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Esther E.

By Esther E.

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IC5: Commerce

One of the areas we have reviewed in Commerce is the way that we handle custom items. Previously, many of our features were limited to Commerce Products. Even items such as Subscriptions and Download Files were not fully integrated. In Invision Community 5, we have looked at ways to improve the overall experience.

 

Icons and Images

A small, but important change: displaying the item icon when an image is not available. In previous versions, if no image was available, the checkout and client area displayed a standard "box" icon for all items. In IC5, we now show the icon defined in your Item extension.

Could contain: Page, Text

 

Product Details

Line item details are displayed on the checkout screens, as well as on the Invoice. However, this functionality was restricted to custom package fields, which are only available for Commerce Products. This logic has been moved to a new extension method, detailsForDisplay.

Could contain: Page, Text

 

Coupons

A very popular request is to create coupons for specific items that are not Commerce Products. Previously, coupons could either be applied to the entire purchase or to specific packages. We have added the following methods to the Item extensions to allow you to integrate your items with the coupon form.

  • couponFormElements
    Returns an array of elements that will be shown on the coupon form. If no elements are returned, your item will not be listed.
  • saveCouponForm
    Process the values of the fields defined in your couponFormElements method. This method returns an array of data that will be stored with the coupon.
  • isCouponValid
    Check if the coupon is valid for this item.

New default coupon form:

Could contain: Page, Text, File, Webpage

 

 

Autopay

When Commerce generates renewal invoices, we attempt to take a payment if a user has a card on file. We have moved this functionality to \IPS\nexus\Gateway::autopay(). Your gateway must also have the SUPPORTS_AUTOPAY constant set to true in order for this to work.

With the new logic, when a renewal invoice is generated, the task will loop through all available methods. If autopay is supported, it will attempt to take payment using that payment method.

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We've tried to include the most popular requests that we've seen for custom items and payments. What do you think? Have we missed anything? What are some of the requests you've received for custom item integration?

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teraßyte
11 minutes ago, Esther E. said:

Technically the cart will accept any item, you'd just have to add the button on your end to add it to the cart.

What about the ACP? For example, when creating an invoice manually in 4.x it's impossible to add a Downloads file right now.

 

I also hope Custom packages are heavily reviewed for v5, since they have several bugs.

Rather, I've reported plenty of bugs (for Commerce and all other apps), and several are still open and untouched even with fixes provided in them (some since 2021-2022). 🤷‍♂️

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Adriano Faria
6 hours ago, Esther E. said:

Technically the cart will accept any item, you'd just have to add the button on your end to add it to the cart.

And a button will be available on Downloads to accomplish that?

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Matt
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16 hours ago, AlexJ said:

It would be nice if Commerce can get some traction in donation tracking perspective. We have limited subscription option but bills are due every month/year. So having donation goals and who donated against that goal, provides more transparency. 

Already in, but we've not spoken about it yet.

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Esther E.
19 hours ago, teraßyte said:

What about the ACP? For example, when creating an invoice manually in 4.x it's impossible to add a Downloads file right now.

I hadn't realized that, thanks. 

 

12 hours ago, Adriano Faria said:

And a button will be available on Downloads to accomplish that?

Not at this time. The changes in this blog have been applied to our own custom items (courses/subscriptions/etc) where it makes sense. For now we've decided to leave the other items as "buy now". But it will definitely work with your own items. 

 

17 hours ago, AlexWebsites said:

Glad to see coupons for subscriptions. There were other requests such as monthly/annual pricing layouts that would be nice to incorporate into V5. 

Can you clarify please?

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The Old Man

A pie or donut chart would be an ideal way to show who contributed towards a goal. Perhaps one could be added.

(I'm thinking I must have missed the Blog updates for Commerce, this seems more like a backend developer's blog entry (aha, it was!) than the usual preview of new features and functionality, so I'm off to take a look to see what I can find. 🙂)

Edited by The Old Man
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AlexJ
9 hours ago, The Old Man said:

A pie or donut chart would be an ideal way to show who contributed towards a goal. Perhaps one could be added.

Not really. I work daily on BI tools from Microsoft, Google, Tibco, etc. and I can tell you from visualization perspective, it's bad idea. 

No one can click on donut slice of more then 10. Here is live example:  https://fearless-assassins.com/donate/

@Matt Happy to hear, it's added. Have you considered users using donation app can be moved successfully from app to commerce? I really have long standing request i.e. in commerce it accepts credit card as a payment while donation app doesn't. So now, i am forced to use 2 applications because commerce can't create donation goals and show who donated when. 

In today's world, I and many like me would prefer to provide transparency to end users i.e. when, how much and for what goals, users are donating.

2 major issues in donation app is only PayPal support and no subscriptions. I would prefer to have all in one app i.e. commerce or donation. 

Edited by AlexJ
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AlexWebsites
5 hours ago, Esther E. said:

We can look into the first one.

The second one is not on the road map at the moment. 

Sounds good, thank you. The principle behind the second one is to encourage enagagement to maintain a subscription level, cost free or lower cost. I think someting similar can be achieved with account credit for activity. You set the amount of credit applied to each member based on logins, visits, achievements, etc. Something to encourage members to maintain their subscription level for reduced cost or free.

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Marc Stridgen
3 hours ago, The Old Man said:

Will there be an announcement on the new Commerce features any time soon? Thanks

 

There are bits we havent spoken about as of yet, as Matt mentioned in terms of donations for example. We will get to them at some point 🙂 

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Computer Candy

Is it possible yet for the product photo to change based on product options? For example, if a t-shirt is for sale in different colors, can you add photos of the different color t-shirts that will change based on the color the customer chooses on the product page?

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Esther E.
57 minutes ago, Computer Candy said:

Is it possible yet for the product photo to change based on product options? For example, if a t-shirt is for sale in different colors, can you add photos of the different color t-shirts that will change based on the color the customer chooses on the product page?

That functionality is not supported at the moment. 

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IPCommerceFan

I know I'm reaching for the stars here, but I'd like to see the ability to sell custom software via Commerce and serve it via Downloads.

We do this already, but its clunky. 

Currently, our setup is something like:

  1. We create packages in Commerce and assign some custom fields to each
  2. When a customer wants to buy a package, they fill out the custom fields and we write the software to their specifications
  3. We then upload the custom software to a Download page, and change the owner to the customers account. 
  4. Using a custom plugin, we disable the ability to edit or delete the download (things the owner of a file can normally do), and make it so each customer can only see their own files when they visit the Download page.

This essentially gives us a secure download portal for all of our customers, but it'd be great if such functionality were streamlined and given the "IPS" treatment for V5!

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Esther E.
58 minutes ago, IPCommerceFan said:

I know I'm reaching for the stars here, but I'd like to see the ability to sell custom software via Commerce and serve it via Downloads.

We do this already, but its clunky. 

Currently, our setup is something like:

  1. We create packages in Commerce and assign some custom fields to each
  2. When a customer wants to buy a package, they fill out the custom fields and we write the software to their specifications
  3. We then upload the custom software to a Download page, and change the owner to the customers account. 
  4. Using a custom plugin, we disable the ability to edit or delete the download (things the owner of a file can normally do), and make it so each customer can only see their own files when they visit the Download page.

This essentially gives us a secure download portal for all of our customers, but it'd be great if such functionality were streamlined and given the "IPS" treatment for V5!

You'll need a custom application for v5 regardless, so you might be better served with creating a separate location in the ACP to upload this software and link it to a purchase.

Then, use a template hook to display the download in the client area when the user views the purchase. OR... have a separate, dedicated front-end controller that displays the user's own files. Much cleaner from a coding perspective.

 

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