We are happy to announce a couple of major releases today. Users of the Australia extension will be pleased to hear that we have released version 3.0, containing substantial new features and many minor enhancements. Additionally, the new Feeds Generator extension has been launched, allowing you to easily produce feeds of your Magento catalogue for the major shopping comparison services like Google Shopping.
Australia
The 3.0 release of the Australia extension is a major release that adds many new features for Australian stores. Major changes made in the 3.0 release include:
Overhauled Australia Post shipping method
The Australia Post shipping method has been updated to use the Postage Assessment Calculator service from Australia Post. The service will determine a list of appropriately-priced shipping rates based on the customer's order items. Additionally, the merchant can control whether the customer is also presented with options for insurance and signature on delivery.
This can be used in conjunction with the Click & Send order export feature (detailed below) to manage consignments.
Click & Send consignments export
Similar to the eParcel consignments export functionality (which we've updated with bug fixes and new configuration options), we now support exporting orders into a CSV format suitable for the Click & Send consignments service. This gives you more choice in how you transfer consignment information to Australia Post.
Checkout page address validation
Through our integration with the Australia Post Delivery Choices service, you can optionally choose to enable address validation for your checkout page.
Once a customer has entered their billing or shipping address details on the checkout, the Delivery Choices service will be used to validate the provided address. If the address is invalid, the customer will be prompted with optional suggestions for a correct address.
The customer can choose to accept the suggestion, reject it and use the exact address they entered, or go back and edit their address. If the address is already valid as entered, the dialog box is not displayed and the customer is taken to the next section of the checkout as normal.
Minor updates
- Addition of eParcel rates export functionality
- Improvements to eParcel consignments export functionality
- Improvements to postcode autocomplete
- Improvements to Direct Deposit payment method
- Improvements to BPAY payment method
- Support for wildcards in eParcel CSV rates import functionality
- Support for email notifications in eParcel consignments
- Support for multi-warehouse in eParcel consignments
Feeds Generator
A popular feature of the Australia extension was the ability to generate feeds for the various shopping comparison services available, such as Google Shopping. We are pleased to announce that this feature will now receive more focused development as the separate Feeds Generator extension, since it now also supports services used outside of Australia. By splitting out the feeds generation functionality, merchants who just want the feeds generator don't need to also install the rest of the Australia extension.
Summary
This release of the Australia extension is a major update to the integration with Australia Post, allowing Australian stores to make use of the latest Australia Post services. Our Feeds Generator extension allows you to generate feed files for Google Shopping and a host of other comparison shopping services.
You can download and install these new releases immediately from our GitHub repositories or Magento Connect. Documentation is available from our website by adding the extensions to your account.
We would like to thank Ben Corlett, Matthew Boik, Tomas Dermisek and Vishnu Bhatvadekar for contributing to this release of the Australia extension. As always, contributions from the community are welcomed.