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Kirill Samartsev

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Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source Today: What’s Changed with The Release of Magento 2.2

As you already know the Magento team has renamed its products just recently. Now, the CMS is available as Commerce Edition (formerly Enterprise Edition) and Open Source Edition (formerly Community Edition). Lately, the team introduced the release candidate of its platform – Magento 2.2 that should provide users with a whole new experience of work with the platform. In this article, we will find out what to expect with this new release. But first, let’s remember how it all began.
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The Future of Voice Technologies to Increase Online Sales

Internet business development is based on huge data streams, so the result of any online business performance depends on the ability to work with them. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI) is not only the present of internet trade but also its promising future. Today, marketers, internet sellers, and distributors are already starting to use personal assistants, chatbots, automated merchandising and retargeting systems – but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
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Ecommerce Data Aggregators Transform the Landscape

The most obvious ecommerce trend is that online sales grow and obtain all the characteristics of the global digital market, including indispensable involvement of big data, data exchange and standardization. Successful ecommerce becomes too complicated to be build individually. The rising competition makes merchants engage third party services like data aggregators enhancing different aspects of the sales process, including product pages and reviews, sales statistics, etc. Below we’ll highlight some services proved to be ready to add more value and insight to any online store and for any seller.
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We Cordially Welcome Our New Partner Objectsource

For 5 years objectsource has been a regular purchaser of our Magento extensions and now we are happy to celebrate the next level of our cooperation since just recently the company became our official partner. Objectsource is an experienced full service Magento eCommerce agency established in 2009 and based in Central London, Holborn. Among the featured clients objectsource.co.uk enumerates The Fine Cheese Co, The Real Flower Company, Sheerlux, Bristol Energy, British American Tobacco, and others.
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Latest Update: Gift Card 1.2 for Magento 2

Gifting is not so easy as it may originally seem and especially in ecommerce, when you need to meet different needs of your multiple customers.

Latest Update: Gift Card 1.2 for Magento 2

That’s why we continue developing new functions and options of our Gift Card for Magento 2 extension. And, the latest Gift Card 1.2 contains the new functionality that improves both frontend shopping experience and backend configuration facilities.

Gift Card 1.2 for Magento 2


Business Value



  • Backend Promotions with Gift Cards. Using the new functionality Magento store owners are able to give gifts to their loyal and regular customers or personally greet new customers with gift cards.

  • Improved Migration and Integration. The gift code export and import options make it possible to move from Magento 1 to Magento 2 or use gift codes generated in some CRM systems or offline easily.
    Original and Recognizable Gift Codes. Custom gift codes created for different gift cards, customers or occasions make them easily recognizable for both customers and Magento admins.



New Features


Gift Cards Applied to Orders from the Backend


Sometimes, Magento admins would like to encourage most loyal customers with surprises, and the gift card codes applicable from the backend make their best for the purpose. The functionality allows promoting sales or using offline-generated coupons for particular orders.

Apply Gift Card Code Input Field

Apply Gift Card Code Input Field


Now, all the orders received a new input field ‘Apply Gift Card Code’ in the backend to enter gift codes created by the extension. As soon as codes pass validation successfully, dedicated notifications appear at the top of the order page.

Gift Card Product Types for Gift Codes


Newly created from the backend codes now have a new attribute - Type. It refers to gift card product types currently available as Virtual, Physical, and Combined. By default, this attribute is set as Virtual for all new codes, but you can edit it anytime.

Export Gift Card Codes


The export function available for the Gift Card Code grid allows you to export codes into CSV or Excel XML files. This option is especially valuable for sophisticated grid filtering and code segmentation. You can also use exported tables in other applications, e.g. MailChimp reaching the customers with active or partially used codes.

Import /Export Gift Card Codes

Import /Export Gift Card Codes



Import Gift Card Codes


The reverse operation of importing is also possible. It can be used to upload gift codes generated in old Magento 1 stores, by other gift card extensions or offline. The export function is also available in the Gift Card Codes grid.

As soon as the import process is completed, the extension creates a log file with the details located in the Magento var/log folder.

Gift Card Code Pools


As far as the extension allows creating different types of gift card products it is going to be convenient to have different types of gift codes for them. Those particular types of codes may also be useful for individual customer audiences or some occasions.

Code Pools Grid

Code Pools Grid


The functionality is available at Products -> Gift Cards by Aheadworks -> Code Pools. The Code Pools grid contains all the sets of codes in one grid, so Magento admins are able to filter, sort, manage or delete them, if necessary.

New code pools are created just here using the Add Code Pool button. The New Code Pool section specifies pool’s name and specific patterns for codes. The number of generated codes is also determined here. If you want to use existing codes for this particular pool, you can import them from a CSV file.

New Code Pool Page

New Code Pool Page


All the generated or imported codes are listed in the grid below. The grid has three columns: Code, Gift Code Created, and Action. The middle column shows the status of a particular code. For example, as soon as a customer purchases a gift card connected to this pool of codes, then the extension takes one code from this pool. As a result, the selected code becomes active and is highlighted with the ‘Yes’ status.

This way, particular gift card products use particular gift code patterns. But, if you want to create a gift code of a certain pattern from the backend, you can also take it from the required pool. Or you may leave this option disabled and generate the code according to the pattern specified in the general settings.

Code Pools Used for Gift Card Products

Code Pools Used for Gift Card Products 



Gift Card Codes Patterns


This way, the patterns of gift codes determined in the extension’s Configuration Settings are used in all cases if no exceptions are applied.

Gift Card Code Patterns in General Settings

Gift Card Code Patterns in General Settings



Enable/disable Custom Message Fields


If there is no need to allow customers to use personal messages attached to gift cards, you can disable these fields using the Custom Message Fields option. You can either disable/enable them or show only Headline or only Message fields singly.

Product Information


Gift Card 1.2 for Magento 2 is currently available in our store for purchasing and free updating.

The Gift Card extension for Magento 2

Product page
Installation Guide
User Manual
Backend Demo
Frontend Demo
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Game-changing Smart One Step Checkout for Magento 2

Before entering checkout your customers pass a long way thru your store to be likely confident about their products and ready to make purchases. However, it’s not quite right. According to Compass.co, the average checkout abandonment rate in ecommerce is 25%. In other words, one quarter of your loyal customers abandon their orders at the last moment, which is a tremendous portion in the given circumstances.
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Cashless Economy. Is It Near?

The idea of cashless society appeared in 1990s, when non-cash payments became popular in everyday life. As a result, some economists developed a theory of an absolutely cashless economy without paper money used for transactions or savings. Since then, the amount of digital transactions raised manifold in the whole world, still none of the countries was able to completely remove cash from use. The number of non-cash transactions in the whole amount of payments made by citizens of a country shows how close it is to be able to negate cash totally.
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Automatic Related Products 1.3 for Magento 2 with Advanced Positioning and Segmentation

Just recently we’ve updated our Automatic Related Products for Magento 2 with some useful features able to improve block positioning and shopping audience targeting. Automatic Related Products 1.3 for Magento 2. So, what are the features that Automatic Related Products 1.3 brings to the table?
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Improved Templates for Help Desk Ultimate 1.3

Just recently we’ve released a new version of the Help Desk Ultimate extension for Magento 2 stores. The Help Desk Ultimate extension has a lot of automated features, including the messages about newly created tickets by customers and by agents, notifications about replies from customers and agents, messages about reassigned tickets and the changes of ticket priorities, and so on.