What’s new for your business from inriver? Summary: December 2024 grade

It’s time for our monthly review of the most recent inriver product releases, where we examine the practical benefits behind the technical details.

This month’s update focuses on new enhancements to Expression Engine following its successful debut in early December, a useful new trigger to further streamline your workflows, and user experience improvements for Brand Store.

Work smarter with optimized workflows

Simplifying the management of complex PIM workflows just became even more intuitive. We’re pleased to announce the release of a new automation trigger: “Linked Entity Updated.” This trigger allows you to set-up rules that assign work to your team not only when a specific product is updated, but also when there is a change to anything linked to that product.

You can learn more about how this new trigger can drive your operational efficiency in our Community article.

Other enhancements to Workflow this month include:

• Segment-based filtering: Users only see workflow assignments relevant to their specific segments, reducing clutter and increasing focus.
• Clearer summaries: Refined email notifications offer concise updates, helping you stay on top of workflow activities without unnecessary detail.

These enhancements ensure smoother task assignments and better automation, enabling your team to focus on driving results.

Responding to your excellent feedback on Expression Engine

Thank you to all the customers and partners who’ve activated Expression Engine in their PIM environments since its launch in early December and taken the time to provide enormously valuable feedback and ideas for future development.

We’ve been delighted and inspired by your enthusiasm for this new time-saving functionality, and we appreciate all the positive input. We’ve already responded to some of your comments and questions, fixing some small display issues and ensuring consistent behavior across all screens when using this new functionality.

We have also further enhanced Expression Engine’s capabilities since the launch, adding new functions that make it easier to retrieve and manipulate data. Users can now use Expression Engine to:

• Retrieve values from a range of different sources including XML and JSON files for greater efficiency and automation
• Retrieve CVL values, segment IDs, and Field Set IDs to populate required fields more quickly
• Generate new GUIDs (unique identifiers) for improved tracking and data governance
• Compare a single value with many others to quickly find the best match in what’s known as a “switch statement” to save time in decision-making processes

These additions will expand the options for simplifying complex data configuration within your product enrichment processes, without the need for custom code.

Please do keep your feedback coming via the Idea Portal in the Community.

Customizing and optimizing Brand Store for your business

This month, we introduced several updates to Brand Store to improve usability and flexibility:

• Enhanced search functionality: Wildcard search and multi-search delimiters make it easier for end users to find the products they need, improving the overall product discovery experience.
• Streamlined document handling: Server-side PDF generation and optimized download performance ensure that documents are generated and accessed more efficiently.
• Improved storage management: A new time-triggered cleanup feature for downloadable files ensures that storage remains organized and free of outdated files.
• Better configurability: Clarified terminology and customizable email subjects help store managers tailor the Brand Store to align with business needs.

These updates simplify operations and offer your end users a more intuitive and responsive storefront experience.

That’s it for this month’s summary. If you’d like to know more about the details behind these enhancements, you can read our technical release notes anytime.