Fiddle-dee-dee!

I hope ye not be after me pot o' gold. They say if ye catch me I have to grant you wishes three, but that surely won't be happening unless you can climb a tree.

I am so excited about this new version; I am dancing a pretty amazing jig right now. The green beer I had for breakfast might have something to do with that.

Squirrelcart v4.3.0

Version 4.3.0 is now available. It includes some nifty new features, bug fixes, pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, and purple horseshoes*.

This version includes two new automation features to automatically email users and staff, and automatically add users to groups. If you are the type of person that likes doing things without having to actually do those things, this version is for you.

We've also included some control panel tweaks and other improvements.

Automatic Emails

With the new automatic email feature, you can set up custom automatic emails that can be sent to users and to staff when certain events occur.

You can automatically send emails when an order is placed or updated with a status, and when a user is created or added to a group.

With our rule system, you can further refine when an email is sent. It is now possible to send an automatic email for just about any scenario you can come up with.

Examples of when you may want to send an email:

• When a custom item is ordered, telling the customer how long it will take to process.
• When a customer reaches a spending total of $500, offering the customer a special discount.
• When an order is placed between December 25th and January 1st, letting the customer know that there may be a longer wait time for delivery.
• When you've added a customer to a Wholesale group, notifying them that they have been granted special pricing.
• When a customer has opted into a news group (requires News module), confirming with the customer that they have joined the group, and thanking them for joining.

Some of the new features:

• Settings for all the built-in emails that Squirrelcart sends have been moved to the Automatic Emails section of your control panel
• New built-in automatic email to notify a user that a status of refund issued has been added to their order.
• New built-in automatic email to notify a user that a note has been added to their order.
• Include file attachments in any auto email
• If a user orders an item that has a file upload option, you can now receive those files as attachments to the order notification email.
• Include vCards with contact information (requires the Contact module).
• Resend order receipt and account welcome emails via record actions in the control panel.
• Send account reset emails to users that have lost their username or password, via a new record action in the control panel.
• Customize the bulk of the content of built-in automatic emails without having to modify template files.
• Include order, user, store, and other info in your emails, using variables. This can be used to personally address a user by their first name, or include information from their order in the body or subject of the email.

Automatic Groups

With this new feature, you can automatically add users to groups based on rules you designate.

After you set up a group this way, when a user visits your store, Squirrelcart will check to see if your rules apply.

If they do, they will automatically be added to the group.

Why would you want to do this?

You can do lots of things with groups. You can assign special pricing, restrict product and store access, give discounts, offer downloads, control shipping costs, etc...

Anything you could do with a group, you can now do automatically. Combine that with the new automatic email feature, and you can automatically send a custom email to the user when they are automatically added to the group with any message you like.

These two new automation features are really only limited by your imagination.

Reward your loyal customers

One thing you might want to try is creating groups for frequent buyers, to give them automatic discounts. You could create an automatic group for users that have placed at least 3 orders, or have spent a total of at least $500, or anything else you can come up with. You could then assign a discount to that group, rewarding them for their loyalty. Add an automatic email for when the user is added to the group, and thank them for their business.

Order Status Notes

When you assign an order status, you can now include an optional note.

• If you have an automatic email set up for an order status, you can include the note for that status in the email sent to the user.
• Customers can view notes on their order history page.
• You can assign private "staff only" notes
• Assign notes to multiple orders in a single action, using our record action features.

Unobtrusive Control Panel Status Messages

In version 4.3.0, we've revamped all of the control panel status messages. We've made them more concise, and they take up less space. They now appear out of your way at the top of the page, under the toolbar.

Each message type is color coded in the same fashion that you are accustomed to in the storefront. Green for success, blue for information, yellow for alerts, red for errors, and purple for questions.

Success messages now automatically hide after they appear, so you don't have to take the time to close them. If you need to bring one back, you can mouse over the success icon in the upper left-hand corner to bring the message back.

More helpful storefront login failure messages

Other Improvements

• When an admin logs in as a user and then logs out, they are automatically logged back in as admin.
• Updated control panel buttons and toggle switches
• Updated control panel login form
• New version notices in control panel
• New Order (last completed) rule type
• Setting to control sort order of subcategories
• Setting to specify default quantity for add-on products

For a full list of changes, see our version history page.

How to get this version

Squirrelcart v4.3.0 is now available for download on our Downloads page, to all customers with active download access.

You can check your download access status here.

Has your download access expired? You can renew it for an entire year for only $85 USD by purchasing a Download Renewal.

Switch to Squirrelcart Pro

If you are a regular Squirrelcart user, you can change your license to Squirrelcart Pro for the difference in price. For a comparison of the two versions, see this page. If you'd like pricing or more information, just reply to this message.

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