Release Notes

The 1.3.1 release is mostly bug-fixing. Below is a list of the most important fixes.

Fixed issues:

• Synchronization with Magento channel breaks after SQL error;
• Incorrect row count on grids;
• Reports and Segments crash when "Is empty" filter is added;
• Initial synchronization with Magento channel completes with errors;

Release Notes

Website event tracking.

It is now possible to track user activity on web pages and record it in OroCRM. The tracking is done using Piwik JavaScript Tracking code snippets. (For additional information on the subject please check the documentation)
In order to start track events, you have to create a website first—this can be done under Marketing > Tracking Websites. After a site is created, you will get a template of tracking code that you can edit to suit your tracking demands and then embed it on desired pages of your website. By default the code contains only tracking of page views, but the template also contains a placeholder for event tracking code (hidden with comments).
By default all information is passed to OroCRM directly in the real time; note that it may cause performance issues if the traffic on the website is intensive. To avoid this, you may disable dynamic tracking and choose longer log rotation interval in the tracking configuration (System Configuration > General Setup > Tracking). You can also choose to store data not only in OroCRM, but on the Piwik host as well; to do so, specify Piwik credentials in the tracking configuration. Note that if this option is executed, website identifiers in OroCRM must be exactly the same as in Piwik.

Marketing campaigns.

This release introduces support for marketing campaigns. It is now possible to create Campaign records that contain name of the campaign, a unique campaign code that can be used for campaign tracking; provide a lengthy description to the campaign; specify its start and end dates, and estimate a budget.
A relation between Campaign and other entities may be introduced via entity configuration; by default such relation exists for Leads. These relations are available for segmentation and reporting; to provide an example of such use the bundle contains custom Campaign Performance report.
Campaigns are subject to standard ACL permissions; the default ownership type for them is User.

Campaign code tracking.

This feature is build atop the previous one. Its purpose is to link some events that have been registered on the website with a code of a particular campaign in order to measure its performance.
The campaign code can be registered in two possible ways: it can come in the get URL (a good example is a link that is provided to the customer in the newsletter email), or it can be attached to all events that occur on some "landing page."
Either way, such events will be registered in OroCRM with a link to the campaign, and will appear not only on the website page, but on the campaign page as well. The campaign page will also contain a summary report with the aggregate number of registered events of various types, and a timeline graph that will show the dynamics of event aggregation over the campaign lifetime.

Cases.

Case management is a CRM feature that is very important to e-Commerce users. Cases are CRM equivalents for real-world customer problems; when a customer writes an angry email about nondelivery of a product, or calls the hotline and asks for the nonstandard payment method—every time the case should be opened and maintained.
The case must contain a description of the problem that makes a case; some user should be made responsible for handling the case; and some context for the case might be provided. By default, the case has relations to Contact and Account, but you can add more relations via Entity configuration if necessary. For example, it might be useful to tie cases not just to customer's account, but also to the particular order the customer has problems with.
Cases in OroCRM are usable on their own, but they can also be a target to integration with third-party systems (see below).

Processes within Magento integration.

We have rewritten the existing Magento integration jobs and moved part of its functionality to built-in process. This change allows to separate the "synchronization" logic that will still be fulfilled by cron jobs, and the "CRM" logic that from now on will be fulfilled by processes triggered as a result of synchronization job. In this release, the built-in process only handles creation of Account and Contact upon Magento Customer data, but in future releases we intend to complete the separation of logic.

Activities.

In this release we introduce a new type of entities that we call Activities. From the user standpoint, activities equal to some widespread standardized tasks such as adding notes to entities or sending an emails in their context. Using activities allows to standardize user experience for such tasks all over the system, and makes them easily configurable in scope of every entity. All activities are subject to standard ACL permissions.
In scope of this release we introduce three activities: Notes, Emails, and Attachments. Calls and Tasks are in the roadmap for future releases.

• Notes.
  Notes are small text messages that will appear in a dedicated Notes section on an entity view page below the record information.
  To add a note, click a corresponding button on top of a page, then enter a note text in the popup window that appears. Notes are added in a "string" in reverse chronological order—that is, they appear one after another and more recent notes appear higher by default. You can reverse the sorting order with a sorting control. You can also collapse or uncollapse each individual note, or collapse all of them at once using the corresponding control. You can also edit or delete notes if you have permissions to do so.
• Emails.
  The ability to send an email in context of an entity record has been redesigned as a system-wide activity, providing a standardized and configurable user experience all over the system.
  Note that sending of emails via workflow transactions (e.g. in the Abandoned Shopping Cart flow) has not been refactored yet.
• Attachments.
  Another activity added in 1.3 release is the ability to attach files and images to entity records. Attachments must be configured in scope of every entity; the admin should specify maximum file size and allowed MIME types for attached files.
  Attached files or images will be displayed in scope of the record and, if necessary, the user can download them from the system. The download link for every attachment will be protected: when a non-OroCRM user will try to use it, he will be prompted to login screen, and only after successful login the download will start.

Data import in CSV format.

The existing feature of CSV import and export of Contacts was expanded and generalized. It is now possible to configure templates for import & export of every entity, including custom ones. Ready-to-use import & export actions are available by default on the following entity grids: Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity. Export is also available for Users.

Zendesk integration.

Zendesk is a customer service software which main purpose is to provide means of communication between business owners and their customers. It is therefore a great match to Cases feature of OroCRM.
The integration allows the following features:

• Synchronization with the existing Zendesk account (multiple integrations possible)
• One-way synchronization of Zendesk users with OroCRM contacts: for every Zendesk user there will be a matching OroCRM Contact
• Two-way synchronization of Zendesk tickets with OroCRM Cases
  • When a ticket is created in Zendesk, a matching Case will be created OroCRM
  • When a case is created in OroCRM, the user may link it to Zendesk ticket
  • All changes in a matching pair of Case and ticket are synchronized; the strategy for resolving conflicting changes is subject to configuration.
• Two-way synchronization of comments to Cases/tickets between two systems.
  Zendesk integration will not come in default OroCRM package; it will be available as a free extension in the Marketplace.

Other changes and improvements

• Default owners were introduced for channels; this value will be applied to all data.
• Magento Order creation/completion form that appears in the iframe popup when the user tries to convert an existing shopping cart or create a new order now looks more in line with OroCRM style.
• Entity grid data is now exported with filters and sorting applied; pagination is not preserved (all pages are exported at once).
• Attribute key has been changed from the "attribute name" to the "scope + attribute name," so attributes of the same name can be used in different scopes.
• User avatars are now processed the same way as other fields of image type.
• The content of image and file type fields can now be imported and exported in the form of download links in the standard CSV import/export feature.
• Job queue has been improved with multiple workers and jobs priorities.
• Custom jobs for Magento integration were turned into processes.
• Declaration of doctrine types for money an percent have been moved to config.yml.
• Doctrine subscribers were converted to listeners, and all doctrine listeners have been marked as lazy.

Release Notes

Two-side customer data synchronization with Magento

In 1.2 release it is now possible to edit customer data on the OroCRM side and synchronize the changes back to Magento. To do so, you need to enable such synchronization in channel settings (this is possible for existing channels as well as the new ones). After two-way data sync is enabled, all changes in Contacts and Contact Addresses that are related to Magento Customers will be synced back to Magento, so Contacts and Customers will always be in sync. Similarly, all changes to Magento Customer will now affect related Contacts if two-way data sync is on.
System behavior for conflicting changes (e.g. contact data was edited both on Magento side and OroCRM side) can be configured in Channel settings; By default the preference is given to Magento data. We have plans to introduce conflict resolution UI in the future release

Improvements to Customer view

The view now features a location map widget, and full history of Orders and Shopping Carts that are related to a Customer. These changes should greatly improve the experience of working with Customer data, especially when you are considering a direct sales approach such as placing an order from the Customer page.

Improvements to Magento data view

The most noticeable improvement will be removal of per-channel division of Web Customers, Orders, and Shopping Carts in the navigation menu – all records of these entities are now accessed via single pages with "unified" grids. Also, the column sets of each grid has been changed as well:

• Web Customers grid now features Channel, as well as the lifetime value of the Customer, and country and state of customer's default billing address.
• Shopping Carts grid features the same Channel, and billing country and state. Note that the latter two are taken from the particular cart, and can differ from customer's default.
• Orders grid was enriched not just by Channel, but by Website as well. In addition to existing Total paid, Grand total and Sub total amounts were added. Finally, billing country and state were added, too.
  All these additional attributes can be used as filters.

Release Notes

Magento Import improvements and fixes

• Fixed validation of Magento Channel over https
• Improved entity validation in Magento import
• Added option to force run Magento Synchronization

Release Notes

Improvements to Customer view

In 1.2 release, Magento Customer view is noticeably improved. The idea behind the changes was that we wanted to make it more in line with 360° approach that we are using for Account and Contact views. The view now features a location map widget, and full history of Orders and Shopping Carts that are related to this Customer. These changes should greatly improve the experience of working with Customer data, especially when you are considering a direct sales approach such as placing an order from the Customer page.

Improvements to display of Magento data

The most noticeable improvement will be removal of per-channel division of Web Customers, Orders, and Shopping Carts in the navigation menu – all records of these entities are now accessed via single pages with "unified" grids. Also, the column sets of each grid has been changed as well:
Web Customers grid now features Channel, as well as the lifetime value of the Customer, and country and state of customer's default billing address.
Shopping Carts grid features the same Channel, and billing country and state. Note that the latter two are taken from the particular cart, and can differ from customer's default.
Orders grid was enriched not just by Channel, but by Website as well. In addition to existing Total paid, Grand total and Sub total amounts were added. Finally, billing country and state were added, too.
All these additional attributes can be used as filters.

Release Notes

Magento order completion

This feature improves on our Abandoned Shopping Cart workflow. We designed this flow to help you find additional revenue by converting abandoned Magento shopping carts – but you still had to fulfill the conversion on Magento side. Now you will be able to complete an order on Magento website directly from OroCRM, without leaving the application!
All shopping carts in Open status will feature the Complete Order button that will open the iframe window. On the first use, you will be prompted to enter Magento administrator credentials that correspond to the channel you're working with. The credentials must be entered only for the first time in each user session, and on successful login you will be redirected to the Create Magento Order form.
In the form you can edit the contents of the order, apply a coupon or discount, specify billing and shipping addresses, payment and shipment methods, and place an order. This order will be created on Magento side, and immediately synced back to OroCRM, so after the form is closed, the shopping cart will be marked as Purchased and the newly created order will be imported into the system.
This feature requires OroCRM Bridge version 1.1.0 or higher.
Known issue: This feature requires third-party cookies to be accepted by browser for proper handling of Magento login. Normally this is enabled by default, but we detected that in Safari for Mac the default setting is to block all cookies from third-party websites. Please make sure that your browser accepts third-party cookies before you start using this feature.

Magento order creation

This is a related feature to Magento order completion that will allow you not only complete the orders from existing shopping carts, but create them from scratch – again, without leaving OroCRM. The button for order creation is available on every Magento Customer page in OroCRM.
As is the case with order completion, this feature requires OroCRM Bridge version 1.1.0 or higher.

Dashboard management

The 1.1 version introduces configurable and interactive Dashboards to the platform.
You will now be able to:
Re-organize widgets on the dashboard using drag & drop – simply click on the widget header and start moving it around;
Collapse and expand widgets using the small "−" button on the left side of the header;
Remove widgets from the Dashboard using the trash can button on the right side of the header
Add widgets to the Dashboard using an Add Widget button.
The ability to configure dashboards means that users with sufficient ACL privileges can add new dashboards to the system, edit, and remove the existing ones. Dashboard management is available either from the new Dashboard > Manage Dashboards menu item, or directly from the Dashboard view using the new Tools button.

Release Notes

Fixed Issues

• Issue #1049 – Problems with import of several Magento orders per cart
• Issue #944 – Problems with import of Magento orders from Admin website
• Issue #971 – Orders and Shopping Cart grids on the Account view are not clickable
• Issue #970 – Artifacts on the Account view page
• Issue #934 – Contact widget is not working correctly
• Issue #931 – ACL is not implemented correctly for Calls and Emails on Magento-related entity pages

Release Notes

Tasks

This feature allows you to create tasks and assign them to users. Tasks assigned to you can be easily accessed via built-in Task List sidebar widget that provides a list of your open tasks in chronological order, and highlighting the ones that are overdue.

Improved UI for launch of the Sales Process workflow

Workflows are an integral part of the OroCRM experience and of every Business Application. Prior to this release, workflow creation and configuration could only be done by developers using the configuration files. With this release we introduce the first generation GUI tool that allows you to create new Workflows and manage some of the features of custom workflows and reduces the dependency on developers. This version includes the following features:

• Access the list of all workflows that currently exist in the system. Note that "System" or built-in workflows cannot be edited, but can be cloned.
• Activate and deactivate workflows.
• Create a completely new workflow or clone and adjust an existing one.
• Specify steps of the workflow and their relative positions in the workflow
• Add transitions to the workflow

For workflow transitions, the following customization is possible:

• Specify transition form (popup or the whole page) and entity attributes that will appear on this form.
• Customize transition button: change its label, icon and style.
• Provide a warning message to the user.
  With future releases we will continue enhancing this feature and adding more functionality to allow a user to fully manage Workflows

Release Notes

Refactored Flexible Workflows

The idea is to simplify creation and management of the complex workflows that have more than one related entity (e.g. in B2B workflow these are Leads and Opportunities) by adding a restriction that a workflow can have only one main entity (e.g. new B2B workflow called Sales Activity). Note that the Sales Activity entity does not have any value by itself (it even cannot be created directly from the grid) and is meaningful only in the context of the workflow, when there's a connection to a Lead and/or an Opportunity.
Note that the functionality for this release is not complete: The workflow can only be started from the existing Lead or Opportunity which have to be created in advance. The complete vision for this workflow anticipates more elaborate form for starting transition that will allow users to start flow either with an existing Lead/Opportuinity record, or to create such entity on the fly.

Embedded forms

This feature allows developers to create embedded forms that can used in third-party websites in order to collect data directly into OroCRM and have workflows around the data collected. These forms can be set up to maintain the look & feel of a target website.
The package for embedded forms contains two examples of such forms: generic Contact Request form and a Magento Contact Request form that uses Magento CE CSS in its appearance. The latter form also has an OroCRM workflow attached to data records generated from it, serving as an example of the use case for embedded form data collection.

Account merging

Users will now be able to merge up to 5 account records at a time into one account, with a simple and easy-to-use GUI tool. This tool allows user to specify master record (i.e., the record where all other accounts will be merged to), and to choose the source for every attribute of the resulting record. For the relation attributes (like Contacts or Tags) a strategy – replace or append – can be specified.

Upgrading

We have added the ability to upgrade existing installations of OroCRM. To upgrade follow the instructions in upgrade.md file. This process will be automated in future releases.

Release Notes

Improved Workflow

Interaction with the workflow has been redesigned, providing more immediate access to workflow step transitions and view.
The entity that is part of the wokrflow (determined by workflowItem and workflowStep attributes) will no longer feature the "Workflow items" grid in the respective section of its view form, but will instead incorporate workflow step information directly to the entity view. This information includes display of the workflow progress – the current step, the preceding steps and the subsequent steps – and buttons for available transitions. This workflow information is displayed on top of the entity view, and the entity information is displayed below.
The workflow step can no longer be viewed on its own.

Improved Dashboard

This feature adds two funnel charts to our Dashboard: B2B flow chart and B2C flow chart, that relate, respectively, to Opportunity flow and Abandoned shopping cart flow.
The chart visualizes the overall progress of the respective workflow: the funnel shows what is the total value of entities that are in various steps of the workflow, and the outcome of the funnel shows the total value of entities that have reached the "final" step of the flow since the first day of the current quarter. E.g., for the B2B flow the chart will show as the funnel total budget amount of opportunities in "Qualify" step, then total budget amount of opportunities in "Develop" step, and as the outcome of the funnel there will be total budget amount of lost opportunities and total close amount of won opportunities.

Performance improvements

Magento integration performance has been improved in terms of both capacity and speed. Now it is possible to download up to 0.5M records in 13–15 hours

Other improvements

Synchronization of the channel can now be launched directly from the channel view.

The responsive cell design has been applied to Contact View screen. Now if the page is re-sized, the columns count will be reduced from 4 to 2, and then to 1, in order to keep columns not too narrow.