topic Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August in Archive

eShop upgrade occured 18th August

graemewilliams — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:13:44 GMT

I noticed that my eShop was upgraded this morning. The system (main website and admin section) were both down between midnight and 6.00 am.

Following on from Bertie's longstanding post on this subject (eShop version & upgrade notes😞

1. I don't believe BT notified customers in advance of the upgrade. Out of courtesy, it would've been nice to know that my website and business would be unavailable.

2. Please can BT provide a list of new/deleted features resulting from the upgrade. After a quick scan through the Admin section, I can see the product search function has improved (the previous search wasn't much good so this is a welcome addition).

3. What is the current software release of the software?

I'm always grateful for the upgrades because I'm assuming they always improve the operation and functionality of the system. However, it would be nice for BT to inform customers following basic business practice.

Thanks

Re: eShop upgrade occured 18th August

Lancelot — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:39:04 GMT

The latest release is eshop 6.09.1.

There is improved statistical functionality for Google Analytics and the general back office Search Functionality has been improved.

There is a Tweeter gadget you can place on the eshop now too.

You can now import multiple images and there is a new image display methods such as “Coverflow". This is really a sort of Flash component (they call it eyecatcher) which shows an animated carousel gallery and slideshow to display product images.

There are improvements to Sagepay, Amazon and Paypal (PayPal Pro 3D Secure Authentication- UK only) intergration.

This includes the addition of LeGuide.com- the network of shopping guides, price comparison sites, shopping search engines and online consumer forums, which is the domain leader in France and number 2 across Europe, with 13.1 million unique visitors (Comscore May 2010).

Trusted guide has now been included too, along with eKomi, which afford access to shop rating sites.

A welcome improvement is the ameliorated copy and paste from Word.

These are only a distilled summary of the various improvements. For a fuller version, see here-

http://www.epages.com/en/download/en-epages6-Featurelist609.pdf

Re: eShop upgrade occured 18th August

ian_d — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:35:27 GMT

I agree with rikkismusic regarding the notification of the upgrade to eshop. I followed a post a few months ago on how to add a background colour to the "Add to Shopping Basket" link to make it stand out. I added the html code to the Head Area in back office to give me a bright colour and cart image. The upgraded eshop now has the "Add to Shopping Basket" as a button with its own cart image, so my html code is now being ignored in favour of the new button.

Although this new feature is an improvement for most eshop users, it would still have been nice to have been informed of the change.

I have yet to see BT confirm the exact version of epages is use so we can at least view the changelog at epages website. Hope this information can be forthcoming in future.

Thanks.

Re: eShop upgrade occured 18th August

James — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:42:47 GMT

Apologies that you weren't informed about the upgrade all, I've sent this Forum thread to the relevant department and they are currently looking into this process. As regards the version question, Lancelot is correct, the version is now 6.09.1.

James

Re: eShop upgrade occured 18th August

Bertie — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:36:49 GMT

This is hard work James - as usual!

Re: eShop upgrade occured 18th August

graemewilliams — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:43:10 GMT

Thanks all for your comments. And special thanks to Lancelot for providing some details.

It seems though that we'll never get a definitive list from BT of added features after any software upgrades. Shame really. It seems so basic to me.

Re: eShop upgrade occured 18th August

James — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:44:01 GMT

All, thanks for your comments. As an update to my earlier post in this thread, the department in charge of eShop have informed me they will let customers know about each planned release in advance, in Help & support. They will also describe what the changes will be to the product.

In addition a new FAQ is going to be put up in the above Help & support section about the enhanced functionality available with v6.09.1.

James

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

Bertie — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:51:47 GMT

Thank you for your reply James.

The concern is that this sounds all to familiar - see the posting link above by Graeme Wiiliams -eShop version and upgrade notes.

My posting 9 months ago -

Re: eShop version & upgrade notes

26-11-2009 10:58 AM

Many thanks.

Can you put a sticky posting on the forum when the release is active, and post a list of the amendments please?

Regards

and your reply:

26-11-2009 01:09 PM

Hi Bertie,

That is exactly what we will do, today we have created a separate forum dedicated to eShop and as soon as we can provide an update it will be a sticky thread there.

The eShop Team

Can you confirm when the FAQ regarding v6.09.1 will appear please.

Also, as this version was released by epages on 10th March 2010 and five further versions have since been issued (the latest being v6.10.1 on 27th August 2010), when will there be another update?

Do you have set dates for introducing new versions?

Regards

Bertie

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

James — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:29:36 GMT

Hi Bertie, I completely understand your frustration. Unfortunately the eShop Team no longer monitor this board, so their plan to put up a sticky thread to inform customers about new releases never got put in place. However, when we moderators know about any future updates (there aren't any planned for the moment) we'll post a message in this board and leave it at the top for all to see.

For the Help & support FAQ mentioned above please see What Changes have been made in eShop v6 09.1?

James

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

graemewilliams — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:13:59 GMT

Website and MBO has just gone down for what appears to be planned maintenance. Date/Time was 30th Nov @ 10pm. No notification from BT or notice on this forum as per above post.

Furthermore I was in the middle of working on a product description and hadn't saved when MBO went down. I reckon about 30 mins work. Maybe it was saved during maintenance procedure but can only check tomorrow morning.

We'll see.....

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

Bertie — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 12:49:12 GMT

It appears that yet again BT has implemented software improvements issued by epages without any notification to, or consideration for the end user. Certain additional features/changes have appeared seemingly from nowhere. Again, we are expected to know what these are using some mystical psychic ability.

Please James, do not talk to me about understanding my frustration. This is sheer incompetence. How the country manages to function with BT running the majority of the network is beyond me.We are fortunate in that this is the one and only service we have to use BT for.

Can you tell me James, how people in BT keep their jobs when they are so inadequate? The number of other messages that users post highlighting the total lack of ability/knowledge/effort of BT staff is damming, yet nothing whatsoever is done about it.

The sooner BT is broken up and staff have to actually perform in order to keep their jobs - as happens in the majority of the private sector - the better. The company is clearly being run as if it is still part of the public sector.

Please provide immediate information as to the version number we are now using, the changes made since 6.09.1, why we were not notified either before or after these changes were made, and the name of the person who is actually accountable for eshop.

Bertie

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

James — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 13:11:47 GMT

All, I sent your messages to the team in charge of eShop. Here's their response:

BT eShop is currently on version 6.10.1. This was released on December 1st and was one of many regular maintenance releases that seek to address known issues and provide feature improvements. These are not intended as significant upgrades and the intention is that they should be intuitive, easy to use and of benefit to the merchant. Customer feedback is very important and we will provide additional support when it is evident that the features need additional help and support material.

BT does not promote maintenance patches but we monitor feedback and we will consider doing so for future releases.

James

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

Bertie — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:36:15 GMT

Thank you for your reply James.

As you have no doubt realised, the introduction of a new release without notification goes against what the eShop department promised to do in your September posting.

Their comments regarding addressing known issues and providing feature improvements show a complete lack of common sense. These fixes & improvements may be intuitive, but if a) we have to stumble across the fact that there may have been an upgrade, and b) we do not know what these fixes and improvements are, how can we make use of them no matter how intuitive they may be?

Why is it so difficult for them to issue a sticky posting notifying us of the intended upgrade and the fixes and features that will be implemented, and how many times do we have to go over the same ground?

They say that customer feedback is important and they will respond to it - so why haven't they issued the support material following my previous message requesting it?

We would be extremely pleased for patches to be installed as these often fix crucial areas. But again, we would need to be given dates and details.

It seems that the eShop team are not able to put themselves in the position of the user. One of the consequences of upgrades can be that links with 3rd party software such as eBay can be broken or altered with a resulting problem or change of process required - which happened with the latest release. If we had been made aware of the upgrade and the fixes & improvements, we would know which areas to test/look at in order to either make sure there are no problems following the upgrade or to take advantage of any enhancements.

Again, can I request that they provide a list of fixes, features and changes which were implemented in this latest release.

Thank you for your help James. I would imagine that you are as frustrated as we are.

Bertie

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

graemewilliams — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:27:54 GMT

To BT Moderator

There is something else you might not be aware of when BT does this upgrade. I have hundreds of products listed on Google Base/Merchant Centre. I rely on this service for a significant amount of traffic/business to my website.

Google Base crawled my site during the latest upgrade by BT. Google subsequently marked about 25% of my products as "Disapproved" and therefore not available for listing on Google Base. This lasted for about two days until they eventually came back up. This is not good for business when leading up to the Christmas period.

If I had been informed by BT prior to the upgarde then it may have been possible for me to make a contingency plan with my Google Base account.

Please pass this info on to the powers that be.

Thanks

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

James — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:57:29 GMT

Hi all, Please see the FAQ eShop upgrade 6.10.1 which details the recent changes. I'll ask the eShop team again for notice prior to all updates. James

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

graemewilliams — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 10:25:39 GMT

Brilliant! Thanks very much for that James. I read the list with great interest. One or two of the new features I had already discovered "intuitively" by myself. Others I hadn't seen and will hopefully put to good use.

Re: eShop upgrade occurred 18th August

Bertie — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:18:56 GMT

Many thanks for your help James, it is much appreciated.

Regards

Bertie