New Feature Releases

Find out about recent Yahoo! Merchant Solutions feature releases.

January 2013

On January 10, 2013, several Catalog API enhancements were released. The updated Catalog API XSD and Catalog API Reference Guide are provided below and in our API online help section.

The enhancements released include:

• Addition of <StartIndex> and <EndIndex> to Simple Search and Advanced Search requests and responses, and addition of <TotalRecordsCount> to Simple Search and Advanced Search responses. The <TotalRecordsCount> indicates the total number of matching records (results) for a search. <StartIndex> and <EndIndex> allow you to specify a range of records to show from the matching records (up to a maximum of 1000 records at once). For example, if you have 5000 matching records returned and wish to see records 1001-2000, you can do this by entering a <StartIndex> of 1001 and an <EndIndex> of 2000.
  
  
• Support of lt (less than) and gt (greater than) for Advanced Search.
  
  
• The ability to include HTML in Create Item and Update requests, by wrapping HTML in [CDATA] tags.

Documentation:

• Catalog API Reference Guide - Updated Sections Only
• Catalog API Getting Started Guide and Reference Guide - Full Document
• Catalog API XSD

Updates to PayPal product naming were also included with this release. Merchants using PayPal are advised that the display name of PayPal Website Payments Standard has been changed to PayPal Express Checkout. This change corrects an error in how the name was displayed and has no effect on the functionality or features of your account.

October 2012

On October 16, 2012, the following new features, enhancements, and updates were released:

Promotions Center

A new shipping promotions feature has been released for Promotions Center. Using this feature, merchants can create free or discounted shipping promotions and define criteria such as shipping method, location and order total, create dynamic banners to promote shipping discounts, stack shipping promotions with other promotions, and more. Get help with shipping promotions.

Social Media Sharing

A new Pinterest option has been added to Social Media Sharing. Now, along with Twitter and Facebook sharing buttons, you can include a Pinterest "Pin It" button on your product pages. Note that the Pinterest option must be manually enabled in Store Editor, whether you are currently using Social Media Sharing or enabling it for the first time. Learn how.

Note: When enabled, the Pinterest "Pin It" button will be available only on product pages that include a product image.

Order and Payment APIs

The Get Order API response now includes a <GiftMessage> field for gift messages specified by a shopper (shown only when a shopper has selected the gift wrap option during checkout), as well as a new <PaymentType> field to indicate the payment type used by the customer to place their order.

The <Type> field for <Promotions> now includes a "SHIPPING" value when a shipping promotion is applied to an order. This addition was made to support the new shipping promotions feature for Promotions Center.

Order and Payment APIs previously did not return a response that indicated PayPal was the payment processor used in the <PaymentProcessor> response field. This issue has been fixed.

• Download a sample Get Order API response with the new tags
• Download the updated Order API XSD

Order Manager

Merchants can now create custom order marks in Order Manager, in addition to the standard order marks already available (OK, Fraudulent, Cancelled, Returned, On Hold, Pending Review). Learn how to create custom order marks.

Order Export

Two new column headings, "Promotion ID" and "Promotion Type," have been added to order export information for Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and generic CSV export formats, to support the new shipping promotions feature for Promotions Center. The new column headings apply to all order exports for these formats, even when a promotion has not been applied to an order; however, values are only present in the columns when a promotion is applied to an order. When multiple promotions are applied to an order, the values in these columns are separated by commas.

Please note that no changes have been made to the M.O.M., QuickBooks, PC Charge, or UPS WorldShip® export formats.

• Download an updated CSV order export format sample

XML Order Format and Yahoo! Order Format

The XML order format for real-time order posts and real-time tax and shipping calculation will include a new "SHIPPING" value in the "Type" field when a shipping promotion is applied. The Yahoo! Order format will also include the "SHIPPING" value in the "Promo-Type" field. If you use a third-party shipping system for calculating shipping charges, you may still create shipping promotions in Promotions Center. The shipping promotion will be applied after the third-party system returns the shipping charge.

Store Editor

Stores using Editor 2.0 templates have the option to add the loose.dtd URL to the DOCTYPE of site pages, using the new "Use loose.dtd DOCTYPE" option in the Controls section of Store Editor. This feature is available only for stores using Editor 2.0 templates. Learn more.

October 9, 2012

Change to credit card information in Order Manager order export formats

As of October 9, 2012, full credit card information and expiry dates are no longer included in Order Manager order export formats. This change does not affect real-time order posts or the processing of credit cards directly in Order Manager via a FDMS compatible merchant account or PayPal. If you use credit card information from any Order Manager order export format for offline order processing or other actions, we recommend configuring real-time order posts for your store (available for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Standard, Professional, and Yahoo! Store accounts) or using PGP encryption to have orders delivered by email (available for all accounts).

Read information about this change and the FAQ.

Notice of this change was emailed to store owners on October 1, 2012. If your store is impacted by this change and you were not able to complete updates to how you perform affected payment processing actions before today's change, a short extension period to make updates can be requested. Please contact us if you require this short extension period.

September 2012

Store Editor changes:

• A new Confirm Publish Step option has been added to the Controls section of Store Editor. This option is disabled by default. When enabled, it adds a step to confirm that you wish to publish your store, to help prevent unintended publishes. When enabled, this option is used for both Publish Changes and Publish All publishes.

Order Manager changes:

• Visibility of full credit card numbers is now limited to users assigned the Credit Card role in Access Manager, and only on the order details page.
• Full credit card numbers are no longer visible on printed order formats to any user role.
• Batch review downloads now contain only the last four digits of credit card numbers.

Access Manager role changes:

• The Order Processor role can no longer access customer credit card number information beyond the last four credit card digits, or perform payment processing actions. Users with the Order Processor role on September 27 have been transitioned to the new Payment Processor role to retain existing access to payment processing actions.
• Two new roles — Payment Processor and Credit Card — were added to Access Manager.
• The new Payment Processor role provides access to only the last four digits of customer credit card numbers. This role allows access to payment processing actions and all other features available to Order Processors. Users who require the ability to process sales, voids, credits, re-authorizations, and other payment actions should be assigned this role.
• The new Credit Card role provides access to full customer credit card numbers, visible only on the order detail page in Order Manager. (Printed orders no longer include full credit card numbers.) This role allows access to payment processing actions and all other features available to Order Processors. Restricting the Credit Card role to only those users who need this access to perform a business operation such as offline credit card processing is strongly recommended.
• Owner and Administrator roles no longer have access to full credit card numbers, but these users may assign themselves the Credit Card role in addition to their current Owner or Administrator role. Owners and Administrators continue to have access to all other features.

August 2012

Promotions Center beta — phased release

A phased release of the Promotions Center beta began on August 14, 2012. When the Promotions Center beta is released for your store, you will see a notification of this new feature in Store Manager. We expect that the phased release will be extended to all stores over the course of several weeks.

Included in this release are some important changes, made to support Promotions Center. Read about these changes.

June 2012

UPS carbon neutral shipping, pickup scheduling, and rating features

For stores using the integrated UPS functionality, new UPS carbon neutral shipping, pickup scheduling, and rating features are now available. Read the Yahoo! Store Blog post for more information about these features.

April 2012

On April 25, 2012, the following updates were made for all stores:

Item options using quotation marks (Catalog Manager and catalog.xml)

Catalog Manager and catalog.xml fixes are being made for an issue encountered when using a quotation mark (") in an item option. The catalog.xml will now display only one option for "OptionValue" when a quotation mark is used, and the quotation mark will no longer be stripped. Catalog Manager will now also correctly display item options using a quotation mark.

Updates to objinfo.xml

Previously, non-orderable items that did not have a value entered for either the "Caption" or "Message" attribute were not added to your store’s objinfo.xml file. Now, only non-orderable items that do not have a value for either "Caption" or "Message," and that do not have an object property of "item," "section," or other default item or section type as configured by you in your Store Editor, will be excluded from your store's objinfo.xml file.

Order API and Checkout API XSD updates

If you are referencing the Order API XSD and/or the Checkout API XSD, these have been updated to include promotions elements for the Promotions Center closed beta that will be released to a small number of store owners in order to collect feedback before a general release. Please note that Order API responses and Checkout API responses are not affected for your store, unless you are participating in the Promotions Center beta.

• Download the updated Order API XSD
• Download the updated Checkout API XSD

In addition, the following updates were made for stores participating in a Promotions Center closed beta release. These updates do not pertain to stores that are not part of this closed beta. If you are not participating in the Promotions Center closed beta release, no changes to any third-party integrations you may have for your store are needed. If you are participating in the Promotions Center beta, please note that these updates will not take effect until Promotions Center has been enabled for your store.

Order Manager updates

New fields for store promotion discounts will be added to your full order and invoice format printed order information, and to order email information for readable, Adobe PDF, and XML format emails. In addition, a new "Promotion Discount" column heading will be added to your order export information for Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and generic CSV export formats; a new "<Promotions>" element will be added to the XML export format; and a new "Promo Discount" line will be added to plain text export format. New information has not been added to the M.O.M., QuickBooks, PC Charge, or UPS WorldShip® export formats.

• Sample updated CSV order export format
• Sample updated XML order export format
• Sample updated plain text order export format

Yahoo! Order format and XML order format updates

If you are using the Yahoo! Order format for real-time order posts or real-time tax and shipping calculation, please be advised that the Yahoo! Order format will be updated with the new fields listed below. Download an updated sample Yahoo! Order format script.

New fields added to the Yahoo! Order format: Promo-Count, Promo-Id-N*, Promo-Type-N*, Promo-Discount-N*, and Promo-Message-N*

* "N" in all instances represents a numeric character, such as Promo-Id-1, Promo-Type-2, Promo-Discount-1, Promo-Message-2.

A description for each field is below:

Promo-Count—number of promotions applied (e.g. 3)
Promo-Id-N—promotion ID (e.g. 2)
Promo-Name-N—name of promotion (e.g. promo-40%)
Promo-Type-N—type of promotion (e.g. percentage)
Promo-Discount-N—discount applied with this promotion (e.g. 5.00)
Promo-Message-N—promotion message (e.g. 40% off)

If you are using the XML order format for real-time order posts or real-time tax and shipping calculation, please be advised that a new "<Promotions>" element will be added to this format. (Please see the sample XML order export format.)


Order API and Checkout API response updates:

Order API responses will now include a new "<Promotions>" element under "<OrderTotals>," while Checkout API responses will now include new "<PromotionsDiscount>," "<AppliedPromotions>," and "<QualifiablePromotions>" elements. Updated API documentation will be available in online help prior to the Promotions Center beta being enabled for your store, which is when these changes will take effect.

February 2012

New Site Search enhancements:

• Categories to show in the search bar category drop-down list may now be specified using the "Categories for category drop-down" option.
• A "quick look" view of items on the search results page may now be enabled (requires items to have an item image).
• You may now specify items to appear first in search results when a search term matches an item, using the "Enable promoted items" option (also requires the new "promoted" attribute in Catalog Manager to be added to Catalog Manager tables and applied to individual items).
• The letter casing of brand names shown in the brand filter can now be made consistent using the "Use titlecase for brand names" option.
• Div codes can now be used to display Customer Registration and/or Floating Cart links on the search results page (custom templates only). These features are no longer automatically enabled for stores using custom templates.
• The new Site Search is now supported for Web Hosting stores.
• Customers may now search for items by UPC code.

Catalog Manager enhancements:

• The "promoted" attribute is now an available Shopping attribute, and must be added to tables in order to use the new Site Search "Enable promoted items" feature.
• The "keywords" attribute may now be added to Catalog Manager tables as a custom attribute.

Customer Registration enhancements:

• A new "Allow Facebook ID" option has been added to the Global Settings section of Checkout & Registration Manager, in the Customer Registration tab. This option allows you to offer Facebook as a provider ID customers may use to register and authenticate with your store. (This option is not currently supported for stores built using Web Hosting tools.) Get help with enabling this feature.

January 2012

Saved Cards enhancements:

• Saved Cards now has two options for informing registered customers about the feature. You may now display information about saving card information as a dismissible information box that appears after a customer completes their order and reaches the order confirmation page, or you may continue to display this information inline on the order confirmation page. Learn about each of these options.
• Issues affecting use of the Saved Cards feature when the "Billing Address" section is hidden in checkout have been resolved.

Customer Registration enhancements:

• Images may now be used in place of text links for the “Cancel” link on the registration form for our Customer Registration system, and on the Account Settings tab of a registered customer's My Account page.
• When accessing the registration form from a checkout page, the "Continue Checkout" button now redirects to the shipping and billing information or shipping information page (depending on merchant settings).
• An enhancement to how Customer Manager references JavaScript has been made to improve the performance of Customer Manager.

Order Manager enhancements:

• Inscription information for items ordered with an inscription option is now highlighted in Order Manager to make it easier for merchants to immediately see this information on-screen and when printed. See what a highlighted inscription looks like.
• Files for orders exported from Order Manager now include date and timestamp information in the following format: Orders-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM. Learn more.
• USPS tracking numbers entered in the order notes for an order are no longer masked.
• The "map" link shown below the ship-to address in Order Manager now passes city, state, and zip code information to Yahoo! Maps, to show the location on Yahoo! Maps.

Floating Cart enhancements:

• The Shipping Calculator for Floating Cart has been updated to display only the United States by default. If you offer shipping to Canada and wish to display Canada as an option in the drop-down list, you must go to your Foreign Orders page in Store Manager, save your settings again, and publish your Order Settings.
• The vwitem, vwquantity, and vwcatalog values are no longer inserted as item options via Floating Cart.

Coupon Manager enhancements:

• Coupon discounts for coupons that exclude items are no longer applied to gift certificates when a gift certificate is ordered.
• The performance of Coupon Manager when a large number of coupons are present has been improved.
• Security warnings are no longer displayed when accessing Coupon Manager after accessing a secure (https://) page in Store Manager.

Page Redirect Manager enhancements:

• Page Redirect Manager now supports redirects for URLs that include tracking strings or other query strings.
• In response to merchant feedback, the "Revert," "Publish," "Upload," and "Download" icons in Page Redirect Manager have been replaced with labeled buttons to make these actions easier to locate and use.

Catalog Manager enhancements:

• A Catalog Manager search issue for stores using Editor 2.0 has been resolved. Merchants who previously experienced search result issues in Catalog Manager when using the "contains" option should now be able to locate items that contained the search criteria, rather than only exact matches.

Database Inventory enhancements:

• Merchants using Database Inventory may now choose to turn off the default message that instructs shoppers to contact the merchant when an item is not available, using a new option in the Settings section of the Configure Inventory page. Read more information.

Risk Tools enhancements:

• Merchants using Risk Tools to block IP addresses may now include up to 150 IP addresses on their block list, and may add 25 entries at once. Previously only 100 IP addresses could be blocked, and only five entries could be added at once. Learn how to block IP addresses.

New Site Search beta enhancements:

• New Site Search beta category drop-down menu alignment issues in Internet Explorer and display issues in Internet Explorer 7 have been resolved.

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions API enhancements:

• Character encoding issues experienced in API responses have been resolved.

Other enhancements:

• Tax and shipping settings are no longer published when publishing Store Editor or Coupon Manager changes. Tax and shipping settings are now only published when Order Settings are published.
• Issues with manual transactions for Diner's Club cards beginning with "36**" are now resolved.
• Serbia and Montenegro are now listed as separate countries in checkout when a merchant ships to these countries, as well as in Shipping Manager and Tax Manager, and on the Foreign Orders page in Store Manager.
• A Javascript array has been added to all checkout pages that allows you retrieve information about what a shopper has in their cart at any given point during the checkout process. This enhancement should eliminate the need to "scrape" the cart page to access this information, and can help provide better flexibility when determining things such as promotional offers during checkout that are based on the information retrieved.
• An alignment issue experienced when printing out order confirmation pages from a web browser has been fixed.

October 2011

New Site Search (beta release)

• Visit the help section

Catalog API (beta release)
The Catalog API is available for Merchant Solutions Standard and Professional accounts

• Read Catalog API documentation

September 2011

Page Redirect Manager

• Visit the help section
• Read the release announcement

August 2011

Saved Cards for Customer Registration

• Visit the help section
• Read the release announcement