Highlights of Version 7 Feature Pack 2
New features available with WebSphere Commerce
Version 7 Feature Pack 2 include: WebSphere Commerce search,
Social bridging, Coshopping, Subscriptions and recurring orders,
Catalog Filter and Pricing tool, web feed utility; and support for IBM Product Recommendations, formerly
known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer.
WebSphere Commerce search
WebSphere Commerce search leverages the Apache Solr search platform to deliver enhanced search capabilities in starter stores. Business users can manage search term associations and search-based merchandising rules with the Management Center. These built-in search capabilities and tools allow businesses to optimize the search experience and reduce the total cost of implementation and provide a tightly integrated commerce and search solution.Social bridging harnesses the power of social networks
Social bridging is an extension to the social commerce feature. Social bridging provides social networking capabilities that enable stores to support the open sharing of information within the storefront by using external social IDs. Social bridging encourage shoppers to leverage their existing social networking sites and identities to extend your brand beyond the WebSphere Commerce site. Social bridging allows customers to use established, external social networking IDs to create social content in your store. It also allows shoppers to leverage the social contributions they make to your store on their personal external social networking sites.
Learn more....Enhance the customer experience with coshopping
Coshopping enhances the customer shopping experience by enabling two shoppers to explore a store, view products, and chat about product details. Attract more shoppers to your store by delivering a smarter and more collaborative shopping experience. Coshopping also enhances an existing contact center chat solution to allow a customer service representative (CSR) to guide the customer through product browsing and selection on the site.Learn more....Support selling of subscriptions and recurring orders
Retailers can now sell service-based and subscription-based offerings and enable shoppers to place and manage recurring orders online. Service-based and subscription-based offerings increase customer loyalty and encourage shoppers to buy more frequently.Learn more....Use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool to implement pricing strategies
Use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool in the Management Center to create and manage catalog filters, price lists, and price rules. Sellers, Sales Managers, and Account Representatives can use the flexible features to implement pricing strategies that meet changing business needs and filter the catalog for product and price entitlement.Learn more....Web feed utility facilitates connecting to a web feed and harvesting its information
The web feed utility provides a new way to connect to web feeds, such as a Content Management System, and harvest the information they provide. Previously, third-party software had to be acquired and configured to achieve similar goals. Therefore, with an improved native ability to perform these tasks, Feature Pack 2 offers cost and time savings. The web feed utility is built around the Data Load utility; leveraging its efficiency in reading data and loading it into your WebSphere Commerce database. The web feed utility can connect to a web feed and harvest its static content, such as PDFs, Microsoft Office documents, media files and other file formats. Attaching static content, such as a user guide or video, to catalog entries or marketing information creates an engaging site for customers.Learn more....IBM Product Recommendations support for Management Center marketing activities
IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer generates personalized product recommendations for each visitor based a powerful set of proven and configurable algorithms. Marketers can use the precision marketing engine to create marketing campaigns to control when, where, and to which customers to display these relevant product recommendations. Use E-marketing Spots to display both dynamic and flat file recommendations throughout your store.Learn more....Store Management tool allows you to manage the stores you are authorized to work with
The Store Management tool replaces all of the store management features in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, except store creation and the ability to suspend and resume stores. Managing stores in the Store Management tool is more efficient than the change flow process previously used in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.In WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, change flow data is saved in configuration files within the stores.war file. Store function and store style data in Management Center is saved in the Marketing database. As a result, you no longer have to update your EAR file or the style.xml and VirtualPages.xml files when you change selected store functions or store style.
You can also stage your selected store functions and store style. If you change the value of a store function in the staging environment, such as which optional fields to display on the Registration and Change Personal Information pages, you do not have to change both the staging and production environments. When you propagate your changes, the production environment is automatically updated.Learn more....Manage versions of catalog objects
The Content Versioning feature allows business users to manage versions of catalog content and rollback changes if required. By creating versions of business objects, Product Managers and Category Managers can:- Create, restore, delete, and view versions of business objects.
- Make temporary changes to objects to target specific events such as a seasonal sale.
- Captures a snapshot of catalog objects.
- Create a version of a business object for testing purposes.
- Manage content that requires approval under a workspace.
Learn more....Manage product attributes with the Attribute Dictionary
An attribute dictionary is a set of common attributes and attribute values that can be reused by multiple products. The Attribute Management tool in Management Center provides business users the ability to update, assign, and manage product attributes. Enabling the attribute dictionary tool in the Management Center provides the following key features:- Standardizes attributes and attribute values that are common among multiple products.
- Change attributes and attribute values in one place and have the change reflected in all catalog entries.
- Browse the attribute dictionary to locate and manage attributes.
Learn more....Marketing activities support new trigger, target, and action elements
You can take advantage of new types of web activities that can motivate customers to make a purchase:- Use triggers to influence search results in the storefront, react to a customer's recurring order or subscription status. For example, you can reach out to a customer who cancels a subscription, orders a new subscription or when a subscription is about to expire.
- Use the Search Criteria and Result target to identify customers whose search results include specific catalog entries, or search with specific search filters.
- Use actions to deliver enhanced capabilities with search rules.
You can create the following actions:
- Add or remove the customer from an existing customer segment
- Change the position of certain results within the search results list
- Force specific catalog entries to display at the top of the search results list
- Replace search keywords that are submitted by the customer with alternative search keywords
Learn more....Simplified installation and enablement in the development environment
The development environment installation process is improved to streamline installation of fix packs and feature packs, requiring less manual interactions. With these new improvements, you can:- Select which features you want to enable before you run the installation. You can enable individual features, all features, or no features.
- Install the fix pack, feature pack, and optionally the base product at the same time. You can create a custom repository that includes all the products you want to install.
Learn more...Support for Management Center programming model enhancements
In previous versions, OpenLaszlo classes were used to declare tool definitions, object definitions, search definitions, properties views, and list views. Now the OpenLaszlo classes that define configuration information are converted into XML files that do not need to be compiled into the Management Center flash binary file (ManagementCenter.swf). When you enable the Management Center feature, a port utility is started during the enablement process. Use the port utility to migrate your customization from OpenLaszlo classes to XML. In addition, you can use the enhanced comparison utility in WebSphere Commerce Developer to compare the OpenLaszlo classes and the new XML files. Merge any conflicts into the new version of the XML files.Support for Oracle RAC as the WebSphere Commerce database
You can now use Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) as the WebSphere Commerce database. With Oracle RAC, you can scale your database tier horizontally by using a number of computers, LPARs, or blades to distribute your query processing across multiple nodes.Learn more....