Since the Last Update

January has been all about getting the changes held back over Christmas out to prod. There have been a lot of bug fixes but also optimisations, improvements and new features moved to beta.

Beta Test Requests

  • Return Rate %
    • Backoffice > Reports > Publishers
  • Rails 4

Improvements

  • API Approach
    • Added API endpoint for getting customer data. This improvement is not visible on the surface but it is part of a project to move the application to APIs that feed data from the database to the interfaces. It is more flexible and easier to scale.
  •  Appro
    • Changed the ‘Add an item to this order — Barcode’ to keep the focus after entering an item. This will make it easier to start an appro or quote with 1 or 2 items and then scan the rest onto it.
  • Baker & Taylor P&A Lookup
    • This lookup has been put back in the system. To try it: look up a B&T title e.g. 9780439784542 and click set in the distributor column.
  • Cash Up
    • Some people were putting commas into totals in the cash up and this was causing totals to be wildly out. This change stops commas doing this.
  • CO Pick
    • This improves the API that will feed the new customer order pick interface. Many customers are wanting an improvement to this interface and you should see it soon.
  • Data Feeds
    • When there is an ‘image download error’ we now capture the ISBN and continue with the other data rather than aborting the import altogether.
  • Email
    • When you send an email from the system and it fails for some reason (e.g. wrong address) you will now get alerted.
  • Group Customers
    • Flag shop customers when doing a group search in the customer tab. Added an option to import group customers into the shop.
  • Optimisation
    • This optimisation aims to make getting order stats faster. This caused of high load at peak times, especially on web pages. It is a major change so keep an eye on these totals and let us know if anything is amiss.
    • We have improved some queries to make the website faster. The web sites are getting an increasing number of visitors so improvements here improve system performance overall.
  • System Admin
    • Automatically re-queue jobs that fail due to redis errors.
    • Fix resque transactions and disable argument, passing to avoid lock.
    • Put update_zero_cost_orders into separate queue, this is to better manage load and performance.

Bug Fixes, Housekeeping and System Administration


Should be completed in the coming month:

  • Rails 4 upgrade

Things we are working on that are likely to take longer:

  • Customer order picking revamp
  • Leading Edge Integration for order sending