We are pleased to announce that the 2019-Q1 product release is complete and will be available on your service cluster on the following schedule. There is nothing required for you to take advantage of this release. Your account will be automatically upgraded:

• Beta Cluster Clients:  Beta is already running the latest release
• Cluster 2 Clients:  Wednesday, February 20, 2019
• Cluster 12 Clients:  Wednesday, March 13, 2018
• All other shared Clusters:  Not applicable at this time  
• Dedicated Clusters:  As scheduled with your Client Success Manager 

This service bulletin describes the quarterly product release and is organized by major product area.  Included in each feature description is the "Work Item #" (WI#) from our product issue tracking database; where applicable.  This is included for your reference in the event our support team provided you with a Work Item # for the support incident you submitted.

RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS

Here are some of the key new enhancements included in this release.   The Q1 release was mostly a roll-up of various hotfixes completed during the quarter.

1. Fixed issues with Assembly items not being split out correctly (WI #6575) - There were residual issues with assembly products being handled correctly on order returns.  This was resolved with this release and there are no known issues with assembly products as of this time. 

2. Custom Fields now fully supported on Web Snippets (WI #6575) -  You can add custom fields to web snippets.  This was previously only available via the POS Snippets.  This can be done via the Add button on the web signup form created.  See below.

The following sections provide information on the rest of the enhancement made for this release. 

BLOYAL DIRECTOR - ENHANCEMENTS

The Director modules below map to the Module bar within Director.  The bLoyal Edition you are subscribed to determines which modules you have access to.

Insight Module

• No significant changes were made to the insight module as part of this release.

Customers Module

• Fixed issue with Duplicate customers sometimes being created from 3rd party integration, e.g. WooCommerce (WI #7086)
• The customer external Id "Unlink" command now doesn't default all application systems by default (WI #7114 & #7101) - This helps prevent users to from accidentally unlinking customer-application system associations they didn't intend to. 

Mailings Module

• No significant changes were made to the mailings module.

Loyalty Module (including Loyalty Engine) 

• Expired coupons now automatically expire any awarded coupons (WI #6757 and #7024)  – When an overall coupon expires any previously customer awarded coupons will now also be automatically expired.  Any expired coupons will also be removed from the list of awarded coupons that show at the POS.

Orders Module (including Order Engine)

• The "Pickup-to-Ship" tool now supports creating pending orders (WI#6972) – The order pickup to ship tool was updated to allow you to create orders in Pending, Approved or Captured (Delivery) status.  Previously, the orders would automatically go to Delivery.  This enables you to review the orders after they are created.  

• Approved status orders can be updated again (WI #7043) – Approved status orders can now be edited like they used to be in V3.  Related to this you can now update the payment amount on approved status orders.  This helps solve order out of balance issues (WI #7034) 
• Fixed issues with handling customer Birth dates for 3rd party connector generated orders (e.g. WooCommerce) - If a customer changed their birth date via WooCommerce, the updated birth date was not being included on the order when it came into Director.  That issue has been resolved. 
• Fixed issue with advanced filters in Shipping Address and Payment Methods view in Director (WI #7024)
• Club run created orders now set the Sales Rep field correctly when creating orders (WI #7087)
• Order returns now set the Sale Rep field correctly on the return transaction (WI #7102) 

Products Module

• No significant changes were made to the mailings module.  

Channels Module

• No significant changes were made to the mailings module.   

Payments Module

• Added better support for gift card lines with quantities > 1 (WI #6960) - Orders with gift card purchase where the quantity is greater than 1 are now split into multiple lines so they can more easily be provisioned. 

Setup and Tools 

• Customer Data import tool now imports company field (WI #7118)
• Added better help text to the Discount rule import tool - There are a lot of fields available on discount rules and it's been hard for users to determine which fields to use.  The discount rule import tool was updated to make it a little more clear.  

 bLoyal API and Integration Support

The bLoyal platform is available to developers via Web APIs for the following bLoyal systems.  

• Web Snippets API – Enables a web developer to easily add bLoyal to your web site.
• Grid Service API – Integrate your backoffice system with bLoyal.
• Loyalty Engine API – Loyalty promotions and accruals integrated with certified connections Loyalty
• Order Engine API – Order processing for order certified connectors

 This section briefly describes updates to the bLoyal web APIs.  

Web Snippets

• Custom Fields now fully supported on Web Snippets (WI #6575) -  You can add custom fields to web snippets.  This was previously only available via the POS Snippets.  This can be done via the Add button on the web signup form created.  

POS Snippets

• The "Delete" button was removed from the customer notes section in the customer details view (WI# 7099) – This button was confusing since cashiers cannot delete customer notes. 
• Fixed an issue with Shipping charge overrides resulting in out of balance sales transactions (WI #7177) 

Grid Service

• Added several new entities to the Grid service – Several new entities were added to the Grid API. To see the full list of resources supported by the grid see the swagger definition:  https://grid.bloyal.io/swagger
• Enhanced the Exception Queue UI – The grid monitoring UI (Director->Setup->Grid Setup) is used to troubleshoot integration issues. The entity exception queue UI was made more useful by adding support for searching by specific connector instance and added paging support.
• Enhanced the CatalogProducts API to be store specific (WI#6061) – The grid catalog product APIs now correctly filters catalog products by catalog and store. This fully enables support for having separate Ecommerce sites with different products published to each store. 

POS and Ecommerce Integrations

There is no need to upgrade your POS or Ecommerce connectors as part of this release.  We send out separate notifications when connector updates are released.

The latest downloads for bLoyal developed connectors can be found here: http://support.bloyal.com/integrations