Let’s take a look at some of the new features contained within Version 9 and how to get around. The first thing you’ll notice is that the Admin has a completely new look and feel. It’s been updated for usability, speed and ease of use. If you’re familiar with the version 5 Admin at all, you’ll notice the big difference is there’s no left navigation. It completely went away and has been replaced by this left menu. This menu is where you will get to anywhere you want to go. Everything’s been organized into logical sections. The catalog contains your categories, your products, your attribute templates, inventory, and image types. Order processing has all the features and tools that you’ll need to process orders including managing orders and managing shipments.
The same links that you see in the left hand navigation here are also on the homepage with these quick links. We can easily get to where we need to go by using the quick links on the homepage. User Interface elements, where pages and items are contained are all contained within this user interface nav item.
Another nice feature of version 9 is this history tab. This history tab will show you everywhere you’ve gone. So it’s very simple to get back to recently visited places. Say for example I wanted to go back to User Interface, I can click right here and it will take me back to right where I was.
Bookmarks is another useful feature. Each of the places you go to most often can be bookmarked. A bookmark is this little ribbon over here in the far right. If I click it it will drop down and if I come over here, it will add this location to my bookmarks. Now I can come over here and rename this under manage bookmarks and say I want to rename this to “UI” hit “Close” and now I have this UI bookmark. So every time I want to go to the User Interface section, I can click on the bookmarks and then click “UI.”
Another great feature of Miva 9 is this Search navigation. You have the ability to search for everything within the software. So this can search customers, pages, products, categories, anywhere you want to go can be found through the search. Say for example I want to go to the storefront page, I can search for the code SFNT and I’ll use the left and right arrows to scroll up or down on the results and I can easily get to the main storefront template or individual areas within the storefront page itself. Once nice feature about the search nav is there’s a keyboard shortcut to open it. It’s Option / on the Mac or Alt / on a pc. Search Nav allows you to search for places, products, categories and pages and it does it using a fuzzy search. So, you don’t have to search for the exact keyword. Miva will show you the most relevant results based off of what you’ve typed in.
The last thing I want to show you is Miva’s new Category List Layout. Any page within the Admin that lists data uses this layout. So if I go to customers, it’s going to show me all customers in the list. Now this list layout allows me to quickly edit things on the fly. So I can double click on something and I can put in my first name, hit enter and it will automatically save it. These column headers are very flexible. I can resort them, I can click and drag and move a column header over or I can add a new column header to the page itself. Say I wanted to see additional data about customers, I can easily add new columns to the page and sort them so they display where I want. These settings are user specific and screen specific. So my user can come in here and I can customize the layout for customers where a different user can have a completely different layout.
This list layout also has an advanced search where you could perform very complicated queries to get the data you need to see. You also have the ability to export this data to a CSV quickly and easily. So I can select 1 row or multiple rows. Click this CSV button and you’ll automatically create a csv file with all the data that’s on the screen. This is very useful for getting data out of Miva Merchant.
These are just a few highlighted features of Miva Merchant v. 9. Throughout this video series, we’re going to go into much more depth of how to use the Admin and the different features of Miva Merchant.