SaaS Archives | Store Locator Plus®

Store Locator Plus® October Update Brings User Experience Updates

Posted by lcleveland in Google Maps, Map Software, MySLP SaaS, Store Locator Plus

The October 2022 update of Store Locator Plus® is now out for both the SaaS platform and the self-managed installations for WordPress plugins. The current release continues down the path of updating the user controls dashboard with newer React-based components. While the user experience (UX) updates are relatively minor with this October update, the underlying technology has set the foundation to begin replacing major interface elements with a modern interface.

The new Material UI on React design will allow Store Locator Plus® to catch up to modern design standards and pave the way for not only a better interface on the dashboard but lead to more advanced designs on the published location maps and eventually produce advanced directory style listings from your locations.

Some of the changes you’ll notice in this release include a new title bar, simplified menu system, and context-sensitive documentation links on each primary Store Locator Plus® dashboard page.

Location Search Reports Updated : SLP 2208.15

Posted by lcleveland in Map Software, MySLP SaaS, Release Notes, Store Locator Plus, WPSLP

Store Locator Plus® has updated the location search reports as part of the 2208.15 release. The new reports interface is the first release of the forthcoming React-centric interface design being implemented in both the WordPress plugin and SaaS platform offerings.

The Store Locator Plus® 2208.15 release is now out on the MySLP SaaS platform. Fixes and features include:

The new search reports for Professional and higher level users.
Add and Edit Location form fixes, patches several issues introduced in recent releases including:
- Incorrect scrolling of the form for Safari users
- Missing field labels when Contact Information was enabled (Professional or Enterprise level)
Manage location shortcuts like the edit and delete locations have been fixed
Inline documentation links on settings pages have been improved
For WordPress plugin users, the SLP Basic Map Block is back
Various REST endpoint fixes

Reports Update

The new reports interface is a preview of the upcoming changes that are slowly being incorporated throughout the Store Locator Plus® product. We started with reports as part of the development cycle to address CSV export bugs. This allows for testing of the React interfaces across multiple customer accounts and gather feedback from users before making drastic changes across the entire application. This approach also allows for small incremental UX changes that are release every few weeks versus on big change that would takes months to deploy.

More user experience upgrades are on the R&D schedule for the next few months.

Learn more on the Reports documentation pages.

Additional 2208.15 Release Notes

SaaS Database Servers Upgraded for Store Locator Plus®

Posted by lcleveland in Store Locator Plus

Preparations are underway to bring multiple upgrades to the Store Locator Plus® location map and directory services over the next few months. Part of those preparations include upgrading the underlying architecture that runs our services. One of the key elements behind our WordPress plugin store, the documentation site, our demo site, and others is the database engine.

Tonight we implemented a database upgrade that improves the security and performance of all Store Locator Plus® services. This upgrade was required by AWS for all MySQL compatible database installations. The end-of-life (EOL) was set for February 2023 which was far too close to the “busy season” for many of our Store Locator Plus® SaaS users.

With that in mind we opted to perform the upgrade on August 1st. This week is typically the slowest traffic week of the entire year, just before thing start to ramp up again for the busy fall and pre-Christmas season. After a week of testing and analysis, tonight was the night to make it happen. WIth full backups in place and the failover/recovery nodes on the cluster working as expected, the decision was made to put the latest version of the database engine online.

While a few customers experienced up to 5 minutes of downtime this evening, most customers saw zero downtime as the new version of the database came online and the prior servers were retired.

This is one of many steps we are taking to continue to improve the performance and security of our servers. For our SaaS platform users it is one more thing we are doing to ensure your map, directory, and location search services remain fast and reliable for years to come.

Over the course of the next month we will continue to improve our infrastructure while the development team works on an improved user experience and additional features for all Store Locator Plus® users.

Thank you for being a Store Locator Plus® customer.