We'll be rolling out some new features to all Platform subscribers this week. This free upgrade will include major enhancements to the customer database and how the application can be integrated with web forms. In addition, the update will include a new "site settings" panel, blog author enhancements and a number of usability enhancements.

Customer Database Enhancements

This update will allow site owners to collect additional information in standard web forms and have that information update the related records in the customer database. In addition, website visitors will be able to update custom fields using the "Update Customer Details" web form. As part of this change, three existing workflows are being enhanced.

• Use form fields to collect custom information - The form builder is being enhanced to allow administrators to add custom fields from the customer database to be added to web forms. This new feature will allow you to setup custom fields in the customer database and then populate these fields with web forms.
• Custom information can be edited by customers - The customer details module is being enhanced to allow site visitors or secure zone members to update custom information in the customer database. Site owners can choose to allow site users to update one or all of the form fields. All of the form fields will be added as a single block when you add them to the Update Customer Details form, but you will be able to remove individual fields to customize the fields available on the form.
• Existing items can be assigned to a specific custom form - After a site has launched, you can attach forms to existing items and add values when first editing and item. This will help avoid having to click on "add custom fields" for every existing entity.

This new feature has been one of our most requested features and we hope this new functionality makes your website even more powerful. If you have questions about this feature, please contact us.

New Site Settings Section

We recently added "site settings" section in the admin area. This new section will be used to consolidate site-wide settings for your site. There are three specific items available now.

• Shop settings - You can now define a shopping cart lifetime so you can define how long items are kept in a users cart after a customer leaves your website. You can also enable or disable the product feed.
• Captcha settings - Allows you to define whether a to force server-side verification of Captcha fields on forms.
• Facebook settings - This new section allows you to define settings affecting Facebook integration on your site.

We'll be adding more site-wide settings to this new section in the coming months and hope this makes it easier to manage site-wide settings that used to be spread across multiple parts of the application.

Blog Post Author Updates

Multi-user sites can now edit the author of blog posts and add an author bio for each user. Site users can upload an author photo and bio in the "my account" section. This bio can be attached to each of this users blog posts.

Usability Enhancements

In addition to the new customer database and forms functionality outlines above, this update will include a number of usability enhancements.

• The links in the Live Feed on your dashboard will link directly to the targeted item instead of the main customer details page. We hope this reduces the number of clicks required to get to the information you are looking for.
• When you edit content in the WYSIWYG editor the system will automatically insert paragraphs tags instead of line breaks going forward. In the past, when you hit "enter" in the editor it would insert a line-break instead of wrapping content in a <p> tag.
• We've removed the automatic page refresh that occurred when you added a custom CRM field to a customer, case or order. This should speed up the process for you.
• When you hit save, the page used to refresh and scroll back to the top of the page. After this update, it won't automatically scroll to the top so you won't lose your place on the page.
• We've made it easier to select the country when setting up payment gateways, tax codes or shipping options.
• We've updated the customer list so you can see all customers instead of limiting you to viewing the customers added in the last year.
• All lists have been updated so they won't display items that have been disabled.
• After this update you can use the selected web app template when adding new items.
• We've edited the main menu so it loads the blog post list when you select a blog instead of loading the blog details screen. This should reduce the number of clicks it takes you to get to the blog post list. In addition, this edit has been applied to all other system lists.
• FTP connection information will be shown in the file manager.