Release Notes - February 2, 2010

We are pleased to announce the release of SaaSGrid 1.8! Our testing sandbox located at http://saasgridpreview.com has been updated to this version. SaaSGrid licensees are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible and can contact SaaSGrid Support for the new distribution.

Major Features

This release of SaaSGrid introduces the following major features:

• Multiple Currency Support: Application Pricebooks can now be tied to one of the following currencies listed below. Accordingly all other information derived from the amounts configured on the Pricebook will show the correct currency, such as application invoices. 
  • Australian Dollar
  • Brazilian Real
  • Canadian Dollar
  • Chinese Yuan
  • Euro
  • Hong Kong Dollar
  • Indian Rupee
  • Israeli Shekel
  • Japanese Yen
  • Mexican Sterling
  • Pound Sterling (British Pound)
  • Russian Ruble
  • United States Dollar
• Deployment Enhancements: The display of the main Deployer window has been enhanced to show status of the individual operations. Log messages are grouped with each requested operation. This should greatly improve the usability of the Deployer. 
• Operations Center Enhancements: The Service Catalog section of the SaaSGrid Operations Center has been fully implemented. It is also possible to create event log overrides as well.
• Custom URL for Applications: Customers who purchase your application can now specify a custom domain name that they can use to access it on-line.
• NHibernate 2.x Support: NHibernate 2 can now be used as an object-relational mapper tool for database driven applications. This is the third ORM technology natively supported by SaaSGrid; the other two are NHibernate 1.x and LINQ-to-SQL.

Minor Features

We continually strive to improve the SaaSGrid development and usage experience, and have made numerous minor changes to the platform based mostly on the feedback of our customers. This release of SaaSGrid introduces the following minor changes:

• Billing Service Improvements: Error messaging relating to the usage of payment methods that are no longer valid have been enhanced to provide clarity as to why the appropriate invoice could not be paid. 
• Hidden Pricebook Components: It is possible to prevent a Pricebook component from being displayed during the purchasing process. This can be useful if you wish to track a particular feature but not indicate it to the customer. It can also be useful if you want to phase out a feature for the purpose of sales yet still need to include it to permit usage of part of the application.
• Enhanced Checkout Process: Besides incorporating multi-currency, the layout of the checkout process pages has been improved. 

Bug Fix Highlights

The following is a list of selected bugs that are fixed in this particular release of SaaSGrid. 

• Initial creation of environment whose DB server uses a default instance is now supported.
• It is possible for a user to promote an application without the need for permission to purchase subscriptions to applications.
• It is possible to set system settings whose status is checked/unchecked in the SaaSGrid Operations Center.
• Recurring payments are being applied properly (also fixed as a patch to 1.7.0).
• Event log entry in Provider Portal renders correctly (also fixed as a patch to 1.7.0).
• Cancel purchase link that was inoperable in Chrome has been repaired. 

Future Releases

Planning for the next release of SaaSGrid is still underway, and a release note for this release will be produced at the conclusion of this planning. Please contact your Customer Champion or Account Representative with feedback about what features you would like to see in a future release.