1. What's New
  2. Release Notes
  3. SuiteCommerce, SuiteCommerce MyAccount, and SuiteCommerce Advanced Release Notes
  4. Previous Releases
  5. Vinson Release of SuiteCommerce Advanced

Vinson Release of SuiteCommerce Advanced

Welcome to the Vinson release of SuiteCommerce Advanced! This version includes the following enhancements. Many of the features and enhancements in this release have dependencies on the 2016.2 release of NetSuite. For details, see the NetSuite 2024.1 Release Notes.

The following bundles are available:

Important:

To take advantage of new features in existing implementations, you must migrate the new code to your existing code base. For details, see Migrate SuiteCommerce Advanced.

Alternative Payment Methods

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes an update to Alternative Payment Methods. Previously, Alternative Payment Methods were available to users only when making a payment during a standard checkout. Now you can use alternative payment methods in the following situations:

These improvements do not require any configuration or setup beyond that required for the overall feature. For more information about this feature, see Alternative Payment Methods.

Application Performance Management (APM) Changes

With this release of SuiteCommerce Advanced the data stored by the Application Performance Management (previously known as Real User Management — or RUM) has been updated. For more information about the overall APM feature, see Application Performance Management (APM).

A diff in the form of a .patch file for backporting APM enhancements to Mont Blanc is also available. For details on implementing this patch, see How to Apply .patch Files.

Category Integration

With this release of SuiteCommerce Advanced you can integrate NetSuite Categories into your SCA website.

With Categories enabled, you can create a hierarchical structure of product categories, subcategories, and products to organize your store catalog. Each site can have one catalog, with categories assigned to it. This structure lets you present items to shoppers in a structured and organized fashion.

To enable Categories for your SCA site, some setup and configuration in NetSuite is required. For more information about implementing Categories into your SCA site, see Commerce Categories. For information about configuration properties for this feature, see Categories Subtab.

Checkout Usability Improvements

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes an update to the Checkout experience and includes the following enhancements:

Search by Purchase Order

You can now set your SuiteCommerce Advanced site preferences (Setup > SuiteCommerce Advanced > Set Up Web Site) to allow users to add Purchase Order (PO) numbers to the Payment Information page of your web store. The Display Purchase Order Field on Payment Info Page setting displays or hides a text field where customers can enter PO numbers. This PO number automatically appears on sales orders generated from your web store. POs are also searchable by PO number.

This setting has been available for Site Builder and is now available for SCA sites. For information about these preferences, see Payments Page.

Guest User Checkout Fields

You can now configure your site to provide Name and Email input fields for guest users. The new forms.loginAsGuest.showName property displays or hides first and last name input fields when a user registers as a guest. Likewise, the new forms.loginAsGuest.showEmail property provides an email address input field. If enabled, these fields become required for guest users visiting your site.

You can also choose to make these fields automatically populate throughout the guest’s checkout experience. The new autoPopulateNameAndEmail property enables or disables auto-population of the guest’s name and email in any forms throughout checkout. If this property is enabled, forms.loginAsGuest.showName and forms.loginAsGuest.showEmail properties must be enabled (as applicable) to auto-populate.

Configure these properties using the new SuiteCommerce Configuration tool. For descriptions of configuration properties, see Forms Subtab.

For details on the new Configuration Tool, see Configure Properties.

Save Credit Card Information

You can now set your SuiteCommerce Advanced site preferences (Setup > SuiteCommerce Advanced > Set Up Web Site) to:

If you set Display ‘Save My Credit Card Info’ Field to true, your site displays an option during checkout, and users can choose to save their card information for their future use. If you enable both preferences, users can still clear this option and choose not to save their card information. These settings have been available for Site Builder and are now available for SCA sites.

For information about these preferences, see Payments Page.

Configuration Changes

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes significant changes to how you configure your SuiteCommerce Advanced website. Configuration is no longer contained in JavaScript configuration files as part of the application source code. These properties are now stored in JSON configuration files and set using a new SuiteCommerce Configuration record in NetSuite.

Pre-Vinson

In previous versions of SuiteCommerce Advanced, configuration properties were stored in the following locations:

Vinson

With the Vinson release of SuiteCommerce Advanced, configuration properties are stored in JSON files as part of the SuiteCommerce Advanced source code. Any module that defines configuration properties contains a subdirectory called Configuration. This directory contains the JSON configuration files associated with the module. The JSON files contain the schemas used to manage configuration settings plus default property values for the associated domain. Any default configuration settings are included in the Vinson source code, but you must create new JSON configuration files for your custom modules.

With the Vinson release of SuiteCommerce Advanced there is a new SuiteCommerce Configuration bundle (bundle ID: 135010). After installation, you can edit existing properties using the SuiteCommerce Configuration record at Setup > SuiteCommerce Advanced > Configuration.

For a description of Configuration for both pre-Vinson and Vinson implementations, see Configure Properties.

For detailed descriptions of configurable properties (regardless of SCA implementation), see Configuration Properties Reference.

Device Fingerprinting for Transactions

For this release of SuiteCommerce Advanced, device fingerprinting for online orders as part of the advanced fraud management features available with CyberSource Decision Manager is supported. For more information, see Device Fingerprinting.

Field Set Setup Script

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes a new field set named Items Searcher. This field set is required for use with Quotes for Commerce Websites. See Set Up Initial Field Sets for details.

Header Improvements

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes an update to the code and layout of the website header. These changes alter the appearance and behavior of the website header.

These changes include the addition of the Store Locator feature. The header now loads with a Store Locator link and pin icon (mobile devices display only the pin icon). When a user loads the Store Locator page, the site prompts them to enable geolocation. Other capabilities within the header function in the same manner as the previous release.

Store Locator in website header

Newsletter

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes a Newsletter feature to manage email subscriptions to an established email marketing campaign. With this feature:

Note:

This is an email subscription opt-in feature only. It is not a marketing campaign or content management tool. After a user opts in, it is the merchant’s responsibility to manage subscriptions for each Lead or Customer record. For detailed information about creating and managing an email marketing campaign using NetSuite, see Email Marketing Campaigns.

To enable the Newsletter feature to work, do the following in your NetSuite account:

For detailed information about this feature, see Newsletter.

Quotes Enhancements

With this release of SuiteCommerce Advanced, users with permissions to create quotes now see an Add to Quote button on product details pages. After pressing this button, SCA sites display a message informing the user that the item and specified quantities are added to their quote. These items appear in the user’s request for quote. If a user does not have permissions to create quote requests, this button does not appear.

Note:

If a user adds an item using this button and requests a quantity lower than the minimum required, the item is added to the quote request, but at the minimum quantity required for purchase.

For detailed information, see Quotes for Commerce Websites.

This enhancement requires a new field set called Items Searcher. The Items Searcher field set is included in the field set setup script. For details, see Set Up Initial Field Sets.

SCIS Integration

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes an update to the SCIS Integration feature.

Using the previous release of this feature, shoppers could view all of their purchases in one list on their Purchase History page, differentiating between the Online or In Store purchases using the Origin column.

With the Vinson release of SuiteCommerce Advanced, shoppers can also:

These improvements do not require any configuration or setup beyond that required for the overall feature. For more information about this feature, see SuiteCommerce InStore Integration.

Services Architecture Changes

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes a significant change to how SCA organizes and manages services.

Previous Releases of SCA

In previous releases of SCA, each service required a .ss file to handle data transactions with NetSuite. Each .ss file handled HTTP requests sent by the frontend application to access data in NetSuite. Each .ss file maintained its own logic, but also included code common to all services. One .ss file existed per service.

Diagram of services architecture in previous releases

Vinson Release and Later

The Vinson release of SuiteCommerce Advanced relies on more files to achieve the same result. This new architecture may appear more complex, but it helps maintain services in a more structured way than previous versions of SCA.

Diagram of services architecture in current releases

SC.EventWrapper.js – contains centralized, extensible Before and After Event listening capabilities plus extension capabilities for use by all service methods.

ServiceController.js – maintains extensible code common to all services. The code that used to be maintained across all .ss files is now maintained here. This new ServiceController module extends SC.EventWrapper.js and references validation methods declared in ServiceController.Validations.js.

[Module].ServiceController.js – processes requests for a specific service. It does this by extending ServiceController.js. Code is maintained in one location and made available to all services. Each service-specific controller can call a backend model, which communicates with NetSuite as in previous releases.

[Module].Service.ss – handles communication between the frontend SuiteCommerce application and the associated service’s [Module].ServiceController. Each service still requires one service (.ss file) to communicate with the frontend, but this file is now automatically generated using the dev tools and simply calls its related, service-specific controller.

ServiceController.Validations.js – contains the validation methods for requests common to all services.

Note:

The ns.package.json file of the module associated with the service signals the dev tools to auto-generate your [Module].Service.ss file and associates it with a specific service controller.

For detailed information about how to build custom services, see Create a Service to Handle HTTP Requests.

Site Access Restriction

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes changes to how you set up website access restrictions. If implementing Vinson release or later, you enable these features in the Web Site Setup in NetSuite. In the previous release of SCA, this required changing the backend Configuration.js file.

For more information about setting up restrictions to your entire website or restricting access to pricing information, see Website Restriction. For information about setting up

Store Locator

This release of SuiteCommerce Advanced includes a Store Locator feature. Store Locator lets shoppers search for physical store locations on your site. Any search returns results within proximity of the shopper’s location or specified address. A link to the Store Locator page appears in the Header, along with Pin icon.

With this feature enabled, shoppers can:

To implement the Store Locator feature, you must use NetSuite to create a custom Customer Center Role and set up Elevated Permissions for the associated backend service (.ss file). You must also configure feature properties. For detailed information about setting up this feature, see Store Locator.

Note:

The Vinson release bundle of SuiteCommerce Advanced uses Google Maps as the default map engine for Store Locator.

General Notices