The latest version of Commerce Server is under development and we are in the final stages of accepting applications for TAP (Technology Adoption Program) participation.
TAP is a great program for those companies;
- interested in shaping Commerce Server with their input,
- interested in working closely with the Product Unit to learn how the next version of Commerce Server will work,
- looking to get design feedback to improve their implementations.
So far, we received numerous requests to join TAP, but there are still have a few openings left. If you are interested in working closely with the Product Unit, please let us know ASAP.
A word about "R2": If you are interested in learning what's new and exciting in this upcoming version, we would be happy to share details in a one-on-one presentation.
A word about TAP: TAP is designed to bring the customers and partners together with the Commerce Server engineers to ensure that we understand and address all your needs and share information to ensure the highest quality implementations. It also gives a competitive advantage to those who thrive to stay relevant in today's demanding market.
If you are interested in learning more about 'R2" and TAP please drop us a line at cstap at microsoft dot com.
To help clarify some questions around Commerce Server BizTalk support - Commerce Server 2009
does support BizTalk 2006 R2. We are currently doing test passes against BizTalk 2009 and will advise when our test passes are completed.
The Commerce Server Product Unit has produced a series of videos that provide a visual overview of the features and benefits of Commerce Server 2009 from both a business and end-user perspective. The fourth video in this series, Commerce Server 2009: The Site Designer Experience, is now available.
This video outlines how Commerce Server 2009 can help site designers to create new Web site content and functionality in just a few clicks. Learn how Commerce Server 2009 and SharePoint Commerce Services Web parts simplify the process for changing page functionality and page layouts to meet the specific requirements for your e-commerce site.
To access the full video series, visit the Try It section at www.microsoft.com/commerceserver.
Luxury online jewellery boutique AstleyClarke.com has appointed Snow Valley to design and develop its new Web site.
The new online store will be delivered using Snow Valley’s MUSE e-commerce platform, which is based on Microsoft technology including Commerce Server, BizTalk Server and SQL Server. Astley Clarke will be taking full advantage of the powerful catalogue and promotion engines within Microsoft Commerce Server, while scalable integration with its fulfilment system will be completed using BizTalk Server.
To read the complete article posted June 5, 2009 on OnWindows.com, click here.
The Commerce Server 2009 (April) evaluation VPC has expired. It has been replaced with a June evaluation VPC which is now available for download on Microsoft Connect.
The June evaluation VPC is complete with Commerce Server 2009 and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 (MOSS) fully installed and configured (Core Systems, Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation, SharePoint Commerce Services), including the new Default site with the Template Pack running in SharePoint using the 30 new Web Parts. Demo scripts, sales collateral, samples and videos are also included on the evaluation VPC.
Please note:
1) You must be registered and logged into the Microsoft Connect site with your Windows Live ID account - https://connect.microsoft.com/.
2) Ensure Commerce Server is added to your Microsoft Connect Dashboard, go to ‘Survey’ and register to download the latest VPC.
No technological or content changes have been made to the June evaluation VPC other than the extension of the trial license period of the evaluation software installed. This VPC is to be used for demonstration purposes only. Approximately every 2 months the VPC will be updated and reposted to Microsoft Connect. This VPC is installed with evaluation software that will expire, significantly reducing functionality of the VPC. Please refer to the readme for more information.
The Commerce Server Product Unit has produced a series of videos that provide a visual overview of the features and benefits of Commerce Server 2009 from both a business and end-user perspective
The first video, Create Engaging Online Shopping Experiences Using Commerce Server 2009,has been available at Microsoft.com/CommerceServer for a couple of weeks.
Two other videos are now available:
Introducing Commerce Server 2009 - This video introduces the core features of Commerce Server 2009 – including the new Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation, SharePoint Commerce Services and interoperability with the Microsoft ecosystem.
Commerce Server 2009: The Merchandiser/Marketing Experience - This video highlights how SharePoint Commerce Services and other core business management tools that come out of the box in Commerce Server 2009 offer a building-block approach within SharePoint to deliver contemporary e-commerce Web site functionality. These tools are designed to make it more convenient for business users, such as merchandisers and marketers, to perform product or campaign updates quickly and easily.
The video highlights the following capabilities:
- Making modifications to product information using the Inline Product Property Editor e.g. a price adjustment
- Using Catalog Manager to perform advanced product edits such as creating a new product category or changing the sequence of products in a specific category
- Using Marketing Manager to set up a new campaign – including defining ads, discounts, and coupons.
A final video in the series highlighting the Site Designer experience with Commerce Server 2009 will be made available shortly. All of these Commerce Server 2009 marketing videos are available from the Try It section of Microsoft.com/CommerceServer.
A series of Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 marketing videos will soon be available on the ‘Try It’ section of Microsoft.com/CommerceServer. These videos are intended to provide a visual overview of the features and benefits of Commerce Server 2009 from both a business and end-user perspective.
The first video of the series called ‘Create Engaging Online Shopping Experiences Using Commerce Server 2009’, highlights shopper capabilities including browsing for products, reading reviews and writing reviews, adding items to a list and accessing Store Locator to name a few. View video.
We will continue to update everyone as additional videos highlighting the merchandising/marketing and designer capabilities of Commerce Server 2009 are made available online.
Commerce Server was featured last week on AnugCast, a weekly podcast focusing on topics related to .Net development.
Recorded in Danish, the podcast is produced and hosted by Søren Spelling Lund of http://www.publicvoid.dk/. In this podcast, Søren talks to Torben Frølund, a senior developer with Sonofon, a Danish cell carrier, and the dev lead on their current solution based on Commerce Server 2007. The podcast also covers the history of Commerce Server, what's new in Commerce Server 2009 and more.
To listen to the podcast, visit: http://www.anug.dk/post/2009/05/02/ANUGCast-32-Microsoft-Commerce-Server-med-Torben-Frc3b8lund.aspx
In an effort to help improve the Commerce Server 2009 evaluation experience, the Commerce Server 2009 Evaluation VPC (April 2009 version) is now available for download to partners and customers. This VPC has Commerce Server 2009 and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 (MOSS) fully installed and configured (Core Systems, Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation, SharePoint Commerce Services), including the new Default site with the Template Pack running in SharePoint using the 30 new Web Parts.
Register* to download the latest VPC complete with demo scripts, sales collateral, samples and videos, visit - https://connect.microsoft.com/Survey/Survey.aspx?SurveyID=8411&SiteID=643
*Please note:
1) You must be registered and logged into the Microsoft Connect site with your Windows Live ID account - https://connect.microsoft.com/.
2) Ensure Commerce Server is added to your Microsoft Connect Dashboard, go to ‘Survey’ and register to download the latest VPC.
The VPC is intended to be used only for evaluation and demonstration purposes. This VPC is installed with evaluation software that will expire, significantly reducing functionality of the VPC. Approximately every 3 months the VPC will be updated and reposted to Microsoft Connect. Please refer to the readme for more information.
The Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 Inline Product Property Editor is a snap-in for product administration for merchandisers. This Microsoft Silverlight™ control, hosted in a ASP.NET Web Part, enables merchandisers to update product information on their SharePoint-based e-commerce site directly, instantly reflecting changes, in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) experience. The Inline Product Property Editor allows for quick edits to attribute information such as description, title, and price, which are reflected back to the master catalog in Commerce Server 2009. The Inline Product Property Editor is designed to work on any SharePoint site, including the Default site, the contemporary site, or any other customized SharePoint-based site with Commerce Server installed.
Also included is the Inline Product Property Editor Extensibility Kit that consists of the source code for the Silverlight Web Part. Developers can use the source code to customize or extend the capabilities of the Inline Product Property Editor by using Microsoft Silverlight, and the Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation that was introduced in Commerce Server 2009.
Download the Inline Product Property Editor, visit
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147779
The new Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 Template Pack offers a refreshed, contemporary “skin” of the Default site for both desktop browsers and mobile devices (specifically Windows Mobile and iPhone™). This new contemporary site is a full-featured and functional shopping Web site that uses SharePoint as the presentation front-end in either Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). It also offers a default production quality site design that creative professionals can quickly and easily customize to suit the needs of their organization.
Download the Commerce Server 2009 Template Pack, visit
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147778
When we shipped Commerce Server 2007, we began supporting ASP.NET Authentication for SQL Authentication and ADFS for Windows Authentication. In fact, this became the preferred and directed method to handle site authentication for Commerce Server. The legacy ISAPI authentication filter was maintained for backward compatibility, but was marked as deprecated. This story did not change for Commerce Server 2009.
For the next version of Commerce Server, we are proposing to remove the legacy CS2000/CS2002 ISAPI Authorization filter entirely, effectively forcing you to use ASP.NET Authentication or ADFS.
If this will cause you a problem, please let us know on our CS2009 MSDN Forum post - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/commserver2009/thread/13c3ad67-b1fb-475c-8c88-75709f87dc9b?lc=1033
Stylesheets, page layouts and master pages in SharePoint can be used to change the way the Default Site looks, but what if you need to make quick changes to the way the out-of-the-box controls render content without having to build your own custom web parts?
Check out the latest blog post from Kelly Andrew Heard, Solution Architect from Cactus Commerce as he walks you through a couple of quick methods in Redesigning the CS09 Default Site -http://blog.kellyheard.com/redesigningthedefaultsite/
Like all product units at Microsoft, we are very interested in your feedback as we plan our next release of Commerce Server.
One of the key themes for our next release is to provide a single, unified setup experience. In order to best do that, we need to optimize which platforms are supported.
Our current proposal for the next release is to support and optimize for the following:
1) Operating system:
The next version of Commerce Server will support Windows Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2, and only the 64-bit version. By doing this, Commerce Server gains the benefits of 64-bit performance, and keeps up to date with Windows Server releases: Windows Server 2008 R2 and all future versions of server software will be 64-bit only. One change we’re proposing will be to drop support for Windows Server 2003, which is moving out of primary support and into extended support in July 2010. By choosing Windows Server 2008, we can also choose to support IIS 7 exclusively, and get the benefits of IIS 7 integrated mode.
2) SQL Server:
The next version of Commerce Server will support SQL Server 2008 only, plus pre-release testing for the next version of SQL. As with the proposed OS support, we’d like to focus on the most current and next releases of SQL Server. This does mean dropping SQL Server 2005 as a supported database platform.
3) SharePoint:
SharePoint 2007 (both MOSS 2007 and WSS 3) will be supported and we also plan to support the next version of SharePoint.
4) BizTalk:
The BizTalk adapters are not changing, and they will be tested for compatibility with the upcoming BizTalk 2009 release.
5) Dev tools and platforms:
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 will continue to be supported (as it was with CS2009) and we’ll add support for the next version of Visual Studio as well. We are also looking at supporting Windows 7 and/or Vista x64 as a development platform.
We value your feedback on our proposal for the next release of Commerce Server. Please post your comments on our CS2009 MSDN Forum today, visit http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/commserver2009/thread/6a5ec5a6-069a-4352-9a50-243473dbb5ea
Thank you,
The Commerce Server Product Team
For those that were unable to attend the Commerce Server session on ‘Creating a “Next Generation” e-Commerce Experience’ at MIX09, the recording is now available online.
Microsoft Commerce Server joint development partner, Cactus Commerce discusses how to create compelling and consistent e-commerce experiences. See a demo of an e-commerce experience that leverages a common commerce platform together with rich client application technologies that work on a range of Web and mobile platforms.
To view the webcast, visit http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T55F
