Shopify Community AMA: Winter Editions ‘23 Recap

Jacqui
Community Moderator

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Thanks to all Community members that participated in our inaugural 2 week AMA on the new English AMA discussion board! 👏👏

 

Here are the questions you asked about the 100+ product updates announced at Shopify Winter ‘23 Editions.

 

@RoedaStudio asked: Is the B2B catalog feature live? I'm looking forward to using it! Does the B2B catalog feature also include a minimum order total for checkout? 

Catalogs is currently in a limited release and will progressively roll out to 100% of Shopify Plus merchants over the next few weeks. To request prioritized-access to this feature, contact your Merchant Success Manager or Shopify Plus Support, and ask to be added to the waitlist. This feature includes the ability to set minimum, maximum, and increment quantity rules for variants. We plan to release order total minimums as a core feature of our platform in a future release. Learn more about Catalogs here

 

@NR1 inquired about adding complementary products as an upselling option when the customer adds a certain item to the shopping cart or is browsing an item’s page. 

Today, you can use the Shopify Search & Discovery app to customize complementary products on the product details page. Surfacing complementary product recommendations on other surfaces like the search results page is not something we currently support; however, the team is actively exploring this. Learn more about the Shopify Search & Discover app here.

 

@senkels and @damaz asked if a one-page checkout would be available for all plans, and how to activate? 

One-page checkout will be available on all Shopify plans. You can sign up to be considered for early access here.

 

@senkels also inquired about email notifications being editable and translatable for self-serve returns (for example return request received, accepted) as they want to stay true to their brand design and language. 

The three new notifications: return request confirmation, return request approved, and return request declined are automatically translated by Shopify based on the buyer's locale, as all other notifications are. Learn more about customizing return request email notifications here

 

@TexasSalt asked: Does the AI writer take descriptions from other websites? We make our own products and do not want to stumble upon the same description on someone else's website. 

The OpenAI Flow connector creates descriptions from content sourced all over the web. Although it's possible that similar products would have similar descriptions, the chances of stumbling upon the same exact same description are incredibly low. This chance also decreases significantly as the number of words in the description increases.

 

@CGSC asked: Do the new inventory changes allow us to have a single inventory accessible from multiple locations? We have several locations that all pull from a central warehouse. Orders are delivered to each location on a weekly basis for customers to pick up. 

It sounds like your customers are buying products online, and looking to pick them up in retail locations, and the only relevant inventory is that of your warehouse. At this stage, we don't have the single inventory across multiple locations you're referring to, therefore your retail stores have to have their own inventory quantities for the pickup location to appear at checkout. Learn more about pickup in store here. If your customers are buying in-store and they want their products shipped to their home, use the ship to customer functionality on Shopify POS

 

@jam_chan asked: In add a custom bundle, what are the results and outputs after the step #2 to build a cart_transform function? How is the cart transformed after running the code? They were also wondering why Rust is involved? 

We have a screenshot here that shows how Bundles would appear in checkout. You can use any language that compiles to WebAssembly for Shopify Functions. Our official language is currently Rust, and we just launched a local developer preview of using JavaScript to write a Function.

 

@Garygilbert wanted to know about markets and multi-location fulfillment. They have a shop which sells the same product line in two countries, but because of customs wants to fulfill from two different locations.  If they sell in their primary market (Switzerland) then they should fulfill from the Swiss fulfillment location. If they sell in the "rest of world" market they should only fulfill from the "Austria" location. 

You can sign up for smart order routing early access here. Soon you'll be able to automatically route orders to the most optimal location with this functionality. With shipping profiles, set up a custom shipping profile for those specific products, and within that profile click on "Create zone" to add multiple shipping zones for your locations with their own shipping rates. You can also click on "Manage" under shipping origins to add multiple origin locations. 

 

@jam_chan also asked about the Built for Shopify program that requires all apps to remove asset API since their standalone web app uploads a custom product template with different section files and cannot remove asset API, and is also uploading images to the theme. Any exemptions here? Will non-embedded apps be deprecated?

Embeddedness is a requirement for Built for Shopify status. Embedding your app in the Shopify Admin creates a seamless and familiar experience for merchants. We’ve expanded our best practices to clarify that merchants must be able to use your app’s most important functionality without moving between Shopify and external app surfaces. Learn more about those best practices here.

Regarding the Asset API, you're correct that in general Built for Shopify apps shouldn’t add, remove, or edit a merchant's theme files using the Asset API. There are two exceptions to this rule: 

  1. Your app is a page builder app that adds or replaces all layouts or templates files with the purpose of providing an alternative theme customization experience.
  2. Your app backs up all theme files, and restores files from a backup.

When you apply for Built for Shopify status, your app will be audited for Asset API usage and exceptions.

 

@Lhingley and others wanted to know whether Shopify Editions Winter '23 updates automatically install on your Shopify store, or do you need to do something to manually update? 

You can visit the Editions site here and click through on the feature you're interested in, leading to product-specific documentation that guides you on how to add to your store if eligible. Alternatively, if you're signed into your Shopify store, click on any of the "Try it in your store" links which direct you to where in your Admin you can install or find the feature.

 

@leganv9 asked which languages to learn to be a developer on Shopify to build apps and themes? 

Visit the Build with Us section of the Winter Editions '23 site here for the latest releases that help speed up your builds and give you more ways to customize commerce.

 

@MongooseMedia asked: What is the best way to do inventory management for two separate inventories that do NOT overlap without Shopify choosing the inventory levels themselves or overselling from a location?

In order to prevent overselling, make sure you uncheck "Continue selling when out of stock" in your product details page. Learn more here. If you're referring to the new "On Hand" quantity field, we have reverted some of the inventory quantities updates. You should be able to once again manually edit the "Available" inventory quantities. In terms of fulfillment location priority, we have not made any changes so that experience shouldn’t have changed.

 

Thanks to all Community members that participated in our first AMA, even if it was just viewing the questions and answers! We appreciate your engagement, and would love to hear your feedback, share your topic requests below. 


Visit and subscribe to our AMA discussion board to stay up to date on what’s happening next.

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