This collaboration aims to enhance the e-commerce experience by synchronizing critical business operations, such as order processing, stock management, and customer information, between Business Central and Shopify.

Enhanced Extensibility

The Shopify Connector now allows for more flexibility and extensibility. This change is driven by feedback from partners and customers, aiming to tailor the connector for specific e-commerce scenarios while minimizing the risk of breaking changes due to rapid developments on the Shopify side.

User Interface Improvements

The release features considerable improvements in the user interface of the Shopify Connector:

• Template Transition: The shift from configuration templates to simpler item and customer templates streamlines the process of creating customer or item data. This change caters to ease of use and accuracy in data entry.
• Sales Document Control: A new toggle has been introduced, allowing users to choose whether to release created sales documents automatically or manually. This feature adds flexibility in order processing, especially when dealing with availability issues of ordered items.
• Shopify Actions Enhancement: Users can now easily add items to the Shopify shop directly from the Item Card and Item List in Business Central. This feature simplifies the management of product listings across multiple Shopify shops.

Marketing and Product Description

• Rich Marketing Texts: Business Central now enables users to add detailed marketing texts to product descriptions. This feature is designed to enhance the promotion of products on Shopify. Users can generate these texts using AI-powered tools like Copilot or create them manually. Additionally, there's an option to synchronize these marketing texts with Shopify, further integrating the product information between the two platforms.

API Changes and Order Source Display

• Shopify API Updates: Modifications in the Shopify API have led to changes in how the order source is displayed. The Source Name field is replaced by App Name and Channel Name, providing more specific information about the sales channel used for product selling.

Customer Data Export

• Multi-Shop Export Capability: A notable enhancement is the ability to export Business Central customer data to multiple Shopify shops, facilitated by the addition of a new Shop ID field. This feature broadens the scope of customer management across different e-commerce platforms.

The 2023 Release Wave 2 of Business Central brings forward a set of robust improvements and new features in its Shopify Connector, aimed at empowering businesses to optimize their e-commerce operations. The enhancements in extensibility, user interface, marketing integration, API adaptability, and customer data management exemplify the commitment of Business Central to provide a comprehensive and efficient business management solution in the dynamic e-commerce environment.