The new release is here – and with it, the Flow Builder! As well as this feature full of new options for workflows, triggers and events, you can expect minor improvements to the Rule Builder and dynamic product groups. Additionally, there are interesting features in Editions & Service News for the Professional and Enterprise editions.
General Updates
Individual automated business processes with the new Flow Builder
This feature packs a real punch! It can help you enormously in automating complex processes, so that you can focus even better on your core business. Set defined triggers for actions and events – and enable numerous processes to be automated on this basis. Define workflows and optimise your internal and external communications – all this without having to write a single line of code. The application scenarios for Flow Builder are numerous: from order status to communication with suppliers to email automation.
New condition for dynamic product groups: consider products with a product image only
With Shopware you can create dynamic product groups and display them in different parts of your online shop, for example in categories or Shopping Experiences. Set rules which determine which products belong to your dynamic product groups instead of manually adding or removing products. You can link the dynamic rules to different conditions. For example, only include products which are currently on offer, made by a certain manufacturer or similar.
A new filter condition has been added to this release. This enables you to only display products which have a cover image in a dynamic product group. In this respect you can prevent products which have been insufficiently maintained from showing up in the corresponding locations with a placeholder image. And vice versa - you can create a dynamic product group which consists only of products without a cover image.
New in Rule Builder: international postcodes are a requirement
Rule Builder is a central, powerful element in Shopware. Shopware team are constantly working to use it to enable more and more practical features. In the last release, for example, Shopware team added new conditions to Rule Builder, so that you can create suitable rules for yourself and your business. In this release, Shopware team have added another option which is particularly advantageous to shops which ship their products outside Germany.
The situation up to now: It was already possible to set a delivery address postcode as a condition. This meant you could define shipping conditions dependent on the destination, for example. This is convenient if you want to offer selected shipping methods in certain regions only, such as dispatch by bike courier exclusively in your immediate vicinity. However, until now, this function has only been possible with 5-digit German postcodes.
This is new: From now on, you can also set international postcodes as a condition as well as German postcodes – and thus also shipping methods for certain regions outside Germany. International postcodes can differ widely and may be written with letters or hyphens. Here are a few examples:
- The shipping method is to be available for North West London: postcodes beginning with NW1
- The shipping method is only to apply to parts of Terceira Island: postcodes beginning with 97
- The shipping method is only to apply to parts of Belo Horizonte 30000-xxx to 30090-xxx
You can read more about this topic in the documentation and also watch the video.
Editors & Service News
Professional Edition and above: link Flow Builder to other services via webhooks
As already described above, the new release includes the practical Flow Builder feature. Shopware team will develop this even further in future so that additional options are enabled in future iterations. One extra is already available now for the Professional and Enterprise editions: it concerns the connection option via webhooks.
What does this mean? Webhooks enable different web services to be linked together. Conversely, Flow Builder enables automated processes and starts actions when there are certain triggers (for example, sending an email when X occurs). Workflows such as this are perfect for combining with other web services. For example, you can link webhooks with communication services and send a message via Slack, Telegram or other messenger service instead of an email. In this way, you can tailor Flow Builder in away that is even more customised to your company’s specific requirements and tools. Learn more about the extension in the Shopware Store.
Dynamic access: hide content for specified customer groups
This release includes the new dynamic access feature in the Professional and Enterprise editions. This enables you to make content visible to certain customer groups only. As a consequence, this content is then hidden for everyone else. This leads to numerous application scenarios for both B2C and B2B shops. For example, you can make exclusive categories, products, variants or landing pages accessible to VIP customers or specific wholesale partners. Check out the Dynamic Access extension in the Store to learn more.
Developer News
Symfony Rate Limiter
With this Shopware version, Shopware team implemented the Symfony Rate Limiter component, in a first instance, to prevent the forms in the application from brute-force attacks, AKA “fail2ban”-behaviour. Shopware team secured the following forms by default:
- Storefront customer login
- Storefront after order guest login
- Storefront password reset
- Contact form
- Admin panel login
- Admin password reset
With a simple yaml file, this feature’s policy can be configured by limited trials or times, for example fixed window, token bucket etc. Please see this for more details.
In the shop, it behaves like this: after triggering the limit after x requests, the user receives a message that the limit has been exceeded and the waiting period until the next request that will be processed regularly.
The best of it: you can use this component in your plugins, apps or other extensions as well. Intrigued to read more about it? Here is documentation.