This document will continue to evolve as existing sections change and new information is added. All updates are logged below, with the most recent updates at the top.
| Date |
What's Changed |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 20 JUN 2017 |
Initial Document Creation |
The 17.3 release of Oracle Commerce Cloud includes substantive improvements and changes to the following areas of the product:
- Multi-Site
- B2B
- Audiences
- Extensibility
- Experience and Design
- Storefront
- Catalog
- Publishing
- Guided Search
- Integrations
- Tax
- Assisted Selling Application
What follows is a brief summary. For more details about each feature and improvement, please review the What’s New 17.3 Release document and the official Oracle Commerce Cloud documentation in the Oracle Cloud Help Center.
The major new features released in the Oracle Commerce Cloud 17.3 release include:
Multi-Site via One Admin Console: Site Specific Settings and Layouts
Create additional B2C sites and assign catalog and price groups to each site via API. Manage multiple B2C sites using a single administration interface, enabling merchants to run multiple websites on unique URLs that require a unique shopper experience per site, including different content and product assortments.
In 17.3, multi-site improvements include site-specific layouts, site-specific settings for email, shipping methods/shipping country, and setup, and ability to filter promotions by site.
The OCCS Admin UI provides a centralized location for business users to manage shared and site-specific promotions, product catalogs, pricing, and content for multiple sites per site. Includes preview by site, site-specific SEO, and Storefront and Agent support for multiple sites. Sites have separate shopping carts.
B2B Commerce: Account Hierarchies
An account can now contain sub-accounts that represent multiple hierarchies of an organization structure, allowing customers to manage by department, for example, and allowing buyer actions to be limited by the accounts and sub-accounts the buyer belongs to. This feature is supported in the Admin, Storefront, and Agent.
Due to the nature of this feature, layout changes must be made in order to add account hierarchy capability to the Storefront.
Provides the ability to use numeric profile and account properties, such as age, to build audience rules that personalize site content and products for shoppers.
Define Experiments by Audience
Audiences are now directly integrated with Experiments, allowing A/B tests to be targeted towards specific audience segments.
Allows testing of content and experiences with a subset of shoppers before rolling them out more broadly.
Allows integration and customization code to be run alongside Oracle Commerce Cloud, co-located for security, reliability, and performance. Add REST APIs directly to the Oracle Commerce Cloud REST API. Intended for extensions and add-ons to the Commerce Cloud solution, not standalone applications or substantial replacements of key functionality.
Shopper logins can use existing SAML2 SSO solution. OCCS user profiles will be auto-created and updated when a user logs in. Profile properties to share with OCCS can be customized. Allows for a seamless login experience across sites and users only need to register once.
Custom Properties on Order Line Item
Provides merchants with the flexibility to create, retrieve, and update custom order properties at the order line item level, especially useful for instances when an item is customized or personalized (e.g. gift cards, monogramming). Supported in Admin, Agent, Storefront, Order Webhooks.
Include Site ID in Webhook Payloads
The site ID property is now included in the webhook request payloads for the following webhooks, allowing systems that receive webhooks messages to identify the site that originated the message and process the message accordingly:
Order Submit, Order Submit for Non PCI Compliant Target Systems, Return Request Update, Return Request Update for Non PCI Compliant Target Systems, Cart Idle, Quote Request, Quote Update, External Price Validation, Shipping Calculator, External Tax Calculator, Shopper Registration, Shopper Account Update, Credit Card Payment, Generic Payment
Additional New Features and Other Changes
There are also a number of additional new features, changes, and improvements included in the Oracle Commerce Cloud 17.3 release. By functional area, these include:
There are no changes to browser support.
No new languages or currencies are supported.
Distinctive Oracle Apps style applied to all CX Cloud Apps, including Oracle Commerce Cloud, so that they share a common navigation model.
Context Configuration for Checkout Layouts
Allows merchants to create checkout layouts that differ based on payment scenarios.
Design Studio “Layout” Manager now contains a quick search functionality, allowing merchants to quickly search by layout title name.
Command-line tool that allows merchants to integrate Commerce Cloud with the IDE or code editor of choice. Makes it possible to transfer content between Commerce Cloud server instances.
Test Environment Storefront Authentication
Restricted access model for origin and test storefront servers has been implemented, so that only certain applications are allowed direct access to those servers.
New widget version for collections loads category data faster to improve rendering and overall widget performance.
Improved Responsive Image Support
ccResizeImage binding has been updated with HTML5 responsive support, using the srcset and sizes attributes. Hero, Product Listing, and Product Details widgets have been updated to use ccResizeImage instead of productImageSource.
Points as a Currency (API only)
Provides ability for merchants to create a currency type called “points” and allows for launching a new website based entirely in points. This is API only and requires the merchant bypass out of the box tax calls or set up own tax processing. Shipping must either be handled in points or via the external shipping calculator.
SKU Bundles (Admin UI Support)
Allows merchants to combine multiple SKUs to create a new product/SKU bundle within the Admin UI, making it easy to set up and view the bundled SKUs. Includes ability to use the SKU Import/Export function to manage the bundled SKU setup.
This was previously available via API only.
Selective Publishing Improvements
Merchants can now filter by user, see timestamped changes for all authors, and view selected assets and dependencies separately.
Guided Search capabilities have been improved to model data much more efficiently. The first feature to take advantage of this is multi-language applications which are now more easily manageable, with publish times for multi-language implemented reduced significantly.
Order items can now record attribute data that is not part of the commerce catalog and support item level attributes from external systems. This is especially useful for telco use cases, where a merchant may have a configured SKU with external item attributes, such as number of minutes or text allowances.
Merchants can now import and export data in bulk using plug-ins, allowing for data to be brought in from an external system or data to be sent to an external system. Supports JSON and CSV formats. Objects supported: Accounts, Products, Collections, Catalogs, Profiles, and Inventory.
Tax Processor Configuration Enhancements
Provides merchants with the ability to configure their tax processor settings directly from the OCCS Admin UI. Supports two out-of-the-box processors (Avatax and Vertex O-Series) and the customizable tax calc webhook option, as well as None where no tax processor has been configured.
Allows merchants to create their own tax calculation processing by allowing Commerce Cloud to make a call-out to retrieve the appropriate values. Gives merchants more flexibility in integrating with the tax calculation provider of choice.
Tax Included/Excluded by Price Group
Merchants can now indicate if product prices include or exclude tax by specific price groups, especially useful for merchants selling in multiple countries and currencies.
Store associates can now provide assistance on orders with split shipping.
Opt In/Out Email Settings Support
Allows in-store associates to opt shoppers into or out of marketing emails for a particular site.
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