Since the Last Update

March has been spent improving the migration tool to speed up and improve the process of migrating data from other systems to Circle. We attended the Leading Edge conference in Hobart and have taken onboard the need to clean up the setting of agencies and distributors, data feeds, and a desire for better communications with our customers. To that end you will be getting more emails from us about new features and how to use them.

New Features

Beta Test Requests

  • The Rails 4 version is now being tested. Rails is the the underlying environment we build the system in (it is a bit like an operating system on a PC). For security and to take advantage of the technology’s developments it is important that we upgrade. While it is a total system upgrade, you should not notice any changes in the way the system operates.
  • A number of stores have been using Rails 4 for the last month but we want everyone to test it to make sure there are no individual issues. To try the new version simply insert ‘dev’ into your site address. e.g. warwickbooks.dev.circlesoft.net

Improvements

  • Customer Orders
    • Fixed ‘Error 414 URL Too Large’ when trying to create a huge order – (775 total items in this case).
  • Data Feeds
    • Implemented the Thorpe Bowker community data feed.
    • When there is a title and a subtitle in the Thorpe feed we now append the subtitle as follows ‘Title – Subtitle’.
  • House Keeping
    • Removing ‘Raw’ method from places where is safe to do so.
  • Loyalty
    • Do not display loyalty in the web cart if loyalty is not enabled in the Backoffice.
  • Manage Stock
    • Added an Agency Column and the ability to ‘Set’ Agency in Manage Stock. This is needed to make sure all consignment items have an Agency.
  • Migration Tool
    • Added Abort button for each migration and Abort All button.
    • If an ISBN is not yet part of the sites stock file during a Sales History load, don’t fail the upload rather add the Title to Site then upload the Sales Transaction.
    • If the content data has failed to upload it is possible for Support to download a CSV list of the failing entries.
    • If an email is invalid in customer CSV load the record but leave the email address field blank.
    • Migration tool can now handle non-UTF-8 Files.
    • Possible to upload the same INW Goods Invoice number from different Suppliers.
    • When a Customer CSV file has one blank name keep the file blank when the record is loaded.
  • Order Bells
    • Disabled flags to reduce the load they were causing on the servers.
  • Performance
    • Optimisation of slow queries to improve overall system performance.
  • POS
    • Ability to open cash draw from POS with option to require a reason.
  • Security
    • Improved security around staff access privileges.
  • Upload Tool
    • For Purchase Order CSV, if the cost price value in the CSV is < 0, convert it to 0.
  •  Website
    • Space is better used on the mobile version reducing confusion around Menus.

Bug Fixes, Housekeeping and System Administration

Should be completed in the coming month:

  • Rails 4.2 upgrade.
  • Agency distributor tidy up.
  • Thorpe data feed tidy up.
  • A number of niggly issues we picked up talking to people at the LE conference.

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

  • Automated consignment billing through the POS.
  • Customer order picking revamp.
  • Further SEO and website performance monitoring.
  • New central site for groups using new Java Script (Vuejs) technology that will eventually turn into a new Backoffice for stores.

Beyond the next month:

  • Ability to pay invoices with Cr notes.