We know that during this pandemic, brick and mortar stores are aiming to make a footprint in digital commerce. This is one of the primary reasons why Magento has come up with their new version which in-turn focuses to help merchants to capture new opportunities in the current commerce scenario and also helps them in preparing for the future.
MAGENTO 2.4 has released and the features listed ensure a win-win for both merchants and customers.
Lets us dive into Magento 2.4 Features and enhancements for both open source and commerce edition:
This release includes all the improvements that were included in Magento 2.3.5-p1, with 100 new fixes to core code and 30 security enhancements.
HIGHLIGHTS
The following are the highlights of Magento 2.4 Features:
Purchase Approval Workflow
New approval workflow functionality has been introduced as an important highlight in Magento 2.4 features. This functionality helps us to enable B2B companies to customize their approval process by using a simple form.
Seller Assisted Shopping
This feature allows merchants to login to their customer’s website to improve the customer experience and deliver exceptional services. With the help of this functionality admin can help the customers in multiple ways:
→ Troubleshooting in any part of the buying process
→ Helping customers through any custom functionality
→ Also, admin can place orders and request quotes in order to save customers time.
In-store Pickup
This In-store Pickup in Inventory Management which is formerly known as Multi-Source Inventory (MSI) allows merchants to select the physical inventory locations that are eligible to be the customer’s pickup location. It also facilitates customers to quickly find the near-by location to pick up during their checkout process.
New Media Gallery
Creating content, maintaining, and keeping it fresh can be time-consuming. Magento 2.4 comes with a completely rebuilt Media Gallery that performs up to 30 times faster and strengthens our integration with Adobe Stock. We can now:
- Easily maintain the images by knowing how often and where those images are used throughout.
- With new image attributes, it is easy for us to search and filter the images.
- The updated Adobe stock Integration will move image licensing and management workflow into a new media gallery that will save time.
PWA Development
Magento has introduced the latest version of PWA Studio which introduces a new Venia storefront. As many of them including merchants, partners, and developers adapt to PWA Studio Magento is continuing to make it faster, and more cost-effective to launch PWA Studio with Magento.
SECURITY AND PLATFORM UPDATES
Security-only patch (M2.3.5 p2)
Customers can now install a single security patch as a fix without applying hundreds of all other functional fixes by installing this Magento 2.3.5.2 patch.
Substantial Security Enhancements
To avoid certain vulnerabilities Magento had given additional features that protect your admin which includes
- Over 30 security enhancements that help close Remote Code Execution (RCE) and Cross-site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) is now mandatory for the Magento Admin. It is activated by default and cannot be shown.
- It also secures Cloud SSH Access by providing Multi-factor Authentication.
- Template filter strict mode is enabled by default.
- Data rendering for UI data providers has been disabled by default in order to restrict malicious users to execute arbitrary javascript.
- New Security Policy.
Platform Upgrades
- PHP 7.4 support introduced and 7.1, 7.2 has been deprecated.
- Though PHP 7.4 uses the latest PHP unit testing framework, the PHP unit 9.x is supported and PHP unit 6.5 is deprecated.
- ElasticSearch 7.6x is now the default catalog search engine. Versions 2.x has been removed and 5.x and 6.x have been deprecated.
- MySQL 8.6 support introduced and 5.6 is no longer supported.
- MySQL Catalog Search engine has been removed and the Elastic search engine has been replaced by default. All the merchants must have to install the elastic search engine to use Magento 2.4
- To reflect the transitioning of the Zend Framework to the Linux Foundations Lamda project, Zend Framework has been deprecated from Magento 2.4.
- Core Integration of the Signifyd Fraud Protection Code has been removed.
- Braintree integration from the core has also been removed.
OTHER ENHANCEMENTS
- With this release, all the third-party payment methods have been removed.
- Paypal Express checkout integration has been migrated to the latest Paypal Javascript SDK.
- Everyone must use the command line to install or upgrade Magento that is Web Setup Wizard has been deprecated.
- Composer update plugin automates all the previous manual process.
- Many Optimization on Redis performance.
- Faster quick order and reordering that is the increase of 25-30% add to cart performance.
So finally the new release to Magento 2.4 will surely offer amazing growth and hosting features for your store. Use this to your advantage and it will surely help you make the mark you wish to in the world of Digital Commerce.
