Updates to Four51's OrderCloud Platform and Dev Center Provide Even More Flexibility

Four51, which powers B2B eCommerce for nearly 20 million users and thousands of businesses worldwide, announced four new enhancements to its cloud-based platform, OrderCloud, in its latest release. These enhancements, available to developers now, extend the capabilities of the OrderCloud platform and allow users to create custom eCommerce solutions faster and easier than ever before.

OrderCloud's latest capabilities were developed to create more flexible, robust versions of current features already in place, and also in response to feedback from users of the OrderCloud Dev Center. Each enhancement further delivers on the platform's slogan, "infinite possibilities." Enhancements include the addition of multiple payment options, an enhanced rules engine, impersonation capabilities and a repeat order directive.

1) Multi-Payment Options
Multi-payment options will allow for multiple payments per order. Payments can be made by credit card, purchase order, spending account and any other payment method a company might be using. "We've offered a split-payment system for quite some time, but this was limiting for many businesses," says Four51 CTO, Steve Davis. "Multi-payments allow for much more flexibility. Say, for example, a regional branch manager needs to order specific products for each of his or her locations. With Multi-Payment capabilities, they are able to charge each locations' account within one payment, rather than ordering every product separately."

2) Enhanced Rules Engine
The upgraded rules engine is a new way to model order approval rules using simple text-based logic expressions. "Customers will now experience a much more robust, open-ended version of our current rules engine," says Todd Menier, Four51's Chief Architect leading the development of this project. "It goes way beyond simple approval rules. This makes it infinitely easier for our customers to perform complex ordering scenarios."

The new rules engine will allow for "if-then" expressions, making the "rules capabilities" applicable to more scenarios than just approval rules. For example, businesses can offer free shipping only if a user orders a certain amount of product, or users can receive an award if they satisfy X amount of orders. "Businesses were requesting it, so we built it," Menier says.

3) Impersonation Capabilities
The API Console available within the OrderCloud Dev Center Dashboard now supports the ability to impersonate specific users. In other words, developers working in the Dev Center can now "act" as a specific buyer user on a specific application to test user data access and assignments. This feature makes it easier for developers to create intuitive experiences for users by viewing data and validating assignments.

4) Repeat Order Component
We've also added a component that simplifies the ability to allow for repetition of previous orders placed on OrderCloud. Because the Dev Center utilizes component-based development, developers can easily add the ability for users to create a repeat order based on their order history.

More Info: http://www.four51.com