Click here for complete upgrade instructions. Click here to review the change log.

As always, thank you for your continued support. We hope you enjoy the software!

We are pleased to announce that SPBAS v3.1.0 has been released! It’s the most feature packed release that we’ve ever delivered. With 26 new features, 26 improvements and 48 bug fixes it’s a release that you do not want to miss.

Click here for complete upgrade instructions. Click here to review the change log. Keep reading for the highlights.
 

Integrated Reseller / Distributor Support

We’ve developed a powerful new suite of features that enable you to turn any of your customers into resellers of your products. You would simply create a new price sheet with the discounted rates and assign it to the customer. There’s a setting at the price sheet level to enable the reseller features in the customer area. Once enabled, your customers can log in to create new customers on their own and place orders on their behalf.

Click here for the documentation on our new reseller features.
 

Modular Reporting System

Due to popular demand, we’ve added a modular reporting system with the following reports available:

    - Daily Sales
    - Weekly Sales
    - Monthly Sales
    - Annual Sales
    - Sales Over a Custom Date Range
    - Product Packages Ordered Over a Custom Date Range

Click here for a link to the documentation on how to create reports of your own.
 

Addon & Renewal Upsell

Using our new upsell feature you can offer additional items for purchase when specific items are added to the cart during the order process. You can upsell both addons and renewal products as the additional items.

When customers order renewal products, such as support packages and download controls, the expiration dates are extended automatically. So for example, if your product includes 6 months of support with the initial purchase, and the customer ordered a 6 month upsell item, then the total support period would be extended to 12 months.

Click here for a link to the documentation on how to create upsell products.
 

Licensing Free Trial Validation

Free trial validation gives you extra layers of protection in preventing the abuse of your free trial licenses.

So for example, if the customer’s existing free trial license has expired then they may return to your site to register another free trial license in order continue using your software without making a purchase.

As a first layer of defense, the free trial validation checks to ensure the customer does not already have a free trial license. If they do, then they won’t be able to complete the order until the free trial item is removed from the cart.

The customer may take this one step further once they realize they can’t simply register a new free trial license. They might decide to register a new account in your system to obtain a new license that way.

As a second layer of defense, any licensing method with free trial validation enabled will check the existing database for matching access details before activating the license. If a match is found then the new free trial license is instantly suspended.

Click here for complete documentation on licensing method configuration. Scroll down to the “Free Trial Validation” section for specific instructions on how to setup free trial validation.
 

PDF Invoices

Invoice reminder e-mails now include an attached copy of the invoice in PDF format. You can upload a logo to be used with each new PDF invoice that is created; and you can upload a unique logo for each of your storefronts. Customers will also have the option to download a PDF copy of any invoice from the customer area.
 

Customer Specific Downloads

This great new feature enables you to add custom file downloads to specific customers. The downloads can be marked as private so that they are only shown in the admin area or they can be public so that the customer can download the files from the “My Files” section of the customer area.
 

Order System Checkout Fields

This very useful feature enables you to show or hide checkout form fields in the order system.

Before, you would need to manually edit the checkout template and form handler to do this. Now, you can simply log into your SPBAS admin area and navigate to the following location to do this:

Settings > Storefronts & Products > Checkout Fields > Enable or Disable

The following form fields can be disabled (per order form):

    - Company Name
    - Business Division
    - Address
    - City
    - Country / State / Province
    - Postal Code
    - Phone Number
 

New Pay Gateways & Important Paypal Update

We’ve added support for the Dutch pay gateway Sisow. Sisow offers payments through the iDeal, Bancontact/Mister Cash (Belgian) and Sofort (German) online payment systems. Also to note, we no longer distribute the iDeal pay gateway as it was replaced by Sisow.

We’ve also added a new version of the 2Checkout gateway with support for subscriptions. This enables you to sell recurring subscription based products that are billed automatically each period by 2Checkout. With the standard version of our 2Checkout gateway the customer is required to login and manually pay the invoice each period.

Please Note: Starting February 1, 2013, Paypal will require all incoming requests to have a “Host:” header which complies with HTTP 1.1 specifications. This header was not required under HTTP 1.0. IPN and PDT scripts using HTTP 1.0 may start failing with “HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request” errors after February 1, 2013, which will result in IPN messages not being validated successfully.

We’ve complied with this requirement from Paypal, so to avoid potential issues it’s recommended that all customers using the Paypal gateway upgrade to SPBAS v3.1.0 as soon as possible.
 

New Plugins

The following new plugins were developed for SPBAS v3.1.0:

    - Aweber
    - Digital Access Pass – DAP
    - JVZoo
    - New Version Notifications
    - Premium Web Cart
    - Simple Machines Forum v2.x
    - WishList Member Extension & SPBAS Plugin
    - WishList Member Sync
    - WordPress Shortcode to Display Licenses
    - WSO Pro – Warrior Plus
 

New Code Hooks

We’ve added three new code hooks that you can take advantage of when developing plugins:

1. The “_at_local_key_response” hook is triggered just before the local license key response. This can be used to create a custom response that is in the format of your choosing (instead of the standard base64 encoded response).

2. The “_license_local_key_data” hook is triggered just after the local key data is created. The local key data is passed into the code hook in array format. This enables you to remove items from the array or add more to it.

3. The “_at_third_party_api_request” hook is triggered with each API call. We’ve extended support for our plugin system based around this code hook. So now you can give each instance of a plugin it’s own API key, endpoint and REST API interface.

Click here for the code hook and plugin documentation.
 

Miscellaneous

Other notable features include:

    - Changed the licensing method workflow in the admin area.
    - Switched from the PHP MySQL functions to MySQLi.
    - Updated to the latest TinyMCE.
    - Moved from $ to jQuery to avoid conflicts in the storefront.
    - Custom attachments for the new order confirmation e-mail.
    - Ability to set the default landing page for an admin.
    - Added multiple theme support for the admin area. New themes coming soon!
    - Plus much more! Please see the change log for complete details.

So that’s it for now! We hope you will upgrade to SPBAS v3.1.0 to take advantage of all the great new features that we’ve developed over the past five months. As always, thank you for your continued support.

Web Hosting

The web hosting support that SPBAS v3 offers is easy to use and feature rich. It’s modular design will enable us to support many different provisioning modules. With this release we are introducing the WHM provisioning module; it supports both standard account creation and the reseller features that WHM offers.

Our web hosting module is broken down into five sections:

Datacenters

You can add multiple datacenters to SPBAS which helps in organizing your servers into locations. It’s also an easy way to record datacenter contact information and notes for quick & easy access later.

Servers

SPBAS has support for multiple servers. Each server requires that you enter the hostname, server IP and nameservers. You must also give the server a status and choose a provisioning module. Other features include the ability to set a maximum number of accounts that can be installed and setting a monthly cost & currency. The maximum number of accounts will be used to determine which server in the group is the least percent full.

Server Groups

After you’ve added your servers to SPBAS you must organize them into groups. SPBAS will then provision new accounts to the server in the group that is the least percent full. Percentage full is calculated by dividing the number of accounts installed on the server by the maximum number of accounts allowed for the server. Of course, if you have only one server in the group then all accounts will be provisioned to it.

Hosting Packages

Hosting packages in SPBAS are assets that are assigned to products. Once assigned, your customers can order the product to have the asset issued. When the hosting package asset is issued the provisioning module will install the account on the least percentage full server in the server group.

Next, we must choose the WHM plan that will be provisioned with the SPBAS hosting package. The WHM plans are read in from each server in the group and displayed in a list. You must select a WHM plan for each server in the group. Otherwise, the server will be disabled. Disabled servers are excluded during provisioning when determining percentage full to find the active server.

Optionally, you can configure the WHM reseller settings for the hosting plan:

The final step is to assign the SPBAS hosting package to at least one product price tier. Once you do this accounts will be automatically provisioned upon order or when manually added through the SPBAS admin area:

Installed Accounts

Installed accounts are accounts that have been provisioned already. When you go in to manage an account you will be presented with an account summary, the ability to change the package settings and also the ability to change the reseller settings. Most changes made to an installed account will be pushed to the sever.
  

Domain Names

We now have domain name support with the release of SPBAS v3. The provisioning system is modular which makes it possible to support many different domain registrars. With this release we are introducing the eNom provisioning module which has support for the registration, transfer and renewal of domains names.

Our domain name support is broken down into 4 sections:

Registrars

SPBAS ships with a manual registration module already installed. If you plan to automatically register, transfer and renew domains you must first create a registrar module. The module is divided into sections where you can enter your API logins, default nameservers and default contacts.

Top Level Domains

SPBAS has support for multiple Top Level Domains (TLD). You can define whois settings, minimum & maximum registration periods, the provisioning module and whether or not the domain requires an EPP code for transfer.

Pricing Slabs

Pricing slabs work much like our price sheets feature. You can set pricing for domain registration, transfer and renewal for each period and currency. Domain slabs can be used to offer free domains, discounts & promotions, to set standard rates and to achieve multi-currency. Pricing slabs can be assigned to a product price sheet or to a product price tier directly. Slabs assigned to the product take precedence over the slab assigned to the price sheet.

Installed Domains

All domains added to SPBAS can be managed through this section:

Going Forward!

We’ve reached an important milestone with SPBAS in this v3 release, and we’re keen to keep pushing forward and expanding the great featureset SPBAS offers (multi-currency, multiple storefronts and much more!) into new areas. Please do let us have your comments and feedback – we’ve always prided ourselves on developing software based on user-demand, and we don’t want to change this anytime soon!

SPBAS v3 offers 11 new features, 33 improvements and 94 bug fixes! Here’s the change log & upgrade instructions.

This milestone release features support for web hosting and domains. We’ve also added Buy Now buttons that work with Paypal and 2Checkout. Many of the helpdesk improvements that you guys requested are now available. We’ve added a feature called “Auto-Pay” that compliments our support for processor side subscriptions (e.g. Paypal Subscriptions). And we’ve made improvements to work flow when configuring SPBAS.

SPBAS v3 offers all of this and much more. Keep reading for the highlights.

Building Something Better

Lack of choice. Lack of competition. Lack of something free (that’s any good).

All three could describe the current state of billing solutions for web hosts. We aim to change that with SPBAS v3.

SPBAS offers unique features such as multiple storefronts. A storefront consists of an order system, customer area, helpdesk and knowledge base. Each storefront can be fully branded and can run on the same server as the admin area or on a remote server. SPBAS enables you to run all of your businesses with a single software license.

With SPBAS you never pay for new features. As long as your support & download package is current you will have access to all features that we develop. With our competition, you purchase a license and then are required to pay extra for things that should already be included as core features! Not so with SPBAS, we save you time through automation and money thanks to things like all inclusive features and multiple storefronts.

We want everyone to use SPBAS. That’s why we offer our fully featured free version that is good for up to 25 customers. After you reach that milestone you can upgrade to the next level; all the way up to SPBAS Max which has no customer limit and comes with 99% source code access. SPBAS scales with your business as it grows.
  

Web Hosting & Domains

The web hosting support that SPBAS v3 offers is complete, easy to use and feature rich. It’s modular design will enable us to support many different provisioning modules. With this release we are introducing the WHM provisioning module; it supports both standard account creation and the reseller features that WHM offers.

With hosting, you also need domain name support – something else we now have with the release of SPBAS v3. Again, an entirely modular system which makes it possible to support many different domain registrars. With this release we are introducing the eNom provisioning module which has support for the registration, transfer and renewal of domains names.

We’ve got an extensive introduction to our hosting and domains features in a dedicated blog post – but our first v3 release includes everything you’d expect: shared and reseller hosting support; register, transfer & renew domains; and the ability to offer free (or discounted) domains with hosting packages – and even vary the discounts or free domains on a per-package and per-tld basis!
  

Buy Now Buttons

To use this great new feature you simply log into your SPBAS, navigate to the product price tier view and click the buy now button link. This will generate a snippet of javascript that can be embedded into any web page to show the buy now button. Clicking the button takes you directly to the pay gateway to make payment.

Here’s an example button that you can use to order our upgrade service:

  
The buttons can be styled using standard HTML and CSS.

Here’s the CSS for the button above:

#buy_now input.submit {
background: #666;
border: 1px solid #666;
color: #fff;
font: bold 14px Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
letter-spacing: 1px;
padding: 12px;
-webkit-border-radius: 6px;
-moz-border-radius: 6px;
-khtml-border-radius: 6px;
border-radius: 6px;
}

#buy_now input.submit:hover {
color: #aef650;
}

  
And here’s the HTML:

<div id='buy_now'>
    <!-- Paste this where you want the button to appear. -->
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.spbas.com/orders/buy_now.php?product=ad93985a"></script>
</div>

Code Hooks, API and 3rd Party Modules

Two new code hooks were added, “_after_domain_package_creation” which is triggered just after a domain is added and “_license_validation_before_new_instance_added” which is triggered during license validation just before a new instance is added.

We’ve also added a new “generic create order” REST API call that you can program against.

New 3rd party integration’s include HostBill, Premium Web Cart, JV Zoo and WSO Pro. This enables you to add customers, users and licenses to SPBAS for each new order processed by the 3rd party application.
  

Other Improvements

The biggest improvements were made in the helpdesk, here are just a few:

- rewrote the IMAP importer to be more complete in parsing incoming mail
- tickets started in the customer area are now instantly imported
- tickets can be previewed by hovering over the subject line in admin
- marking a ticket as spam now also spams any other tickets submitted by the user
- tickets can now be closed by the user from the customer area
- new ticket creation and replies in the customer area are now redirected to prevent duplicates
- added a support ticket view in the admin customer summary
- added better e-mail flood detection and prevention

Continuing with improvements, we’ve added better support for Paypal subscription based billing. As always, you can choose to use Paypal subscriptions in parallel with SPBAS invoicing or just let SPBAS handle the invoicing. If you choose to take advantage of Paypal subscriptions then take note, we’ve added a new featured called “Auto-Pay”. The Auto-Pay feature prevents the invoice from being paid if the subscription is active. Instead, it shows a note that the invoice is pending payment. If the subscription is cancelled then Auto-Pay is deactivated so that the customer can pay the invoice, which starts a new subscription at Paypal and re-enables Auto-Pay.

We’ve also made changes to work flow when adding a new product and throughout the web hosting & domain modules. Using the SPBAS Products feature for example, when you add a new product you are now automatically forwarded to the next step of the process which is adding the price tier. After you add the price tier you are forwarded over to assign the product to an order form which completes the configuration. We will extend this support into all areas of SPBAS with upcoming releases. Features like this make the configuration of SPBAS really easy.

Check out our change log for the complete list of improvements.
  

In Closing…

SPBAS has grown quickly over the last three years and now we have finally reached our v3 milestone. None of this would have been possible without your continued support and helpful feedback all along the way. Rest assured that we plan to continue listening to your feedback and bettering SPBAS into the v3 series of releases.

As always, thanks for everything guys! Let me know what you think in the comments.

User Interface and Work Flow

Like many of you guys, I spend hours each day working in the SPBAS admin area. After so much time invested you begin to clearly see the rough spots that need improvement. I couldn’t think of any better way to mark the v2.0 milestone than to smooth over those rough spots. This gives us a rock solid base moving into the v2.x releases. I won’t be able to cover each change because there are too many, you’ll just have to check it out yourself. I would like to go over a few of my favorite changes though, so let’s begin!
  

1. When we have a new version available this section will slide out with a direct link to the release highlights.

2. We now have drop menu navigation. This has to be my favorite feature. It makes using SPBAS noticeably faster.
  

3. We moved the auto-complete search over to a more natural right position.

4. The search results now include the helpdesk. It also persists until you click the X button.
  

5. The toughest part of using SPBAS is getting started with the initial configuration. We’ve added a built in Quick Start guide to help with this. Clicking on each of the five panels will take you to documentation for that section.

6. Old pros won’t need the Quick Start guide so we’ve provided a way to disable it. Simply click the X button to hide it forever. You can re-enable it at anytime by clicking the Quick Start link in the footer.
  

7. We converted all of the quick reports from the v1.x dashboard to widgets.

8. The widgets are sortable and persistent so they stay where you put them.
  

9. In this example, we are looking at a select box that contains the different licensing methods you’ve setup. It enables you to flip between each method while staying at the same tab. In this case, the Advanced Settings tab. We use this type of navigation throughout SPBAS where applicable.

10. You will consistently find actionable items like add, edit and delete buttons at this location throughout SPBAS.

11. We use tab style navigation in the editor views throughout SPBAS. With v2 we’ve switched from horizontal tabs to vertical tabs positioned on the right hand side of the screen. We made this change because it enables us to add more tabs than would fit horizontally and we can now better describe each tab.

12. Clicking on the settings tab will show all menu options at once on a single page. The settings tab is where you configure everything from software licensing to KB so there are dozens of direct links on this page.
  

Code Hooks

With v2.0 we’ve standardized the process of adding new trigger points for code hooks. This improvement enables us to create new code hooks anywhere in SPBAS in minutes. Expect to see many new hook points in future releases.

We’ve introduced four new code hooks for v2.0:

1. *_helpdesk_before_user_delete
2. *_admin_before_user_delete
3. *_at_phpaudit_license_invalid
4. *_at_license_key_creation

Click here to learn more about SPBAS code hooks.
  

Joomla! Login Share Module

The Joomla login share module has arrived! I know many of you guys use Joomla and have requested this module for quite some time, I’m glad it has finally here.

The module works with Joomla v1.5 & v1.6 and offers login share with SPBAS acting as the controller. This means that SPBAS will handle things like account updates, password changes and user registration. It currently does not support session share or the advanced ACL introduced in Joomla v1.6.

You can install the login share module at this location in the SPBAS v2.0 admin:

Settings -> Application -> Custom Modules -> Add New -> Joomla!
  

Framework Upgrades

We are pleased to announce that we’ve also implemented a series of framework upgrades.

First, we no longer require php short tag support, we replaced all of the short tags with regular tags.

The next upgrade was of the admin area directory structure. We made it even more modular by moving all module specific components to a central spot in admin/modules/*module*. This creates a new standard for module creation that simplifies the process and better organizes functionality.
  

Notable Changes

We also implemented the following notable changes with v2.0:

- You can now add invoice line items with $0.00 amounts.
- Improved license instances support for the SPBAS method. ( no integration code update required )
- Fully implemented wildcards for domain, IP, server hostname and server IP. ( e.g. *.domain.com, 192.* )
- Ability to define the cookie domain in the m3_configuration.php. ( e.g. $conf['use_cookie_domain']=’.url.com’; )
- Added helpdesk to the global auto-complete search in the admin area.
- Switched javascript frameworks in the admin area. Moved from Prototype to jQuery.
- Updated the installer to have the look and feel of the v2.0 admin.

These are optional, but do require an integration code upgrade if you plan to use them:

- Added the license key string to the local key cache for the SPBAS method.
- The customer and user data is now available in the local license key cache for the SPBAS method.
  

In Closing…

I’m very proud of the v2.0 release. It’s a milestone release that has improved the core product in ways that will benefit everyone for years to come. I hope you enjoy using this release as much as I enjoyed developing it.

Thank you guys for your continued support. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Local License Key Grace Periods

Let me start by explaining how the SPBAS licensing method works. We provide integration code that embeds into your application. This integration code will contact your remote SPBAS licensing server once for initial activation. Upon successful activation the licensing server will return a local license key. The local license key will then be stored in the file system or the database (your choice) and will act as a cache. Each subsequent license validation will try the cached key first and only go remote for a new key if there’s a problem. Most commonly problems are that the cached local key has expired or the customer has moved the installation. In any case, it’s very important that your licensing server be online to serve out a new local license key on demand.

Imagine that your licensing server has been down for 3 days due to a hardware issue. Most of your customers are running your application on a cached local key and are experiencing no problems. However, one customer in particular has a local license key cache that has just expired. Your licensing server is down so a new local license key cannot be obtained. Luckily, you’ve configured the integration code in your application to use our new grace period feature. You’ve specifically configured it to try again for the next 10 days. So once a day, for 10 days, the integration code embedded in your application will try to contact your licensing server for a new local key. If the integration code is unable to obtain a new local key within the 10 day grace period then on the 11th day the customer will be presented with a licensing error. If your licensing server comes back online within the 10 day grace period a new key is fetched automatically without any interruption of service for your customer.

As you can see with the example above, this is a very important feature that we’ve introduced here. We hope you’ll never need it, but isn’t it nice to know that it’s there for you in case you do?

Take a look at the Optional Parameters section of our integration guide to see just how easy it is to implement.
  

Enhanced Performance

As many of you may know, our storefront packages (order/, kb/ and customers/) work around a writable/REST API which makes integration possibilities endless. It comes with a cost of though, that cost is the added overhead of the HTTP connections from the storefront to the SPBAS API server. Most of the time this isn’t a noticeable overhead, but on rare occasion it can be.

Many times the storefront and the API server are located on the same physical server. In this situation there’s really no need to connect through the writable/REST API. So what we’ve done is enabled an additional configuration to cover this situation. It is now possible to configure SPBAS to bypass the writable/REST API in favor of working with the local API directly. Enabling this configuration will eliminate the HTTP calls to the API server which results in a nice performance gain.

By default, all new installations of SPBAS from this point forward will have this configuration enabled by default.

Just to note, if your storefront is on one physical server with the rest of SPBAS on another server you must use the writable/REST API. Also to note, all installations of SPBAS before v1.9.1 are setup to use the writable/REST API by default.

Click here for documentation on how to enable or disable this new feature.
  

Code Hooks and Modules

We’ve added two new code hooks with v1.9.1. The first code hook is triggered to run with each API request, before the request has been processed. The second code hook is triggered to run after a package is created. Code hooks help you extend SPBAS by creating 3rd party modules set to run as the code hook is triggered.

We’ve also introduced new 3rd party login share modules for WordPress and Simple Machines Forum. If activated, the modules will keep the SPBAS user data in sync with WordPress and/or Simple Machine Forums.
  

Other New Features

Other new features include improvements to our addon system making it possible to require addons for specific purchases and we’ve added V.A.T. consumption tax support for our international customers.
  

In Closing…

Over the past 8 weeks we’ve managed to turn out a really nice release with v1.9.1. If you are an existing customer we encourage you to upgrade. If you’ve tried SPBAS before, now would be a great time to try it again.

As always, thank you guys for your support and feedback. Let me know what you think in the comments.

In the past 12 weeks we’ve managed to implement 7 new features, 15 improvements and 32 bug fixes. This release comes after one of our longest release cycles on record, we hope you will agree it was worth the wait.
  

Login and Session Share API

At the core of this new API is the ability to validate an e-mail address and password from your 3rd party application against the SPBAS database. You can optionally extend this API to create the user account and/or customer account if one does not exist already. On success the API returns an array of data related to the user account.

If your 3rd party application is written in PHP you can use our standard libraries for integration which makes using the API extremely simple. If your application is not written in PHP then you can parse the raw XML response.

You can read more about this new API here.
  

Code Hooks & 3rd Party Modules

We’ve added two new code hooks that you can take advantage of. The first hook is triggered just before making payment and allows you to change the item name. The other hook is triggered just after the license is created. Both are great additions to the code base making SPBAS just a little more powerful.

This release also offers two new 3rd party modules, reCaptcha for the customer area registration form and Disqus comments for KB articles. You can see reCAPTCHA in action here and Disqus comments on most of our KB articles here. You can turn Disqus on/off at the KB site level or for specific articles only.
  

Sell Product in Units

This very powerful feature enables you to sell units of product. This means that you can now sell GBs of bandwidth, hours of development service or anything that would be sold in units. When you enable units at the product price tier level in SPBAS admin the quantity ordered is converted to units with only one set of assets issued (license, download, etc), one order part, one package and one invoice created. Standard products create one of each of these for each quantity ordered.

So for example, if the customer ordered 10 standard product licenses then 10 licenses would be created. If the customer ordered 10 unit product licenses then only one license would be created.
  

Other Notable Features

SPBAS v1.9 brings with it a handful of other very useful features which include extensive improvements to the order system for addons, the ability to e-mail individual invoices from the admin area, the ability to force a SSL connection for the admin area and user download logs with UI elements added to both the admin & customer area.
  

Site Redesign

If you haven’t visited us in a while you might notice that we have redesigned our website here at www.spbas.com. We feel it better represents what SPBAS has to offer as opposed to the old site. I thought I would mention this as we are still in the process of compiling testimonials, featured design integrations and case studies. If you would like to participate then please contact us.
  

That’s it for now, let us know what you think in the comments.

No more back and forth between the 3rd party helpdesk and SPBAS, now your data is only a click away. Using the integrated desk will save you time and money. Not to mention, no more dual logins for your customers.

Let’s face it, the software business is all about customer support. Providing quality support in a timely manner will give customers confidence in choosing you over your competition. With the release of SPBAS v1.8 you now have a competitive advantage. The helpdesk is included with every SPBAS license at no extra cost.
  

Quick Tour Screencast

Feature Complete Helpdesk

We’ve made the helpdesk very feature complete while leaving out the clutter that a standalone helpdesk can sometimes bring. Here are only a few of the main features the new helpdesk has to offer:

Departments
- Multiple departments & staff assignments
- Optionally, force tickets to be created from the customer area (per department)
- Assign departments to multiple storefronts

Tickets
- IMAP based e-mail import
- Create/reply to tickets from the SPBAS admin interface or your e-mail client
- Auto-complete search for tickets & replies
- Tickets grouped by status: “New”, “Open”, “Closed” and “My Tickets”
- Ability to quote the last reply on a new reply
- Auto-inserted signatures per staff member
- Multiple attachments per reply
- Quick links bar per ticket: view customer/user, add invoices, add packages, change passwords, etc.
- Change the subject of a ticket
- Assign the ticket to a specific staff member
- Ability to change the ticket department & the ticket priority
- Automatic e-mail flood protection to catch e-mail loops
- Add notes per ticket
- Quick stats showing packages w/ expiration dates, total tickets opened per user/customer and an audit log
- Support history tab to quickly switch between tickets a customer/user has opened in the past

Support Packages
- Create and assign support packages to price tiers. (e.g. 6 month support access)
- Require non-expired support package for new ticket creation (per department)
- Offer paid renewal options for expired support packages before a ticket can be created

Customer Interface
- Integrated in the SPBAS customer area
- Customer can view open & closed tickets or start a new ticket
- Tickets can be created from the customer area or direct e-mail to the department address
- Customer can purchase support renewals for expired packages
- Standalone contact form assigned to a specific department

Be sure to check out docs/Quick_Start_Guide.txt, section 8 specifically. It’s a guide to configuring helpdesk.

In Summary

What a busy four weeks it’s been since our last release. I’ve worked long hours to make the helpdesk a reality so I really hope you guys find it useful. We switched over last week and so far it’s been great. Well worth the time investment, I hope you will agree! Please be sure to let people know about SPBAS if you find it useful.

Also, hang on tight guys, this next release will knock you out of your chair. Great things to come.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Admin UI Changes

We have really simplified the admin UI for licensing with the release of v1.7. I think it’s best if I just show you:

SPBAS Licensing Method

The SPBAS method was designed with the best of PHPAudit & Iono in mind and built upon our years of experience with licensing. The idea going into the build was to solve complex problems and to package the solution in such a way that makes it really simple to integrate with your application.

Features Include:

- It’s an easy to implement class with configurable options.
- Checks the local key first with each validation, only going remote if the key is expired or missing.
- When it does go remote it tries sockets, cURL and then fopen. The order is configurable.
- Local license keys are stored in the database or file system, your choice.
- We have true support for instances now, so 1 license key can be installed at X locations.
- We have support for lists of predefined license keys – think retail/boxed software.
- Plus a whole lot more…

So while it is not required that you take advantage of the SPBAS licensing method, we do encourage everyone currently running either the PHPAudit or Iono method to consider upgrading to the SPBAS method as soon as possible. It’s quite simply the best licensing available and we want you to enjoy the benefits it will bring.
  

3rd Party Modules & Code Hooks

We have made significant investments in the 3rd party modules system with this release. We’ve introduced 14 new code hooks that will enable developers to tightly integrate SPBAS with other applications.
  

Storefront API Wrappers

All of the storefront packages are based on a writable/REST API. They require no database connection and can be used anywhere on the web. This makes the integration possibilities endless.

To encourage developers in extending SPBAS to work with other applications we’ve written simple API wrappers for every call, over 60+ total. This should enable developers to quickly and easily integrate any aspect of any storefront package into other applications. The documentation can be found here (see Storefront_API*).
  

Complete API Documentation

We are pleased to announce that we have now have complete API documentation. It’s done in PHPDoc format and can be found here. We’ll build new documentation for each release to retain history between versions.
  

In Closing…

It’s been a great summer. The work completed improves our core product in ways that will benefit us all for years to come. We hope you take full advantage of the change that v1.7 brings.

Thanks for reading, let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Mass Mail Overview

Our goal with SPBAS is to make every module as complete as possible. We understand that the best things in life are often the hardest to come by. So while we could have implemented a half baked mass mail solution just to say we have the feature, we didn’t. Instead, we researched the market and consulted with serious e-mail marketers to create a very solid mass mail application. We hope you will agree.
  

Mass Mail Lists

Lists enable you to create groups of customers that meet specific criteria that you define. For example, say you have a release notice or policy change and you need to contact all customers. You’d create a list for that.

Lists are essentially a set of rules that you assign to a campaign. Each time you send a campaign the mailing list is generated based on the predefined rules. Approaching it this way results in a list that is dynamic and always automatically up to date.
  

Mass Mail Campaigns

For each mass mail campaign you can edit the e-mail copy, view it online or send it to yourself for testing. We provide several built in replaceable tags that you can use like {first name}, {last name}, etc.

We also support the inclusion of an Alt Body to accompany your HTML e-mail copy. The Alt Body is designed to be the plain text version of the HTML e-mail. Not everyone can receive HTML e-mails so it’s important to send a plain text copy along too so your message isn’t lost in a tangle of HTML markup.
  

After you’ve created your e-mail copy, you need to assign the campaign to one or more lists using the Assign Lists tab. Don’t worry, we’ve got duplicates covered. Even if a customer matches the criteria to be assigned to both lists, they’ll only receive one copy of your campaign.
  

Finally, we are ready to send the campaign using the Send Mail tab. This is where it gets really interesting. You have the following options to choose from:

- Max to send per hour
- Who to send to? every customer in the list or only customers who have never received the campaign before.
- When to send? Now, Per Schedule (date & time), Periodic Schedule (interval in days & time)
  

Imagine what you can do with that! Here at SPBAS, we’ll use the Periodic Schedule feature to e-mail our free version customers a few days after signup to make sure everything is going ok. Just to see if we can help with anything or if there are questions. It will help us stay in touch with you guys and hopefully make us better at what we do.

How will you use the mass mail features? Let me know in the comments.
  

Suspension Logic

Have a look at SPBAS Admin -> Settings -> Billing & Invoice. I’d like to touch on two new features today.

The first is invoice reminders which you can set to automatically send at your desired interval. For example, if I entered 30,60,90 the customer would get a reminder on the 30th day, the 60th day and finally the 90th day. The 90th day would be the final notice. The e-mail template used for these notices can be found at Admin -> Settings -> Templates -> Invoice, Invoice Reminder.

The second new feature is the ability to suspend the package for unpaid invoices after x days have passed. You could set this to be in sync with the invoice reminders. For example, using the 30,60,90 interval again, you could set the packages to suspend on the 97th day, 7 days after the final invoice reminder. How you configure it is up to you, tailor it to fit your exact business needs.
  

In Closing…

With this release SPBAS has become more stable and feature rich. We hope you enjoy the software.