Catalog shopping cart release update

This blog from the Instructure Product Team is no longer considered current. While the resource still provides value to the product development timeline, it is available only as a historical reference.

zsgoreczky
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
70
9104

As I have mentioned in my previous post, the engineering team is working on adding a shopping cart to Catalog. We have broken down this improvement into 3 different phases, and we will roll them out to Catalog Beta in 3 different steps.

 

The Shopping cart will affect multiple screens in Catalog. The main home page will have a shopping cart icon if an item is already added to the cart, the listing page (or details page) will have an ‘Add to Cart’ / ‘Remove from Cart’ button, and the enrollment congratulations page will also change a little. 

Since some of the institutions have their Catalog home and listing pages customized, we would like to make sure that you can see these changes as early as possible. The reason for this is that some Catalogs have custom colors for the header of the home page or the buttons of the listing page. In this case, the shopping cart icon and the ‘Add to Cart’ / ‘Remove from Cart’ button will have a different color as the other components. We would like to make sure that you have ample time to adjust the new icon and buttons’ parameters, if you wish to do that.

Consequently, we are going to add the shopping cart to Catalog Beta incrementally with the three steps noted above. This does NOT affect production—we are not going to release the shopping cart to production until December. So the incremental release affects ONLY Catalog Beta environments.

So as step 1, you will see the shopping cart icon in the header) and two new buttons on the listing page (next to the thumbnail and at the bottom of the page). Clicking the shopping cart icon will open the cart preview, and clicking Checkout in the preview will open the checkout page. Please note that the checkout page will not work properly yet, as it is still under development. 

 

Please stay tuned and keep an eye out for the Beta release.

 

UPDATE: Today (October 21, 2021) we have turned on the first batch of changes in the Beta environment. 

UPDATE 2: Yesterday (November 16, 2021) we turned on the second batch of changes in the Beta environment. This release contains the checkout page and the 'All Done' final page that we show once the payment / enrollment has gone through. 

UPDATE 3: Today (December 16, 2021) we have released the last batch of changes in the Beta environment. This is the scope of the January release. 

UPDATE 4: Today (January 5, 2022) we have released shopping cart to production. 

This blog from the Instructure Product Team is no longer considered current. While the resource still provides value to the product development timeline, it is available only as a historical reference.

70 Comments
zsgoreczky
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi @escull You are right, the message is misleading in this way. We are going to tweak it and have a more generic copy for it. Thank you for calling it out! 

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@zsgoreczky What is the truncating issue? Would you be able to show me what you mean? So, do you mean tomorrow it will be fixed in beta and on the 10th in production or?

The checkout button is displayed in the cart preview, you can see it in the screenshot that you have attached above. I see two different checkout options. One with the subcatalog name and one with the listing names. Which ones are you referring to in the graphics I provided?

Yes, we will keep shopping cart turned on in everyone's Beta environment, even if you do not wish to have it turned on in production.  Can you confirm this will be off in production for us?

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@zsgoreczky will the new language for @escull be in production or beta?

zsgoreczky
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Dear All, 

Today we have released shopping cart to production. 

 

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@zsgoreczky Thank you, Zsofi. I have confirmed the shopping cart is turned off in our instance. When we want it turned on should we reach out to our CSM? 

Also, what is the truncating issue? Would you be able to show me what you mean? So, do you mean today it will be fixed in beta and on the 10th in production or?

The checkout button is displayed in the cart preview, you can see it in the screenshot that you have attached above. I see two different checkout options. One with the subcatalog name and one with the listing names. Which ones are you referring to in the graphics I provided?

zsgoreczky
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi @jsowalsk 

Yes, when you are ready for getting shopping cart turned on, please reach out to Kelly and she will let me know about it. 

The truncating issue was an issue that affected long titles. Long titles didn't get truncated properly, but they overflew the trash icon as well. We had the same issue for the checkout page, too and we have fixed it there as well. 

I have meant this checkout button: 

Screen Shot 2022-01-06 at 16.02.19.png

albertina_clayt
Partner
Partner

I'm not sure if this is related to the update but wanted to mention it here just in case. Myself and a couple of folks at our org are seeing a loading issue with the revenue reports. This just started today. I will also be placing a ticket.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@zsgoreczky I will do that. Do you know why when I check out I see the subcatalog sometimes for the name of the courses and why sometimes I see the listing names? Each time I have tested the courses they have been in different subcatalogs. I posted images previously on this.

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@albertina_clayt I had the same issue with pulling enrollment reports and I submitted a ticket and it is now fixed.

bromanski
Community Participant

Will there be updates to the Catalog Guides to reflect this new feature?

zsgoreczky
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi @jsowalsk In case of multi-checkout cart previews we show the title of the catalog / sub-catalog the listing belongs to. Not the title of the listing. If you click the arrow on the right, you can see the title of the listing(s). 
As mentioned before, in case of UMD, you will not see the multi-checkout option in production due to your institution's single payment gateway and currency type. 

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@zsgoreczky So if I am understanding you correctly, in production we will only see the listing name and not the subcatalog in the checkout area right? Since in Beta, it has been showing a listing option and a subcatalog option when checking out which has been very confusing for testing. Could you please provide an image of what the checkout process will look like in production?  Or is there a way to have beta resemble production?

zsgoreczky
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi @jsowalsk Only the cart preview will be different in production for your institution. Everything else will be the same. The cart preview will look like the screenshot I attached to my previous reply (with the listing's title, listing type, price and the checkout button at the bottom). 

Hi @bromanski Yes, the Community Team is working on updating the guides. 

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@zsgoreczky Ok, so we don’t need to worry about the subaccount issue during checkout in production? When can we expect to see bulk purchasing or is everything in beta as expected? I just want to make sure testing wise.

 Jessica

 

 

jeffharris
Community Member

Hello @zsgoreczky, are there any plans to offer a way for institutions to toggle the cart feature on/off? All of our courses are free, and we have no intentions to offer paid courses in our catalog, so the cart feature only confuses our customers. 

zsgoreczky
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi @jeffharris 

The cart can be used for free listings as well as it enables students to enroll in multiple listings at the same time. 

With shopping cart we have also improved promotion code handling and now multiple promotion codes can be used. Additionally, students receive more information on the enrollment's status, we indicate if the enrollment is in progress, if it was successful and if it failed by any chance, they can retry it with a single click. 

If you don't wish to have shopping cart turned on for your institution, we can turn it off for you, however, please note that these improvements will also get turned off. If you still wish to be excluded from the release, please contact your CSM and we will help with it. 

 

bromanski
Community Participant

@zsgoreczky 

Thank you for letting us know that we can also use multiple promotion codes. Can you explain this more specifically? It would be very helpful to have a webinar with a demo for how all these new features work.  I'm having difficulty following all of this here. Also, I appreciate your updating the guides. Can you let us know what guides are updated by providing direct links here? @jsowalsk maybe we can do a demo of this at our next Peer Group meeting?

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@bromanski I have asked about this. @zsgoreczky Can multiple promotion codes can only be used with the shopping cart or can we use them without the shopping cart? If so how? Is there any documentation on this besides here? https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Catalog/How-do-I-enroll-in-an-individual-Catalog-course-or...

and here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Catalog/How-do-I-add-a-catalog-promotion/ta-p/1780 

I see promotions are created the same way - for use one time or for all courses in a subcatalog but can you explain by what you mean multiple promotions can be used?

jsowalsk
Community Champion

@zsgoreczky @jkayew is there any update on bulk purchasing and the next steps for the timeline for Catalog?