ALIVE Platform Bulletin #16

Posted on 16. December 2020 by Lukas Vit

Dear issuer,

welcome to the ALIVE Platform Christmas review where we pick up the most important development tasks that have been implemented into the system in 2020 and will hopefully help you run your business.

The pandemic of corona virus is unfortunately still with us and it affects ISIC business worldwide. Some offices have been completely closed, some others can’t print plastic cards, because the staff works remotely, etc.

We have tried to use this time after the business slowed down to prepare some new functionalities and to fix many background, mainly technical stuff to improve the ALIVE Platform so it is prepared for the moment when business returns in full swing again.

Support Service at the End of the Year

We would like to inform you that our Prague office will be closed from 24th December 2020 untill 3rd January 2021. However in case you would require urgent support during this period, please enter your query via Service Desk directly or send an email to support@gtsalive.com and our IT support team will help you as earliest as possible. Critical support issues can  be also reported through our 24/7 hotline (+420 226 222 350) in case this service is included in your service package.

On behalf of the whole GTS ALIVE team we would like to thank you for being with us in 2020 and wish you Merry Christmas spent with your loved ones and we are looking forward to successful cooperation in 2021!

NCDB 

Splitting of Orders 

When you are processing a large amount of card orders every day using NCDB, our improved functionality can be helpful in your daily routine. This functionality ensures that card orders are split based on their validity (when the card validity starts) and you can send to Personalization centre only the cards with validity which you want to print immediately. The card validity (in case the validity is in future) is also added as a suffix to the name of card order for easier recognition. 

Open

History of Card 

To get better data about the changes that happen to cards, card issuers, card designs and serial ranges, we implemented some steps that help us keep the history of mentioned entities. To explain this simply – whenever there is for example any change of card validity (card is updated, the validity is changed, card is cancelled etc.), a new timestamp tied to this particular card is added into the database table that keeps data about card history. 

Through this functionality, we have better possibilities when trying to find out which steps have been performed upon any card, and we are gaining more (and better) data for reporting purposes through the BI tool. 

This is only the initial step, we stared to collect these data only recently, so we will see and evaluate in several months what we can pull from collected data through Business Intelligence and what benefits the data can bring for your business. 

New API for External Issuers 

We also worked hard to complete new API through which External Issuers can report issued/printed cards. Just a reminder – External issuers are those card issuers who issue cards completely on their side and they just report which cards have been issued (see our LMS course). 

This new REST based API is a successor of the current SOAP API (which will be supported for some time further). The API brings you for example: 

• Support of custom fields

• Better processing of cardholder’s photos (.jpg/.png formats and direct binary data instead of Base 64 format)

• Much more flexibility, offering two modes how the issued cards can be reported. These modes differ from each other based on who takes care of the stock of serial numbers.

The API is now in a testing phase, but the documentation is already available for you.

We will also prepare a LMS course for this API, once it is launched live.

Please contact us in case you are interested in this API or you plan to start a cooperation with new external issuer who will use the API for data transfers. The old SOAP API operation will be terminated in about a year. We will inform you in advance so you’ll get enough time to agree with current SOAP API users to migrate to the new one.

Online Ordering 

ONLINE ORDERING ADMINISTRATION 

Legal Representative’s Data in Order Detail 

When the customer ordering a card in Online Ordering is younger than a defined age (this age differs for every country based on the local legal directives), it is also necessary to add information about his/her legal representative.

In Online Ordering administration, from now on, all information about legal representative is displayed directly in the detail of card order, not only in editing mode as previously. We believe this UX improvement will be useful for your staff who operates online orders. 

Open

More Possibilities to Filter Card Orders 

Into Online Ordering administration, new filter labelled Email has been added. Using this filter, it is possible to find card orders containing specified email address of the customer or their legal representative. 

More, another new filter labelled Orders Requiring Attention has been added. Using this filter, you are able to filter out all card orders which have been manually marked as “incomplete” for example in case of a bad photo quality, unsatisfactory proof of student status etc. 

ONLINE ORDERING FORM 

Less Scrolling down 

In Online Ordering form, the order of years (when the user chooses his/her date of birth) in the drop down menu was turned upside down, so current year is at the top and other years follow. This change means less scrolling down for your customers, when searching for correct year of birth. 

Cookiebot 

Into Online Ordering module, support for Cookiebot service was added. Cookiebot is a service that, after you create your Cookiebot account and add the domain you want to scan, can display to your customers a floating window which encourages them to specify cookie policy. Within the Online Ordering administration, all you need is to enable the Cookiebot service in Global Settings and to put two strings, which Cookiebot generates. 

Links to GDPR Documents 

In Online Ordering form, it is now possible to display links for up to three external documents that can be related to GDPR or can contain other legal regulatory information necessary for your business. When a URL is inserted, these links are automatically displayed in every step of the Online Ordering form (right below the form). You can set them in Online Ordering administration -> Global settings. Names of the documents are of course localizable using your Localization Manager account. 

Prevention of Double Click 

Many customers complained about the problem with resubmitting of orders in Online Ordering form. When the customer was impatient and clicked the “Place order” button multiple times before he/she was redirected to the payment gate, more card orders with the same data have been created. Your staff then needed to go through them one by one which was time consuming and non–effective, customers were confused by more card order confirmation emails. From now on, when the customer pushes the button for the first time, the button becomes inactive (coloured with grey colour), next submits are not accepted and only one card order is created. 

Discount Manager

New Version of the DM WordPress Plugin

As we already informed in one of our bulletins, a new version of the DM WordPress plugin was launched and distributed to you during 2020. 

Beside all changes mentioned in our bulletins, the plugin also brings some changes in support of map providers – beside GoogleMaps, the Discount Manager plugin now also supports map service provided by OpenStreetMap project. Within the administration of the plugin, you can choose which map provider you prefer. Corresponding map tiles are displayed immediately after you confirm your choice. OpenStreetMap map is a free service, so you can save some money from your budget if you use it instead of GoogleMaps, where you need to pay for the API key. 

Before installing this new version of the plugin, which can be downloaded here, we recommend going through the Readme file which is included inside the installation package. 

Other Major Background Changes 

Automated Deployment Completed 

We finished the autodeploy of last modules of the ALIVE Platform, so we can deploy new releases of the ALIVE Platform much more easily than before, when everything needed to be performed manually. The deployment is of course still not “on one mouse click”, but the speed has been rapidly improved and above all, there is less space for making a mistake based on human factor.

Discount Manager Optimization 

We are constantly working on the optimization of data flow within Discount Manager. Imagine just all the verifications that are coming into the system every second when someone verifies his/her card! This is a lot of data which we need to handle and save effectively.

New Version of Elasticseach 

The Elasticsearch engine which powers discount searching in the DM plugin for WordPress and school name autocomplete fields in the Online Ordering form and card issuing form in the CI module, was used in very old version. This was upgraded to the newest one what secured better performance and reliability.

New Data Storage 

One of the further background changes was a switch from AWS EFS data storage system to AWS S3 system which has some advanced features which will be useful for us next year and is also much cheaper than EFS. This is one of the changes that cannot be really recognized from your side, but has big effect on speed and stability when the data like cardholder photos, proofs of study, card designs are written or read.

SMTP Changes for Better Email Deliverability 

Lately, some of you contacted us regarding the issues with deliverability of emails sent through Marketing Manager. We know that deliverability of emails to customers is alpha and omega of your business and we take these issues very seriously. 

At first, please let us tell some words about email deliverability, because to gain 100% deliverability of emails is a kind of magic and every system that sends so many emails as the ALIVE Platform struggles with it from time to time. 

The root of the deliverability is the reputation of sender. The reputation, on technical level, can be improved by verifying sender’s domain and correct settings of  DKIM, SPF records etc. (see Email Deliverability: Avoiding The Spam Folder [2025]  for more information). However, the reputation also depends on the amount of sent and bounced emails and on the content of emails, which is not possible to control from our side.

During 2020, as the number of sent emails grew more rapidly (mailing campaigns became more important in corona virus time), we’ve been facing the limits of our email services. More sent emails mean more bounced emails, more danger that the SMTP server can be banned or marked as spammer etc.

Taken from this point of view, best long term solution for you would be to start using your own SMTP server, which can bring you the following advantages:

• You can choose SMTP server which best suits your needs and you can scale its performance according to number of sent emails

• You have full control over the SMTP server

• Through your own settings and domain verification, you can gain the best possible email deliverability

To discuss this topic in more detail, we will contact you individually during the following year and together, we will surely find the most suitable solution for your business.

LMS

Into our LMS portal, we also added three new courses which cover the most often used APIs. These courses do not want to replace the official API documentation, they rather show typical use cases how the API can be used. 

Below, see direct links to mentioned courses:

• API for Individual Online Orders

• API for Creating NCDB Orders

• API for NCDB Cards Import