Magento

While Magento Go is still very young, the results thus far have been astounding. Tens of thousands of you have visited the site to explore, set up trials and sign-on to Go to build stores of your own. We’re seeing some very cool and innovative stores, and we’re planning to begin showcasing them in the near future.

We are committed to doing everything we can to satisfy our customers, and have been listening closely to your comments. Through your much appreciated feedback, the product itself is getting better every day and we intend to do everything we can to ensure your ongoing success. We’re continuously investing in Magento Go and quickly rolling out updates and new features. Here are just a few of our latest updates and additions to Magento Go:

Latest updates on Magento Go:

We’ve come a long way since the initial launch just a few weeks ago, but we can’t wait to see just how far you can take Magento Go. We want to extend a very special thank you for your continued support and ask you to stay tuned for more to come! We couldn’t be more excited!

The Magento Customer Support Team is playing more of a major role in helping to win deals. We are very proud to play such an important role in the sales process.

I am often asked how we ensure customers will receive quality service. We have a vigorous quality assurance process in place to both maintain our SLAs and identify how we can improve our support. We monitor wait times for support case, the time it takes to reach first time resolutions and the number of tickets that are escalated to tier-two specialists. This close monitoring provides us with a broad view of our customer support performance.  We’ve synthesized the information we obtain from this process on our internal Support Wiki, and Knowledgebase.  The Wiki and Knowledgebase provide our agents with a searchable written resource that’s reliable and up-to-date. Additionally, customer surveys also play an important role, because they give our customers the opportunity to provide feedback on our support service.

Support Tip - Configuring Reward Points

To learn the basics on configuring the reward points feature, please view this screen cast created by a member of the Magento team:

Please note that Reward Exchange Rates are required to be configured as well in order for the feature to work properly.

1. Go to Customers > Reward Exchange Rates
2. Specify an exchange rate by clicking on “Add New Rate” and make sure to choose the appropriate direction:

• Currency/Points: the points that can be earned for a purchased amount
• Points/Currency: the points required to make an equivalent purchase

Here’s to your success with Magento!

Paul Wallace

VP of Customer Support

We are happy to announce the availability of Magento Preview Version CE 1.5.0.0-beta2 for download.
This release is a preview version. It is likely unstable and NOT recommended to be used in any production environment (for more information about preview releases and the new community edition release process can be found in this blog post). This release is NOT available for upgrade through Magento Connect Manager unless upgrading directly from versions CE 1.4.2.0-rc1,beta1, CE 1.5.0.0-alpha1, CE 1.5.0.0-alpha2 or CE 1.5.0.0-beta1, The release is available on our download page and via SVN.

Some of the key new features in this release include:

• Improved Import/Export functionality for Products and Customers
• Ability to add and manage composite products when creating or editing orders from the admin
• Alternative media storage using either the file system or the database
• PayFlowLink HSS integration
• Upgraded Zend Framework to 1.11.1
• Enhancements to the core API including exposing shopping cart API
• And much more...

To see a full list of features and fixed issues please visit our release notes page. Diff files are available here.
.
Please report all issues with this release in the bug tracker.

We are happy to announce the availability of Magento Preview Version CE 1.5.0.0-alpha2 for download.
This release is a preview version. It is likely unstable and NOT recommended to be used in any production environment (for more information about preview releases and the new community edition release process can be found in this blog post). This release is NOT available for upgrade through Magento Connect Manager unless upgrading directly from versions CE 1.4.2.0-rc1,beta1 or CE 1.5.0.0-alpha1, The release is available on our download page and via SVN.

Some of the key new features in this release include:

• Improved Import/Export functionality for Products and Customers
• Ability to add and manage composite products when creating or editing orders from the admin
• Alternative media storage using either the file system or the database
• PayFlowLink HSS integration
• Upgraded Zend Framework to 1.11.1
• And much more...

To see a full list of features and fixed issues please visit our release notes page. Diff files are available here.
.
Please report all issues with this release in the bug tracker.

We are excited to announce the availability of Magento CE Version 1.4.2.0 Stable for download and upgrade.

To see a full list of features and fixed issues please visit our release notes page. Diff files are available here.

Please Note: We do NOT recommend upgrading a production installation of Magento directly. Please backup database and all files before upgrading. Please make sure to check file permission before trying to upgrade through your Magento Connect Manager.

Please report all issues with this release in the bug tracker.

Over the next several weeks, Magento will be everywhere from Paris to Dallas to Madrid to Chicago. Likely, we’ll be in your city! Be sure to stop by and say hello!

Roy, Bob, Jary, and Michel will be holding down the Magento booth near Salle 11 at eCommerce Paris from September 21-23. Then they’re jet-setting back to the States to meet Tim Schneider, Scott Dalhgren, Chris Marshall, and Paul Wallace at Shop.org in Dallas, Texas from September 27-29.  Magento will be in booth #107 with hosting partner, RackSpace.

No rest for the weary as Roy will be back in the Lone Star State October 5-6 for the Rackspace Leadership Summit in San Antonio. He’s speaking, so don’t miss it!  Some of the Magento gang will then be flying off to Mallorca, Spain for the Magento Developers Paradise October 10-12. If you’re in The Windy City (Chicago) be sure to check out Magento Mobile at the first ever Internet Retailer Mobile Forum from October 11-13. The “Tim’s” (Schulz and Schneider will be holding down the fort at booth #204) Then it’s back to California to the grand old Moscone Center (San Fran) for PayPal Innovate from October 26-27. Magento is a Gold Sponsor and very excited to have several speaking slots!

In the month of November Magento executives are moving to Europe (may as well!) They start their European tour in Leipzig November 4 - 5 at Meet Magento. Then Monday morning, November 8 they’ll be back in Paris for Bargento 5. And why stop there? Back to Spain for Bargento Espana November 11. On November 22, the first Swissgento event will take place in Geneva. There are rumours of other partner events in Europe during the month of November. Hopefully, they will be back home to celebrate American Thanksgiving with their families…but we shall see!

For a detailed events schedule, check out our Upcoming Events section.

Hope to see you soon!

If you’re in Boston on September 14th, you won’t want to miss the Optaros-hosted Meetup event on metrics! Brad Schwarzenbach, Senior Strategist at Tippingpoint Labs will answer questions about what metrics your company or clients should be using with Magento ecommerce projects. The event will be showcasing how the changing web universe impacts the way brands measure online marketing success.

Learn about what Tippingpoint Labs calls the “DAPRmetrics revolution,” and how it will enable brands to more accurately measure and predict business success online as well as determine “Online Brand Value.”

Register for the event by visiting the Meetup event page.