Commerce Applications
The Aconcagua release of SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA) includes the following enhancements:
The features listed herein apply to SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced unless otherwise noted.
SuiteCommerce
SuiteCommerce lets you create, customize, and configure dynamic and engaging web stores without the in-depth development required of SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA). With SuiteCommerce, you can quickly activate predefined themes to alter the look and feel of a web store and activate extensions to introduce functionality and features. This lets site administrators build SuiteCommerce web stores quickly, without requiring development or access to the core functionality or application architecture.
SuiteCommerce also leverages the new Site Management Tools Theme Customizer, which enables Site Management Tools administrators to customize a theme through the SMT user interface without editing Sass or HTML templates.
SuiteCommerce requires the implementation of a few SuiteApps. The SuiteCommerce, SuiteCommerce Extensions Management, SuiteCommerce Base Theme, and SuiteCommerce Configuration SuiteApps are all required.
SuiteCommerce is available as a managed SuiteApp. This means that all updates to the platform are automatic. All upcoming changes to SuiteCommerce will be communicated in advance of any released updates.
Because SuiteCommerce is built on the same architecture as SuiteCommerce Advanced, much of the online documentation applies to both platforms. The documentation highlights what product or product release applies to each topic. Look for the Applies To tags within each topic to determine what application or release the topic applies to.
Some procedures in this documentation direct you through NetSuite user interface elements, such as menus and menu items, that state SuiteCommerce Advanced. In these cases, follow the procedures as directed.
Themes and Extensions
With this release, users implement themes and extensions to improve their web stores. Themes and extensions are self-contained packages that extend your site in some way. Site administrators can install themes and extensions as bundled SuiteApps or as custom-built code deployed to an account by in-house theme designers and site developers.
To implement this functionality to your SuiteCommerce or SuiteCommerce Advanced web store, you must install the SuiteCommerce Extensions Management SuiteApp, which adds the Manage Extensions Wizard to your account.
Manage Extensions Wizard
This wizard lets SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced site administrators:
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Activate predefined themes to alter the look and feel of a web store.
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Activate predefined extensions to introduce functionality and features.
Predefined themes and extensions are available as SuiteApps using the NetSuite SuiteBundler. Predefined (published) themes and extensions must be installed into a NetSuite Account before you can activate them. Themes and extensions can also be deployed to an account by site developers using the theme and extension developer tools.
See Themes & Extensions for more information on installing and activating themes and extensions.
Theme and Extension Developer Tools
One key aspect of themes and extensions is how things change from previous releases. You no longer edit distro files and compile code for deployment. Now, you deploy a theme or extension to a NetSuite account, making it available for activation (using the Manage Extensions Wizard). When an administrator activates a theme or extension, NetSuite then compiles the code and applies it to a specified domain.
The Extensions Management SuiteApp includes two different developer tools, one specific to creating themes, the other for extensions. In this way, SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced developers are now theme developers, extension developers, or both.
These developer tools let SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced site developers and partners:
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Develop Sass and HTML templates and deploy as themes.
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Expose Sass variables to the Site Management Tools Theme Customizer.
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Develop JavaScript, SuiteScript, or configuration objects that are accessible using the Extensibility API and deploy as extensions.
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Test themes and extensions on a local server.
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Create Custom Content Types (CCTs) as extensions.
SuiteCommerce Advanced Developers:
As an SCA developer, the Aconcagua release gives you access to themes and extensions. Developers for Aconcagua sites now use themes to alter the look and feel of the site using Sass and HTML files. The Aconcagua release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes the Source and Development distributions within the File Cabinet as expected in previous implementations. However, these distributions no longer contain HTML templates or Sass files. Therefore, you must implement themes to develop HTML templates and Sass files.
To introduce new functionality to a site through JavaScript and SuiteScript, you can now use the Extensibility API to build a portable, extensible application through the new Extension Framework.
However, if you are developing JavaScript, SuiteScript, or configuration objects that are not accessible using the Extension Framework, you must use the core SCA developer tools and follow SCA module customization practices. See Customize with SCA Tools for information.
See SuiteCommerce Extensibility API for a list of components exposed using the Extensibility API.
Extensibility API and the Extension Framework
This release introduces a new way to customize and extend your SuiteCommerce or SuiteCommerce Advanced web store. Developers now create extensions using the Extensibility API to introduce new features or functionality. Developers build code within an extension to make API calls to components. These components then interact with the application. This separates custom developer code from the application itself and helps ensure future extensibility of the application.
The best practice is to build extensions using JavaScript, SuiteScript, or configuration objects available within the Extensibility API. See Extensibility API Components for a list of components available using the Extensibility API.
If you are customizing objects that are not accessible using the Extensibility API, you can use the core SCA developer tools and customization practices to customize these objects.
For more details on the Extensibility API and procedures on how to access components while building extensions, see SuiteCommerce Extensibility API.
SuiteCommerce Base Theme
Along with the introduction of themes and extensions, this release includes the SuiteCommerce Base Theme SuiteApp. Best practice for theme developers is to use this theme as a baseline for any theme development. Simply install this SuiteApp and use the Manage Extensions Wizard to activate it for a domain. Then, use the theme developer tools to fetch the theme files into your theme development workspace and start developing your theme.
You must activate a theme before you can develop or test code locally. This theme is built using best practices for creating HTML and Sass and using established an Commerce Sass Style Definitions for developing Sass.
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For information on how to install this theme as a SuiteApp, see Install Your Commerce Website Applications.
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For information about using the theme developer tools to fetch these files to use a a baseline theme, see Fetch Active Theme Files.
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For information about developing your theme, see Develop Themes.
SuiteCommerce Theme Customizer Support
With this release of SuiteCommerce, theme developers can customize Sass files to expose variables to the Site Management Tools Theme Customizer. Within your Sass structure, you can also establish a schema for displaying each variable in the SMT user interface.
Exposing Sass takes the form of an editable() function call wrapped inside a comment in a theme’s Sass files. When a site administrator activates a theme with exposed Sass, SMT displays those variables, and SMT administrators can alter the exposed variables to further customize their web store.
This customization can include preset skins. A skin is a selectable set of predefined settings that change the appearance of a theme in SMT. One theme can include any number of skins that SMT administrators select to change that theme’s appearance. From a development perspective, a skin is a JSON file that defines each exposed variable and the new values.
See Expose Sass Variables for Customization for details.
Documentation Changes
With this release of SuiteCommerce, the online documentation has been reorganized. For the web store topics, we have separated most developer-specific content from user content.
URLs to most topics have not changed, so any local bookmarks to existing topics are maintained.
You will now see two new sections as follows:
Storefront – These topics explain everything you need to know to set up your web store to deliver a full shopping, checkout, and my account experience to your customers. Some of what you can learn about from here includes how to:
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Apply themes and extensions
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Set up and manage transactions
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Prepare items for availability and search in your store
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Optimize your store for SEO and analytics
Developer Documentation – These topics are written for theme and extension developers and web store administrators. Some of what you can learn about from here includes how to:
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Set up domains
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Create themes and extensions
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Use the available APIs to customize your web store experience
Copy Configuration
With this release, you can use the Copy Configuration functionality to copy a SuiteCommerce configuration record from one domain to another.
Copy Configuration is part of the SuiteCommerce Configuration SuiteApp. After installing this SuiteApp, Copy Configuration is available by going to Setup >SuiteCommerce Advanced > Configuration and selecting your website and domain.
If you are implementing an SCA site, the two domains do not have to be on the same release. For example, you can copy a Kilimanjaro configuration record to another domain on a later release of SCA. Since it is common for later versions of SCA to have fields that do not exist in previous releases, the tool copies the values of all fields that are common between the two releases and uses default values for the additional fields.
Common scenarios where this feature is useful include:
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Moving a web store from staging to production
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Moving from one SuiteCommerce Advanced release to another
For additional information see Copy a SuiteCommerce Configuration Record.
Intercompany Cross-Subsidiary Fulfillment
With this release, SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced support Intercompany Cross-Subsidiary Fulfillment.
This feature only applies to OneWorld accounts with multiple subsidiaries and requires proper setup in NetSuite. See Intercompany Cross-Subsidiary Fulfillment for setup information.
After you properly configure Intercompany Cross-Subsidiary Fulfillment in NetSuite, users can order an item from a subsidiary site regardless of inventory level at that subsidiary as long as there is sufficient inventory to fulfill the order at a related subsidiary. This capability applies to all types of orders including ones set to ship or set for pickup in store.
Free Gift Promotion
With this release, the SuitePromotions Free Gift option is available in your web store. After adding a Free Gift promotion, the free gift is automatically applied to qualifying orders. Users can elect to delete the free gift if they do want to receive the gift item.
Keep the following in mind with Free Gift promotions:
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Free Gift promotions do not work with the Multi Ship To feature.
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Best Offer logic does not apply to Free Gift promotions.
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Parent matrix items cannot be selected a a free gift.
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Items with options cannot be selected as a free gift.
If your site is not already configured to use SuitePromotions, see Promotions in Commerce Web Stores for information about how to add SuitePromotions to your site.
Libraries Update
With this release, the third-party libraries shown in the table below have been updated. Library version information in also shown in the distro.json file. If you are migrating to the Aconcagua release of SuiteCommerce Advanced, ensure that no deprecated methods exist in your implementation before migrating.
|
Library |
Old Version |
New Version |
|
Almond |
0.3.0 |
0.3.3 |
|
Backbone |
1.1.2 |
1.3.3 |
|
Backbone.Stickit |
0.8.0 |
0.9.2 |
|
Bignumber |
1.5.0 |
4.0.4 |
|
html5shiv |
3.7.2 |
3.7.3 |
|
jQuery-Zoom |
1.7.13 |
1.7.20 |
|
json2 |
2.0.1 |
2.0.2 |
|
require |
2.1.15 |
2.3.5 |
|
twitter-bootstrap-sass |
3.3.1 |
3.3.7 |
|
underscore |
1.7.0 |
1.8.3 |
Standard Header and Footer in Checkout
With this release, you can elect to use the standard website header on checkout pages rather than the default checkout header and footer. This property is available on the Configuration record Checkout Tab.
For additional information, see Use Standard Header and Footer in Checkout.