We would like to inform you about the news in the Alive Platform, which we launched with the release number 22.5 on Monday June 21st
Online Ordering
Return an order from Approved to Paid status
We have added a functionality which allows you to return the order from the "Approved" status to the "Paid" status in the Online Ordering administration. You can use this functionality in case the order is approved by mistake. From now on, you can make this change on your side and there is no need to contact our support team, which will speed up your work considerably.
There is a new "Cancel approval" button in the order detail for this purpose:
This button is visible if your order is paid and approved. If you cancel the approval, the order will switch back to the “Paid” status.
Events in the administration of Online Ordering
Another interesting feature is the overview of users who performed a specific action within the Online Ordering. In the “Events” section in the order detail you can now see which user made an action resulting in a specific event. Therefore, it will be easier to find the person who, for example, incorrectly approved an order. This functionality is intended to streamline actions and order handling within the ALIVE Platform. For each record, the date and time of the change and the name of the user who made the change are listed. If a specific action was not triggered by the user, "System" is listed here.
Emails sent from Online Ordering
Another new functionality adds information about the emails which were sent from the Online Ordering to the customer or the card issuer users, including basic information about the email - the date and time of sending and the subject of the email.
NOTE: These are only emails directly from the Online Ordering (does not apply to other emails, e.g. sent from the Marketing Manager)
Fallback emails:
We have improved the process of sending emails so that the customer receives an informational email about his order in all circumstances.
If no email template is created for a language selected by the user, the email is sent in the default language set in your country.
Sent email limit:
We have modified the rules for sending reminder emails for card payment or card collection. From now on, the reminder email will only be repeatedly sent in a two months period. After this period no other reminders will be sent. We strive for better user-friendliness without unnecessary spamming of our customers.
Payment manager
We are introducing a new payment option via PayPal in the Payment Manager
A newer version of the Paypal API has been implemented.
The current integration of PayPal in Online Ordering uses their very old API. As part of the planned replacement of the existing Online Ordering with a new solution (next year), we must reconnect all payment gateways to the ALIVE Platform, and this new integration of PayPal is now part of the preparations for the new online module. We will gradually contact the individual countries that use PayPal payment method in the coming weeks with a request to send new data to the API. This is necessary to operate the new version of the API. The implementation should allow customers to pay both with a PayPal account (when the user needs to be logged in his/her PayPal account) and with a payment card without the need of having a PayPal account.
NCDB
Modifying API for external issuer:
We've clarified the publisher's settings. If you set the publisher as an external publisher, this option is now shown directly in the checkboxes in NCDB settings. Here you can select the way of how you want to send data to ALIVE Platform.
Graduations:
You can now see graduation details in the cardholder's profile. This is a new functionality that allows you to work with graduates. For the future, we are preparing a new functionality for issuing university graduate cards. We will inform you about the planned news in time.
Other technical news:
Apache proxy removal
New version of MySQL database on v8.0.2x
Keycloak v16.1.0 upgrade
Pay API and API gateway - Update Symfony 5.4
Dear issuer,
Welcome to the ALIVE Platform bulletin which regularly informs you about the nearest upcoming changes.
In this bulletin, we would like to focus on a new Support center substituting the old Service Desk, a new platform for our learning courses substituting the old LMS and also for the news in our team who operates the ALIVE Platform for you.
New ALIVE Platform Support center
We would like to introduce you a new solution for entering tickets for support. It is based on Jira Service Management tool by Atlassian and is going to fully replace the previous Service Desk tool by Alvao.
Check out the new Support center here.
Our new Support center allows you to specify what your request is about right from the start. In the beginning you have to specify what kind of issue you want to report. For example, reporting an incident, suggesting a new feature to the Alive Platform or a request for Support. This specification will allow us to quickly and clearly assign your ticket to a person who can respond adequately.
The signpost will guide you to select the correct settings for your ticket.
During filling out the form, or even from the home page, you can search for our learning courses which can contain the answer you are looking for. You can see them because we have also transferred learning courses from the LMS portal to Confluence. We will discuss this topic below.
User accounts
Our team will generate you login credentials that will allow you to sign in to the new Support center. Here you will be able to:
Create new tickets
Check your already existing tickets
View all tickets within your organization
Use the Confluence Knowledge base to the full - read learning articles and our blog.
We will send you all the information about the new accounts by email.
Old open tickets that have been entered into the Alvao Service desk will be fully transferred to the Confluence Service desk.
The preferred way of receiving new tickets is their direct entering of them in the Support center portal using the new credentials. It is still possible to create Support center tickets by sending an email to us. However, emailed requests will be processed by our team with lower priority than the directly entered tickets. Please be aware that the support email address is changing to support@aliveplatform.com. The old one (support@gtsalive.com) will be still working for several upcoming months, but we kindly ask you to use the new one.
ALIVE Platform Bulletin archive
Bulletin archive now also in Confluence
Want to check out our older issues of Bulletins?
Now you can find everything clearly in Confluence in the Blog section.
New ALIVE Platform Knowledge base
You can see our new space for courses here.
We would also like to introduce you a new place for our learning courses, so far located in the LMS portal.
What are the biggest benefits of transferring courses from LMS to Confluence?
No tricky tests. You no longer have to worry that we will test you for what you have learned at the end of each course.
Clearer course search - you no longer have to browse many pages to find the most suitable course for you. All courses are clearly sorted down by level
Search by keywords. Don't know exactly what you are looking for? Try searching by keywords.
If you want to search by using multiple keywords, it is best to use the "_" character, such as "label_printing" or "serial_number", and the search engine will immediately show you the course you need.
Each course is clearly supplemented by courses that are suitable to complete as a prerequisite and also by follow-up courses. You will find them in coloured boxes.
Easy text search using content. Just click on the line of content that interests you and you're right where you wanted it.
Easy text search using content. Just click on the line of content that interests you and you're right where you wanted it.
No login details are required to browse the courses, you do not need to remember any password or login name. You can easily share texts from our courses, for example, with colleagues using a URL link.
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ALIVE Platform team
As our IT team significantly grows, we want to briefly introduce you the actual members of a team who is behind the ALIVE Platform on the GTS' side and with whom you are or will be regularly in touch. Another bunch of people secures the system development, testing and operations on the side of our supplier company Bootiq.
Lukáš Kabíček
“As an IT manager I’m usually very busy, jumping from one meeting to another, consulting projects, communicating with the team, customers and vendors or hiring new IT colleagues. Being a part of the ALIVE Platform team from 2016 (and almost nine years at GTS) I have a strong knowledge of the system and as its product owner I create a vision of its future development. My goal is to rebuild and extend the ALIVE Platform to a state when it will be even more and simpler useful than now and provide you features supporting growth of your local ISIC business.“
Lukáš Vít
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“I do my best to support and solve your daily bases ALIVE Platform issues. Next part of my job is to test new functionalities and discuss some of them on conceptual level with both customers and with the development team.”
Kateryna Shalimanova
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“In my work, I build reports for different products and departments depending on the requirements of colleagues. I make life easier by automating everyday work. I help make the best decision based on real data.”
Nikoleta Perry
“My job is mainly on support, where I try to help everyone who needs it. I'm also testing new Alive Platform features and trying to find bugs. Sometimes I also do something creative, such as preparing a Bulletin or improving our learning courses.”
Zuzana Horáková
“My main goal is to make the Alive Platform user-friendly and easy-to-use and to bring new system functionalities which help you with your everyday tasks. For the required Alive Platform changes I do an analysis from the business point of view, then I translate it to the technical language and hand over to our developers. I act as a bridge between business and IT worlds.”
Milan Batista
“I work to optimize the interaction between humans and products. You have a user experience anytime you interact with a product or service. This might be navigating through a mobile app, browsing a website or taking advantage of a service.
I make a product usable, enjoyable and accessible. Think about the last time you used a new product. Were you able to accomplish your task? Was it easy? How did it make you feel? I seek to make products easy to use, effective, and delightful.”
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Dear issuer,
Welcome to the ALIVE Platform bulletin which regularly informs you about the nearest upcoming changes.
This time we will inform you about a couple of small improvements which can simplify your ALIVE Platform daily routine, and also about our new integration.
European Student Card (ESC) integration into the Alive Platform
The European Student Card is a European Union project which offers a student card allowing a smoother communication with universities, especially in the Erasmus program. The aim of this project is the automatic issuance of the European Student Student Card for students of universities which are a part of ESC project. If such student applies for a ISIC card, he will receive one card which contains all requisites of both the ISIC card and the ESC card.
We are ready to launch the integration since the next academic year in Romania. If you are interested in ESC integration, please do not hesitate to contact us for more information.
Export
We are preparing a long-awaited novelty for you, namely the export of orders in the Online Ordering module. Here a new button will be created on the card order overview page. After clicking on this button, an .xlsx file with data of online orders will be automatically generated. The user will be able to select filters in the order overview, according to which he wants to export the data.
Discount vouchers
Another news on our platform will be a simplification of work with discount vouchers. The main goal is a better data clarity of online orders where a discount voucher has been used. For this reason we decided to step back from relatively complicated variants combining card and shipping discounts which often lack meaning in times of digital cards. We will keep offering vouchers that apply discount on the entire order based on a percentage or an absolute value. We will contact the representatives of individual tenants and offer them an adequate compensation for unused vouchers.