CMS Version 9.0.5 Release Notes

Introduction

CMS 9.0.5 introduces some greatly anticipated enhancements that could have an significant impact on the efficiency of your operation. We're excited to bring these new features to you. If you are already running 9.0.5, you can jump straight to the list of Bug Fixes otherwise read on for all of the details...

PCI Compliance - CMS 9.0 has been successfully reviewed by Coalfire Systems to also meet the PA-DSS 1.2 standard and our application for listing has been accepted by the PCI Council. You can find CMS 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0 on the PCI Council’s list of Validated Payment Applications HERE

Integrations - No changes to our standard CMS integrations in 9.0.5. All will continue to work as they had including CommerceV3, UPS Worldship, FedEx Ship Manager, Endicia/DaZzle, ShipRush, MPS, TransFirst, and Authorize.net. Comments on Endicia enhancements are below. Integration with Magento has been enhanced and is discussed below.

9.0.5 ENHANCEMENT DETAILS

Hold Until Complete - Have you ever wanted to ship an order complete (instead of shipping some items now and the remainder when the back ordered items become available)? Would you also like to retain stock allocation for your items that were in stock so they'd still be available when the back order was ready to fulfill? Hold Until Complete (HUC) is what you've been waiting for!

We intentionally call this Hold Until Complete instead of "ship complete" because this solution makes use of the Hold functionality already built into CMS. You end up holding the order as-is, stock allocation and all, until the remaining items are available. When they are, you just fulfill the back order, the items fulfill onto the -1 invoice with the original items (no -2 fulfillment invoice) and your order is released from Hold for further processing (approval, printing, shipping, and capture.)

Using it couldn't be easier as CMS has automated it all for you. Just turn on the setting in Order Entry Options>Items for HUC and CMS will automatically put any order onto HUC if it contains a mix of in-stock and back ordered items. Employees with the new permission to alter this Hold flag can override it pre or post save (on the View Invoice tab) to allow the in-stock items to ship right away instead. Alternately you can leave the option off so CMS will not automatically set it and just choose the option manually as orders are entered.

HUC is really a special type of hold that only applies to orders with back ordered items. Like oither fully delayed orders (back orders and future ships) CMS will default the intial payment amount to $0 and CMS will create a payment for the full amount when the order is fulfilled. You can, however, set payment amount to a non-zero amount if you wish to take a deposit on the order. This special type of Hold (HUC) will allow payments to be processed in Batch Approvals and EDC where other Hold types are intentional removed from further processing until the hold is removed.

HUC does impose a few restrictions on HUC orders. CMS will not set the HUC flag, or let you set it, for orders that have future ship items on it, returns or multiple invoices. You may also not process a return against an unfulfilled HUC order (since CMS was told it needed to ship complete) so the HUC flag would have to be removed by an operator with proper permissions before a return is allowed. Read more about HUC HERE.
Order Locking - We've implemented a powerful new locking mechanism in CMS to prevent multiple edits from occurring to the same order at the same time. This concept extends beyond just manual order edits though. This also covers back order and future ship fulfillment, batch approvals, and batch capture (EDC). All of these processes will now check for an order lock and, if present, will skip processing. Additionally, these processes set locks of their own so, while the order is being processed, it would prevent other users or processes from modifying the order.

If a lock is encountered, you'll be presented with a message indicating which user/machine has the order locked. This is true both for individual order editing as well as the batch processes. For credit card processing, where it is most critical, we also display a new field called Last Message in the Batch Approvals and EDC screens so you can see that this charge was skipped even after the processing message was closed.

Locks will clear automatically as edits and updates are completed. If necessary, you can also force all locks from a workstation to be cleared by exiting CMS. When the database service restarts, it will also clear all locks from all connections.
Batch Approvals and EDC windows - These two screens include enhancements resulting from both of the above enhancements.
- Last Result field - new column in the grid for both screens showing last result, either from the processor or a lock
- Drag to resize - Both screens can now be resized, just grab a corner and expand to the desired dimensions. This allows for easy viewing of the Last Result field. Some other minor screen changes and button positioning were made to facilitate this.
- Limit to only X - Normally when processing Batch Approvals, all charges displayed would be processed. This new option lets you set a threshold of the number of charges to process. Normally authorizations are a pre-requisite for printing invoices or pick-tickets so this option can allow you to control how many orders to release into the warehouse. While you could do the same thing with print batching options, this one ensures the customers card is not authorized first and is most useful if you have long shipping back logs and want to ensure the authorization is obtained when you have a reasonable change to ship/capture before that auth expires.
Kit Builder - There are several types of kits that CMS supports, one of which is pre-assembled and has its own inventory (as opposed to pulling from component stock real time like other types of kits.) Pre-assembled kits require a fair amount of extra work when you want to build more. Traditionally you'd have to manually decrement the stock levels from all of the components (a real chore if the kit has a lot of components) and then receive stock into the completed kit...but no more!

Kit Builder provides a great interface to help you:

decide which kits to build
see which kits are built from which components
see how many you could build
see how many you have in stock
see how many are on back order
streamline the process of building kits

Kit building can be done in a single or two step process. This starts with the creation of a "batch" of the kit(s) that you want to build. From there you can either build them automatically or reserve stock (decrementing stock from components), print a work-order for the warehouse to pick/build the kits, and then come back to CMS to confirm the actual number built.

In addition to automating all of the stock decrementing and receiving, Kit Builder will provide a paper trail for your work. Records of inventory adjustment (components) and lots received (kits) will both include a notation that it was done by Kit Builder and via which batch number. The lots for completed kits will also have their cost automatically calculated based on the sum of the component costs.

Full instructions can be found in our Kit Builder wiki article.

License Update Utility - When logged in as PCI Administrator a new option under Administration can be found called Licensing. Here you can click a button "Update CMS Licensing" to obtain your latest CMS release code without having to exit CMS or install an update. This option is only available if you've installed the CMS Licensing Service, an option available during your 9.0.5 update.
Magento Integration expanded - In 9.0 we announced our Magento shopping cart integration was being released into beta. As we progress with live clients, many enhancements have been added. An overview of the capabilities of this integration can be found on our Wiki.
Shipping Integrations improvements - Your CMS database includes a table called External_Shipping that is provided specifically for use with shipping integrations. This table allows that software to "write-back" to CMS with information like shipping cost, how it actually shipped, tracking number, and shipped date.

This table has been expanded to work better with multi-carrier shipping systems or fulfillment services where before it would only work well with the shipping systems provided by the major carriers. It also now supports USPS shipments which was previously only possible through Endicia integrations.

New fields include:

RDI - Residential Delivery Indicator (residential or commercial) and, if set, CMS can use this to properly indicate UPS Ground Residential or Commercial (all other methods simply have a residential flag)
External_ID - Data fields only, reference number from the external system if needed
Shipmethod - Carrier agnostic field where the service level used can be specified
Carrier - The carrier for the shipmethod (note that these two fields would be used in lieu of the carrier specific fields found earlier in the table)
Package_Type - Data field only, could be used for indicating if a package was letter, box, tube, etc.
Package_Count - Data field only - how many packages in the shipment
Item_Count - Data field only - how many items in the package
Rated_Weight - Data field only - applies to dimensionally rated shipments

The size of the field in the External_Shipping table for UPS_SHIPMETHOD has been increased from 20 to 50 characters (to facilitate the new Expedited Mail Innovations method).

UPS Mail Innovations supported - We've added a new UPS service level called "Expedited Mail Innovations" which is one of the contracted services offered by UPS (CMS already supported the others.)
Support for Adam Scales - Added support for the Adam brand shipping scale model CPWplus. This is an inexpensive alternative to the normally pricey scales that can be used for both letter and package weights (most scales used for package weighing are not sensitive enough to also be used for weighing letters in ounces.)
Shipping and Handling formula improvement for free shipping - The setting to exclude products from S&H calculations in the spending table now also applies to the % Over option. If you use a spending table for your S&H, it is very common to use it in conjunction with the % Over option since this option picks up where the spending table leaves off. Now both of these S&H formula options can recognize when a product should have free shipping.
Email Matching for Imports - There is an option in Setup now for whether or not you'd like CMS to try and match an imported order to an existing customer by their email address (only). If used, CMS will only make this match if there is a single customer in your list with that email address. If there are multiple matches, it is no longer considered a unique match at which point CMS will step back to its traditional matching logic.
Replacing an Order's Customer enhanced - As described just above, CMS employs matching logic to help connect imported orders to existing customers in your list. While this logic is quite good, there are situations where it fails to match to the right customer or perhaps any customer. This is simple enough to resolve by clicking Find Customer when verifying the order but, when that customer was retrieved, it was replacing the order's addresses with the default addresses from the retrieved customer.

The enhancements in 9.0.5 include giving you the option of which addresses to use, those from the order or from the customer, or cancel the process altogether. These enhancements come into play any time you click Find Customer for an order that already has a customer as well as any imported order.

In addition to the addresses, CMS will also warn if the salesperson or price category for the order will be altered as a result of replacing the order's customer with Find Customer.
Performance Improvements - Significant enhancements have been added to Order Entry to improve performance for larger orders, those with hundreds of items, packages, and/or recipients. These orders will be faster to load, navigate, and save. These large orders will still have a noticeable lag but will be vastly improved over previous releases.
Tech Info Allows Full Formatting - In the Products window, under the Tech Info tab, you'll see you now have full word processor capabilities for creating text about your products. This text is available to your operators in Order Entry by clicking the Tech button.
Another tab has been added here as well for "Additional Product Information" which is unformatted plain text. This would be the field to use if you're storing information about your product for use with other systems, like one that produces your printed catalog. This field is plain text where Tech Info is in an RVF format.
Inactive Catalogs - In Setup, if you lift the Active flag on a catalog, CMS will check to see if there are any unfulfilled requests for this catalog. This is useful because outstanding requests for inactive catalogs cannot be fulfilled/completed.
Better Handling of Discontinued - The Setup option for hiding discontinued items in Order Entry has been reworded to reflect the new behavior which is: 'Hide discontinued out of stock items from product selection lists'. In other words, with this option on, you can continue to see and sell discontinued items until they are out of stock. You may have not used this option in the past due to the fact that CMS would have hidden the item even if in stock. You might reconsider using this option now (CMS must be restarted after altering this setting before it will take effect.)

Other related changes include:
1. Discontinued items cannot be back ordered or future shipped. This is due to limited availability and that back orders and future ships do not allocate stock so CMS will limit discontinued items to only be allowed for normal allocated sales.
2. One time items may not use the same product code as a discontinued item.
Order Entry Improvements :
- Back Order Options (Items tab of Order Entry)
  - When entering the BO/Options for an item, CMS will not always default to fulfilling X (the first radio button)
  - When adding a back ordered item to the order, and the back order options are presented, if you click Cancel the item is removed from the order. If, however, you are editing the B/O Options for an item and hit Cancel, it will simply cancel your changes and the item is not removed.
  - In B/O Options, if you had selected Back Order All and then select a radio button for Fulfill X or Change Amount Ordered To X, the Back Order All Items On Order checkbox will be removed.
- Multiship Cancel - If you click the Multi-Ship button and do not want to proceed as a multiship, you can click the new Cancel button to revert immediately back to a normal order. (this is also possible by deleting all recipients on the order)
- Clicking Edit in Order Entry will now leave you on the tab you were viewing (used to jump to View Invoice)
- When reviewing a -2 or greater invoice and then retrieving another order, CMS was trying to jump to the same invoice number for the retrieved order. Now when retrieving an order from any invoice, it will jump to the -1 invoice of the newly retrieved order.
Order Imports - Payment types in XML are no longer case sensitive. For example - Visa can be VISA, visa, or Visa.
Order Exports - New field for Items Ordered : Product's Vendor SKU - This field provides the primary vendor SKU associated with this product.
Column Sorting - In the Fulfillment Manager, you may now use column sorting in any of the grids by clicking on the column header/name - 34554
Emailing Statements - The option to include a statement as an attachment to a customer email has been restored and is available under the Attachments and Options tab when sending an email from the Contact Manager.
Reports - Physical Inventory - Corrected issue with allocation not including kit components allocations from kits that pull from components. Also added kit components to the optional Detail sub-report. Note that if you have kits that pull from components, this report will now take longer to run.
Bug fixes and modifications