If you have attended one of our previous Launch Events, you have seen our evolving product roadmap and know that Ucommerce 10 is approaching rapidly. As with any significant platform version, concerns about backward compatibility and early adoption come with good reason. This could not be less true with the next major version of Ucommerce, considering the changes required to migrate Ucommerce to .NET Core.
We will talk more about Ucommerce 10 as we get closer to its release. Still, it is necessary to mention because Ucommerce 9.6 is planned to be the last minor release, becoming the de facto LTS (Long-Term Support) release for version 9.
What’s new in Ucommerce 9.6?
Let us cover in broad strokes what goodies are coming with Ucommerce 9.6! Later, we will discuss what is missing and what to consider when upgrading.
Headless Ucommerce V1
First and foremost, this release of Ucommerce will be accompanied by the first version of our newly developed Headless API. This out-of-the-box option allows Ucommerce partners to create Headless solutions.
You can now pick your favorite tech stack, whatever the technology, and use the API to build your checkout powered by Ucommerce. It also means you can have a faster time to market as it will not be necessary to build custom APIs for this purpose.
Ucommerce Partners may have been creating their own Headless APIs to work with Ucommerce. With the Ucommerce 9.6 release, we start relieving this work by providing you with the required APIs to build a checkout flow within a Headless scenario.
Everything from adding a product to the basket to paying for an order with any configured payment provider in Ucommerce is covered with everything in-between that you could previously do in a standard on-premise Ucommerce installation.
With this comes a new management interface in Ucommerce, where you can manage who can access the Headless API for each of your stores.
The APIs have been carefully crafted, working together with alpha implementers to ensure that the most common flows are covered, and we can't wait for you to get your hands on it!
Kondo Order Management
A couple of years ago, we embarked on a journey of a complete User Interface overhaul dubbed "Project Kondo". With the goal of not only modernizing the tech stack it is built upon but also optimizing the usability of Ucommerce to make day-to-day work efficient.
We also want it to look great and spark joy! In this release, we introduce the brand new Orders App.
We visually aligned the new experience with the existing Kondo areas. Order filtering also got a neat uplift, making it easier to filter by order status and time frames.
Working with individual orders has been rebuilt with a new information architecture in mind, giving you the best overview while still allowing creating and altering orders for offline channel transactions.
Bug fixes and performance enhancements
Last but not least, we have several bug fixes and performance improvements. For a complete overview, have a read through our release notes; otherwise, here are some notable highlights:
- Massively improved performance in the back office in cases with many price groups.
- Performance enhancements in the back office image picker when showing folders containing many images.
- It is now possible to create entities in the initialized pipeline.
- You can now display facet value names in the correct language from Bolt.
- Updating campaigns will correctly execute the SaveCampaign pipeline, allowing custom extensions to run.
What’s missing? Upgrade considerations
A couple of features have not made it into the new release, so let's cover those here to ensure you are well prepared for Ucommerce 9.6!
The most noteworthy missing features span the Headless API and the new Order Management System across both main headlines. Neither supports multiple shipments and multiple payments on a single order. The underlying system has not changed. However, if you are using either of the above, you will not be able to use the Headless API or manage those in the back office.
The Headless API in this version supports an end-to-end checkout flow. However, no management APIs are in place just yet. It means that you will still need a way to, for example, show products on your webshop without utilizing out-of-the-box APIs. It will expand upon in the future versions - after Ucommerce 10.
We are here to help! Using our integration with ElasticSearch provides you with all the APIs for this. You can utilize these to build a complete headless e-commerce solution faster and easier than before.
Long-Term Support
Ucommerce 9.6 will be the LTS version of Ucommerce 9, and it will be the last version released before Ucommerce 10. Afterward, Ucommerce 9 will no longer receive any additional feature updates.
Any following release will contain only security updates and potential bug fixes for the next two years. We ensure that bug fixes won’t have any breaking changes. Custom extensions will continue to function for a lifetime of 9.6!
Suppose you are implementing a new solution or looking for a version to upgrade to for existing stores. In that case, we highly recommend Ucommerce 9.6 as it is the most feature-complete version of Ucommerce to date.
Get started with Ucommerce right away and try out the new version:
For pricing, features, and extensibility, reach out to our Sales Department:
Related Content
If you would like to learn more about Ucommerce 9.6 release, check the following links:
Read the official release notes RELEASE NOTES UPDATE HERE
Read the DOCUMENTATION HERE
Finally, you can access the full recording of the VIRTUAL LAUNCH EVENT HERE
