The monthly Retail webinar for September was held on the 5th of September and showcased various features, some of which are releasing soon and others that are in the early stage of design.

 We started the demos with an update to the “Preferred payment methods” feature which allows retailers to define eligible payment methods for returns. The preferred payment methods functionality addresses key refunds and returns scenarios for retailers, reducing risk and increasing profitability margins.

 We then moved over to improvements we’ve made to statement posting, starting with the validation checker that was recently released. The retail store validation checker enables retailers to validate transaction information from all channels before statement posting, thereby catching errors in advance. With the new changes, users have a visual user interface to manage the rules and validations before running the validation checks on the statement to be posted. Another enhancement we’ve made to statement posting is the capability for retail admins to make transaction-level corrections before posting statements without the need for support intervention. The feature includes audit trails to ensure that corrections are tracked. It can be used in cases of transaction corrections to avoid statement posting issues.

 We then showcased the feature currently in preview for end of day processing for trickle feed order creation. The feature enables users to create orders from retail transaction tables in much higher frequency than possible in recent versions of Retail. With this feature, the order creation process is a continuous activity throughout the day, based on entries into the retail transaction table, leaving only financial reconciliation for the end of day tasks.

Towards the end of the session we shared our new concept of intelligent product recommendations, which uses machine-learning, cart, and user context to provide intelligent and relevant product recommendation to customers and cashiers. The intelligent product recommendations functionality uses the omni-channel business KPI-driven metrics with user inputs, and provide opportunities for better revenue boosting and customer engagement experiences.

We posted a recording and the presentation materials from this last webinar, as well as information about the upcoming webinar, on the Retail Interest Group Yammer group. This Yammer group is quite active—used by implementation partners, support, customers, and product group members to post questions and comments—allowing members to take advantage of the collective knowledge of the Retail community. To join this group, go to the Yammer site to send a request – http://aka.ms/retailinterestgroup.

The next webinar will be on the October 3rd. We’re looking forward to seeing you all there!

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The monthly Retail webinar for August was held on the 1st of August and was loaded with exciting content. We covered lots of features, some of which are releasing soon while others are in the early stage of design.

We started with a demo of the Regression Suite Automation Tool (RSAT) for point of sale (POS), which enables retailers to perform regression testing on POS. Regression testing helps you make sure new enhancements don’t break existing business processes. We then covered the new offline enhancements in POS, including manually switching to offline mode prior to login, and automatic switching POS to offline mode. This was followed by a demo of the upcoming clienteling capabilities in POS which will enable a sales associates to easily manage key customers and capture important information like preferences, key dates, notes, activities, and more, thus empowering associates to provide more engaging shopping experiences to their customers.

We then switched to a feature which will allow retailers to provide additional discounts on a transaction when a customer uses the preferred tender to pay. Examples of preferred tender include cash or a retailer’s branded credit or debit card. Then we talked about a feature that allows retailers to define eligible payment methods for returns. In the last part of the webinar, we provided insights into the upcoming enhancements to omni-channel experiences.

We’ve posted a recording with the presentation materials from this last webinar, as well as information about the upcoming webinar, on the Retail Interest Group Yammer group. This Yammer group is quite active—used by implementation partners, support, customers, and product group members to post questions and comments—allowing members to take advantage of the collective knowledge of the Retail community. To join this group, go to the Yammer site to send a request – http://aka.ms/retailinterestgroup.

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The monthly Retail webinar held on June 6 was filled with some great content and attended by over 80 participants from around the globe.

We started with a demo of extensibility enhancements during which the new application programming interface (API) triggers were used with the point of sale (POS). After that, we discussed details of the Regression Suite Automation Tool (RSAT) for POS, which enables retailers to perform regression testing on POS to ensure new enhancements don’t break existing business processes. We then covered the statement posting enhancements, which were added to improve posting performance and provide new validation rules for transactions. This was followed by the product search and discoverability enhancements, where we showcased faster product searches and new refinement capabilities. The last part of the webinar provided insights into the upcoming task management capabilities, which will ensure efficient store execution. We also showcased our vision for simplifying the management of the button grids displayed on POS.

We’ve posted a recording and the presentation materials from this last webinar, as well as information about the upcoming webinar on the Retail Interest Group Yammer group. This Yammer group is quite active—used by implementation partners, support, customers, and product group members to post questions and comments—allowing members to take advantage of the collective knowledge of the Retail community. To join this group, go to the Yammer site to send a request – http://aka.ms/retailinterestgroup.

The next webinar will be during the second week of July. We’re looking forward to seeing you all there!

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