WHMCS CEO Matt Posted December 6, 2007 WHMCS CEO Share Posted December 6, 2007 Version 3.5 of WHMCS will be released next week (if everything goes to plan!) and so for all you lucky WHMCS users, Christmas will be coming early this year! I'm very excited about this new release so this post is going to cover the new features you'll be getting ready for the start of the new year! Shopping Cart Ordering System The all new shopping cart system has had a lot of time spent on its planning and development to ensure it is as feature rich and yet straight forward for the user as possible. I believe that because of that time spent, it will be the best cart system for a web host available today – let’s see if you agree too! As you would expect, it allows for multiple products, addons and domains to be ordered in a single order and be paid for in a single transaction. For those ordering just a single package with a domain the user won’t notice much difference compared with the current single product only order form as the user is guided through adding a product in the same way, but for those wanting to order more, the options are right there for them. The system will also highlight to the user if a domain doesn’t have hosting, and provide a link to add hosting to it. It also provides a new and easier way for an existing client to order addons for their existing packages which should help to increase sales. Each item can be configured and then added to the cart, and items can then have their configuration changed or be removed and shopping can then be continued. The cart also features a new streamlined checkout system which makes it clearer to the user what they are ordering, what they are going to pay for it and when they are submitting the order. Along with the new contacts feature, it will also be possible for the user to specify WHOIS details for the domains in the order that are different to their main account details and thus allow ordering of domains for others (reselling). The legacy single product order form will also remain for those that don’t want to change to the new cart system. Clients Contacts Feature The clients’ contacts feature allows for multiple email addresses per client and the configuration of what type of emails they receive. Clients can manage contacts from the client area adding an unlimited number of additional contacts to receive emails and setting one contact as the default contact for billing. Emails sent will then be sent to the main account email and CC’d to any applicable contacts. The billing contact is used for the invoices payee details and submitted with any credit card payment attempts to merchant gateways. And the support ticket email piping system will also allow tickets to be opened under the clients account if received from any email belonging to one of the contacts under a client in your WHMCS system. Statistical Bar & Pie Charts (Graphs) V3.5 of WHMCS will also see improvements to the reporting modules area of WHMCS with support for bar graphs and pie charts. Included initially will be pie charts showing a summary of service & domain statuses and bar charts showing monthly signups, monthly income and the value of aging invoices. These can be expanded over time and with the simple modular system that's been used it will be easy to create your own like you can currently with the tabular reports. Per Support Department Public/Registered Setting Added due to popular demand, instead of the previous global setting for clients only or public access to the ticketing system, you will now be able to set on a per department basis whether that department is restricted to just registered clients (and contacts) or open to everyone. It will be especially useful to differentiate between the Presales and Support departments in your company. Account Pre-funding The account pre-funding of credit allows your customers to add credit to their account in advance of payments being due ready to be automatically applied to invoices as they are generated. The idea of this is for situations where the client would otherwise be unable to pay, for example if they are going on holiday during the time when a payment will be due and so by adding credit can take care of it before they go. You can set a minimum and maximum deposit amount and then clients can add funds up to that limit without any manual intervention from you. Disable Domain Register/Transfer Options There have been many requests for this feature and so in 3.5 it will make an appearance! By setting the price of either registration or transfer of a TLD to -1 you will be able to prevent registration or transfer requests for that TLD being ordered. Announcements Listing Improvements Announcements will now be listed on the announcements page with a 150 character summary and then clicking the announcement title will take the user to view the full announcement. The RSS feed will therefore now be able to link to the actual announcement rather than just the announcements page. Kayako Integration For those who require the advanced support features the Kayako system offers, it will now be possible to have Kayako replace the WHMCS support features in the WHMCS client area by simply enabling the Kayako integration. And there’s more..! As if all that wasn't enough! There's all the usual bug fixes and improvements to existing features. Obviously it's a massive new release and something of a milestone for WHMCS with the new shopping cart and multiple client contacts features but I've done my best to keep template changes down to a minimum. I believe there will only be around 5 existing templates that will need to be updated during the upgrade and then there will also be a number of entirely new templates for the new features. I hope you will find this new release as exciting as I do! And may I take this opportunity to send you the compliments of the season. For discussion on the new version, go to http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?t=7097 Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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