What's New: Shopify Connector (2024 release wave 2)

Overview

The video walks through the Shopify connector updates in 2024 release wave 2, grouped into product information management and order handling. Product-side topics include meta fields, translations, variants, pricing, API version and weight units.

Order-side topics include return location priority, item charges for shipping, syncing posted sales invoices to Shopify, and reconciling payments, including multiple payment types and gift cards, through a new cash receipt journal action. The presenter also describes a customer-specific pricing feature contributed by a merchant and partner through GitHub.

Key points

• Meta fields defined on Shopify products or variants are imported into Business Central through a new Metafields action. For now the connector only imports them. Mapping them to Business Central data, for example creating item substitutions, needs a custom extension.
• Translations can be synced from Business Central to Shopify for languages selected via the new Languages action on the Shopify Shop card. Item descriptions, extended text, attributes and attribute values are translated when items are added to Shopify.
• The new ‘Add items as Shopify variants’ action adds Business Central items as variants of an existing Shopify product. Availability and prices stay synchronized, but titles may need manual edits because the Shopify APIs do not yet give full control over titles.
• A Customer No. field on Shopify catalogs is hidden by default and can be shown through personalization. It links a Business Central customer to a B2B catalog so that customer-specific prices sync. The feature came from a merchant and partner code contribution on GitHub.
• The connector now uses Shopify API version 2024-07, which is supported for one year. It works with Shopify’s new limit of up to 2000 variants per product, which you can test in a development store on the latest Shopify version. A new Weight Unit setting is required by this API version.
• Shipment method mapping now accepts items or item charges as well as G/L accounts for shipping charges. A new Return Location Priority setting can use the return location from the Shopify refund, falling back to the default return location if it cannot be found.
• Posted sales invoices can be synced to Shopify once posted invoice sync is enabled and payment terms mapping is set up. Invoice lines are created as custom products, the original currency is kept, and customers can pay through a Pay now button.

Features

AL objects mentioned

As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.

• other “Shopify Shop Card” at 3:58
• other “Meta Fields action” at 2:47
• other “Languages action” at 3:58
• table 27 “Item” at 4:19
• other “Item Substitution” at 3:38
• other “Shopify Product List” at 6:38
• other “Weight Unit setting” at 14:19
• other “Return Location Priority field” at 14:39
• other “Shopify transaction page” at 22:56
• other “cash receipt journals” at 21:31

Quotes

• 0:47 “the sales cycle is about 2 weeks in average but it can be as short as 8 days”
• 1:00 “we are again focusing on the making connector better investing into product information management on one side and Order handling on another side which”
• 2:47 “connector right now uh only Imports them but uh we left it to you to write uh your custom extensions to actually do mappings”
• 3:58 “there’s a new action again uh in your Shopify Shop Card called languages you can import the languages from Shopify”
• 6:38 “we introduced a new action called add items as Shopify variants uh in the Shopify product list”
• 11:41 “Merchant and the partner who was helping them with implementation they submitted this code to the GitHub where we have our extension code is”
• 12:58 “every quarter there is a new version and it version will stay current for one year to make sure that we aligned with Shopify”
• 13:39 “now you can have up to 2,000 of variant under one product and our connector already works with it”
• 13:39 “slowly rolling out already it’s the are lifting restrictions on number of variants you can have so now you”
• 14:19 “weight unit when we send the weight of a variant of a or a product uh”
• 15:19 “instead of just one uh shipping charges type which is the GL account you can do item or item charge”
• 16:42 “with this release uh you can also uh synchronize postal sales invoices to Shopify”
• 18:35 “most of items or basically everything is created not as real item or variant but as something which is called custom product available on”
• 20:10 “in this release we are adding a new extra capability which should help you to more easily reconcile payments with the posted invoices”
• 21:31 “under uh prepare tab you’ll see a new action called suest Shopify payments this will only show if you have an active uh enabled”
• 23:58 “notice that majority of this changes are coming from you because we are addressing feedback uh received via different channels either via support or”

Disclaimers in the video

• 13:59 preview: you can test it if you have a development store which uses the latest Shopify version

Presenters (as heard): Andre, Unidentified speaker.