WHMCS V3.8.1 Stable Released
January 13th, 2009The new version of WHMCS is now available to download from our Downloads Section. Here’s some of the great new features that come with version 3.8.1;
Quotes/Estimates System
Due to an ever expanding variety of uses that you, our customers are utilising WHMCS for, we had received a considerable number of requests for a quote system and this has been addressed in the latest update. A quote can now be created belonging to an existing client or a potential customer that doesn’t yet exist in WHMCS. You can then set how long the quote is valid for, and in a similar way to invoices, you can enter line items for the quotes details. The quote can then be emailed to a customer as a PDF which sets its status to Delivered and you can then choose from options of Accepted which will create a client account (if a new client) and convert the quote into an invoice in that account, or Declined with statuses Lost or Dead.
Network Issues Status Page
As an extension to the live server status page that the WHMCS client area already had, a network issues page has been introduced. This page is designed to allow you to post current and scheduled/planned service affecting issues such as server outages, software updates, planned maintenance, etc…etc… The page is divided up into 3 categories – open, scheduled and resolved. The view defaults to all open and scheduled issues which can be given a subject, status, priority, affected area, detailed description and start & end date/time. If the issue is affecting a server, you can choose the server from the list of servers configured in your WHMCS system and that issue will be highlighted to the user in the client area if they have an account on it. You can choose whether the page is publicly accessible or requires a client login to view.
Configurable Option Groups
Configurable options are now created as groups independently from products. This means that you can create a set of configurable options which can apply to many products, and making a change to those configurable options will be far easier with you only have to do it once, rather than on each product you have. It also means that during product upgrades/downgrades, so long as the products share the same configurable option groups, the options will be kept during the upgrade process rather than being lost as they have until now. A product can be linked to multiple option groups so you can still have specific fields for just certain products.
Support Ticket Rating
The core part of almost any business is customer support, and you want to be sure that your customers are happy with the service they are getting. With that in mind, we have introduced ticket rating. This allows the customer to give feedback on the replies they get to their tickets rating them from 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent). Admin Staff can then see the ratings both for individual replies, staff averages and overall averages in graphs and run a report to review badly rated replies.
SEO Friendly URLS
Search Engine Friendly urls are where an url which once was “/knowledgebase.php?action=view&id=1″ becomes “/knowledgebase/1/How_do_I_access_my_control_panel.html” This has been implemented for the announcements, downloads and knowledgebase sections of the client area.
Reordering support for Custom Fields & Configurable Options
A fairly simple change but one which many had requested, custom fields and configurable options can now be re-ordered meaning that you can change the display order of fields and add in additional ones without having to remove and recreate the others.
To Do List Enhancements
As many of you will know, the To Do list can quickly fill up with tasks that need to be performed such as carrying out domain renewals that failed, or checking domain transfers status. In 3.8 we’ve made managing those just a little bit easier by adding some bulk operations to the To Do list overview. You can now select multiple todo entries and assign them to yourself, change the status or delete entirely in a single operation.
Free Domain Registration/Transfer Option
In 3.8, there is a new option to complement the existing free domain functionality with a product. This new option allows you to specify that the initial purchase is free, so no charge to register or transfer a domain with the customers hosting order, but renewals will be charged as normal, rather than the domain being free for the lifetime of the product.
Client Area Ticket Search
The support ticket listing of the client area now includes a search field allowing the user to easily locate past tickets based on keywords searching which should reduce the number of tickets you get asking the same questions repeatedly!
Free Setup Promotions
For those who offer products with setup fees, you can now create a new promotion type which gives free setup on the products in the cart meaning you no longer have to setup a fixed rate coupon for each of the setup fees you offer in order to discount it
Addons Tax/Notes
As with products, you can now specify on each addon if tax should be charged and an admin notes field has been added to addons to allow recording of any specific details for that instance of the addon under a client.
Miscellaneous Enhancements
Other miscellaneous enhancements in V3.8 include:
- A notes box shown on the checkout step of the order process for the user to enter any extra info/requirements
- Domain auto-renew disable button will now cancel any open invoices for domain renewal
- An option to require login to view tickets that belong to registered clients
- Improved support for multi-line line item descriptions in PDF invoices
- Updated cPanel module to import total reseller usage stats
- Updated admin ticket reply process to mark a ticket as read by admins when adding a new reply
- Email CSS Code setting allowing customisation of the default font styles in emails
- Email merge fields now use the users selected language for language variables such as billing cycle & status
- The IP Monitor previously only distributed on the forums is now included by default
