11.27.0 Release
Production Release Date: Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Platforms: Backoffice (B2B), Online Checkout (B2C), ACME Sales (POS)*, Access Control (AC)*, Salesforce, Payments
Release Type: Minor
Downtime: None
Test Environments: Sandbox 10, POS Sandbox 11.27.0, AC Sandbox 11.27.0
*iOS Applications are valid through 05/28/2024
New Features
Auto Renew | Officially Live for Early Adopters!
We are extremely pleased to announce that Auto Renew is officially released with 11.27.0!
It's been a long time coming and we are thrilled to deliver the first of many further improvements around membership, customer and card management, and Auto Renew scenarios.
Highlights include:
- Configuration: Configure Auto Renew per offering as optional, required, or not offered.
- Opt-in: Ability to opt-in while purchasing Auto Renew membership offerings:
- Across sales channels: Online Checkout (B2C), ACME Sales (POS), and Backoffice (B2B)
- With any lifecycle action: New purchase, in-cycle upgrade or downgrade, and any renewal
- View those Opted In: Ability to view if a member has opted into Auto Renew, visible across sales channels:
- My Membership section on B2C
- Member details on ACME Sales (POS)
- Member details in Backoffice (B2B)
- Manage: Management of Auto Renew Subscriptions is supported at both POS and in Backoffice
- Reports: Enhancements in the Backoffice Membership Report help you track subscription information and member engagement in the program.
- Email enhancements:
- Automatically triggered reminder email ~10 days prior to renewal.
- Updated emails for members that opt-in, with the ability to configure Auto Renew messaging.
- Confirmation email in the case where a member chooses to opt-out prior to renewal.
- Legal: Updated legal messaging peppered throughout the experience to ensure members understand their card will be charged on a recurring basis and avoid chargebacks.
- Secure Card on File: And last, but certainly not least, the highest level of security for managing recurring credit card payments via advanced token technology.
Learn more with our Auto Renew Early Adopter User Guide.
We know many of you have already expressed interest. Check in with your Client Services Manager or support@acmeticketing.com to discuss getting access and the timing that is right for you.
Enhancements
ACME Sales (POS) | Connectivity to Card Readers
We have received reports of some venues having issues with card readers occasionally dropping connection, along with trouble reconnecting. The latest versions of card reader SDKs have improvements to help with this issue and others. As such, we have updated the SDK for the following devices:
- Lane/3000
- Link/2500
- IPP350
- ISMP4
Feeling a bit of deja vu? You should! Just like we did in our 11.26.1 release for other card readers, we've updated the SDK to the latest version for the above Ingenico card readers.
IMPORTANT: Plan to install this new POS build end-of-day, not first thing before you open!
When you take this build and connect to your card reader, a new firmware file will be installed on the card reader. This typically takes about 20-30 min.
The card reader will display messaging that it is installing. Patience is key here, as our POS app will say it's not connected while this download takes place. When the card reader is finishing the installation, it will automatically reboot several times. Once the card reader has fully completed the installation, it will display Ready on the screen, at which point you can then reconnect at POS and you'll see the typical quick file download. Only then is the update complete and the card reader reconnected and ready to use again.
ACME Sales (POS) | Temporary Membership Cards
We have added support for three more fields that you can elect to print on your temporary membership cards!
- $acmeMembershipNumber
- $barcode
- $acmeBarcode
By default we print $externalMembershipId, but feel free to change this now in Backoffice > Theme > Tickets. See our documentation for additional information: Temporary Membership Card Layout (BOCA)
ACME Sales (POS) | Advanced Member Search
Has your staff ever overlooked the advanced search functionality at POS? We don't blame them, it's easy to mistake "Advanced Search" as a label instead of a button! So for clarity, we've renamed the button to say "Switch to Advanced Search". Ah, the simple things in life.
ACME Sales (POS) | Member Details Design
While we were enhancing the member details page to show Auto Renew information for members that opt in, we thought it could use some love. We fixed some layout issues and clearly labeled the sections for Customer Record, Membership, and Cardholders.
Online Checkout (B2C) | Checkout with Forms
We have optimized how our checkout API processes forms. The checkout API can now get the form information (including the form response) directly from the Shopping Cart instead of requiring that the full form information be included the checkout call as part of a forms array.
While this change simplifies our APIs, more importantly this change enables us to increase key security checks for our checkout endpoint without blocking real visitors with form data.
And for a few of you that have run into issues with your forms blocked in checkout due to some of our existing security measures, this will no longer be an issue. Thank goodness!
Online Checkout (B2C) | reCAPTCHA checkbox
After looking at it some more, we decided to modify the layout to show the reCAPTCHA checkbox to the left of the Checkout button, rather than above. We hope you like this simple adjustment as much as we do. This will kick in on your next Theme update, manually triggered from Backoffice (don't forget to wait 30 minutes after clicking Update before you see it update online).
Performance & Optimizations
API | Membership List & Search
Do you ever find that when searching for a member, you're twiddling your thumbs a bit as you wait for the results to come back? Wait no more! We have significantly improved our performance when getting a list of members that match your search criteria. Happy searching!
Additionally for API users, we will default to a pageSize of 1000 if a valid pageSize is not specified for the following endpoint: /v2/b2b/membership/summaries
ACME Sales (POS) | Swipe Card Readers
As you know, we have officially sunset support for the MagTek card readers and transitioned to EMV Card Readers. As such, we did some spring cleaning to remove the "Card Reader" section in POS > Configuration, where you once configured MagTek readers. Onwards and upwards!
ACME Sales (POS) and Access Control (AC) | Apple iOS Certificates
We are updating the Apple iOS certificates for the Acme Sales POS and Access Control applications to keep them running on iOS devices. We do this to stay in compliance with Apple development requirements.
ACME Payments
API | Payment Duplication Prevention
Duplicate payments are never a good thing. The good news is, they should never happen in our system. However, we wanted to ensure "should never" is actually "will never". As such, we've enhanced our online checkout API endpoint with an additional layer of duplication prevention. If a duplicate payment occurs within a short timeframe, we will return the message "Duplicate transaction found". We will send additional details to all API users regarding this.
API | Ongoing Payments Improvements
Our payments team has been hard at work preparing for ongoing payments improvements. More to come on this in the Q2 Product Webinar. Look for invites shortly!
Bug Fixes
Salesforce Integration | Data Sync
After a sync from Salesforce to ACME, the state for the Order Contact on Opportunities was blank. That surprised us, so we fixed it to populate as expected. Hooray!
ACME Sales (POS) and Access Control (AC) | Crash Prevention
Crashes are the worst. Even more so when we cannot reproduce them. Wish we could blame these on invisible and random gremlins! However, there is clearly something in our code causing this. So we took a good long look at our logs, both for POS and AC, and modified our code to help prevent the most common crashes.
If you experienced crashes in any of these scenarios, you may no longer:
- POS: Occasional but infrequent crash after tapping Complete in checkout
- POS: Rare crash after you experienced some connectivity issues on your LAN
- POS: Rare crash after seeing a "loading" message cover the full screen
- POS and AC: Rare app crash overnight
- POS: Occasional but infrequent crash on the main tile screen if you cancel after selecting a different date (we think only on combo events)
- POS: Rare crash when interacting with the screen while it's transitioning to another view
- POS: Occasional crashes for those with the following card readers:
- Lane/3000
- Link/2500
- IPP350
- ISMP4
New and Updated Knowledge Articles
We are continuously updating and adding new articles to our Knowledge-base in the ACME Support Portal. Below are some recently added or updated articles:
- NEW! Apple Adapters not Working with iPadOS 16.5
- NEW! ACME Configuration Training Guide
- Whether you have new hires that are coming onboard, or are planning additional training for existing staff, it seems like there's always more to learn! Use this resource to help plan training to focus on the key topics.
- NEW! Configuring a Built-in Discount for Early Membership Renewals
- NEW! Import error: "This membership number already exists in ACME with a different Import ID so the membership number update was blocked."
- Generate an Order Invoice
- ACME Sales FAQ
- Scanning Tickets with ACME AC
- Edit Membership Information on POS
- Emails from ACME Not Delivering to Inbox