Failed Payment Transactions: More Information

On September 29th, beginning at approximately 1pm, users reported transactions declining intermittently with associated payment decline messages of "Connection Error" and "Server Temporarily unavailable."  Our engineers identified the issue as a brief outage by USAePay, followed by periods of intermittent unavailability. If your winery was impacted by this, we hope that the information below will help with reconciliation by identifying failed orders.

To quickly identify any orders that may have been affected by the "Connection Error" decline, navigate to the Reports section. Under the Financial tab, select the Payment Gateway report. Upon reaching the report builder page, assign the date range 9/28 - today's date, 2021. Manage filters to ensure all Order Statuses are selected, and Manage Report Columns to ensure the Order Number, Payment Date and Payment Gateway Transaction ID columns are included. The Payment Gateway Transaction ID column will indicate any orders that had the "Connection Error" decline, making these easy to identify.

For any orders that a) were not successful in a secondary attempt, or b) had a refund that declined or c) that you wish to capture payment now, we strongly encourage you to compare against your iAccess portal to confirm a first attempt was not successful. If you have any point of sale orders that include a tip and were only authorized but not captured due to this error, please reach out to our payments team to assist you by capturing these amounts through the payments portal directly. If no tips were included, you may attempt to capture the payment through the payment tab on the order directly, after you've confirmed the payment has not already been captured (via iAccess). 

New: The Most Secure Checkout in The Industry

To further protect your winery from fraudulent bot attacks, we've automatically added a new, invisible layer of security known as reCAPTCHA to your V2 website checkout. WineDirect is deeply committed to the highest standards of security while ensuring your conversion rates stay high and this enhanced fraud protection does just that.

Key Benefits: Google’s reCAPTCHA 

This invisible and frictionless version works to detect bots in the background and returns a risk score that tells the WineDirect system if the interaction is suspicious and could indicate a bot user. It scores traffic with its Adaptive Risk Analysis Engine and does not force your consumers to click anything extra. Your checkout experience will look exactly the same to your consumer, and you will be protected from bot attacks. Win-win. >>Read full documentation here.

Implementation details:

The reCAPTCHA feature from Google is automatically deployed on your checkout if you're using the current V2 checkout tools and no action is required by you. If you are currently using legacy checkout tools, learn why you should upgrade and how to implement the current checkout tools.

If you have any questions, please read through the documentation and then reach out to support@winedirect.com with any questions. We hope you enjoy the most secure checkout in the industry as we move into this busy holiday shopping season!

 

Now: Corporate Order Importer Expanded

Good news! You can now take advantage of the expanded Corporate Order Importer extension to 36 SKUs. As some corporate customers expressed interest in having the gift extended to pick between a library of wines that pass the 12 SKUs total previously allowed.

The Corporate Order Importer allows you to create multiple orders, with multiple shipping addresses for one single billing customer. The billing customer who is paying for all the orders will only see one charge for the total amount. This update allows you to add more columns as needed to get the required number of SKUs in the importer (up to 36 SKUs). Simply download the latest sample file for compatibility in 3 easy steps:

1. Navigate to Settings > Import/Export > Corp. Order Importer
2. Click Import Corporate Orders from the left navigation
3. Click Download Sample File to download the spreadsheet needed

>>Read the full documentation here.

This update was a direct result of an idea in the Idea Forum. Thank you for submitting and voting to get current features functionality improved!

Fix: Scheduled Reports

If your winery uses the schedule reports feature in new reports, you may have noticed that contacts were not receiving emails as expected. Our team has now fixed this bug and you can continue scheduling reports as you did previously, knowing your stakeholders will receive the reports once generated.

Thank you for your patience as our team investigated. Reports are a critical piece of your business operations, and we are thrilled to have them functioning optimally again.

Completed: Proactive Database Upgrade

In preparation for the busy sales season during OND, we proactively scheduled database maintenance to ensure the latest OS and security upgrades during August and early September. To minimize impact, these upgrades were made between 8:00pm and 1:00am PST every Wednesday evening.

This work has been completed successfully. As we head into the busy sales season, you can be confident in having the latest security patches, updates and upgrades supporting you as you grow your ecommerce sales. Wishing you a successful fall and holiday season!

All-New WineDirect: FAQs

As we start off September, we want to take a moment to update you on the latest developments with our All-New WineDirect platform.

We are well into the discovery stage of this important project – doing the deep research necessary to fully scope the work to ensure that the All-New WineDirect platform will be everything our customers want it to be, and more.

In addition to research, we are upgrading and scaling up the team so we are properly resourced to meet the challenge of building an All-New WineDirect.

For example, we’ve hired a new VP of Engineering, Dan Mills, who has 15+ years’ experience building teams and has successfully been through several SaaS replatforming projects. We are continuing to add other senior Engineering and Product team members to our existing team who will be fully focused on building the All-New WineDirect. We have also restructured our team to allow the majority to focus 100% on replatforming, while another group takes care of our existing platform.

We’ll provide another update later this year, but in the meantime, here are some FAQs and answers that will provide more information.

1. What is WineDirect building? 

We are building the All-New WineDirect Ecommerce Platform an all-in-one platform with support for Ecommerce, Wine Club, Retail (POS), and omni-channel sales with beautiful store experiences, fast check out, powerful analytics, marketing automation and customization through flexible APIs and third-party apps.

2. What features will be included in the new platform? 

The major core functionality of the WineDirect platform will be included in the All-New Platform.  Rebuilding the platform also provides the opportunity to evaluate what is most impactful for our clients and what is no longer necessary. One thing is guaranteed, while the All-New platform will be familiar, it will be a tremendous upgrade across the board.   

3. Why should I be excited about this change?

There are so many reasons to be excited about the All New WineDirect, including:

• Flexible, website design tools that support exciting features including 1:1 personalization of content, product customer benefits such as pricing.
• A content management system (CMS)  you update and A/B test changes on your own; with no programming knowledge required.
• Intuitive and flexible, WineClub, User Choice Clubs and Subscriptions.
• Fast, customer-focused and reliable POS.
• Dashboards and reporting that provides intelligence into trends, status and health of your DTC business.
• One of a kind omni-channel sales opportunities to help you find and attract new clients.
• Improved and expanded capabilities for Webservices to connect with external systems and third-party applications.

4. What new APIs will be available on the All-New WineDirect and what will happen to existing APIs?

New APIs will support a backwards compatibility with SOAP for existing APIs (so existing APIs will still function) and more robust REST services and GraphQL will also be supported.

5. I want to integrate current WD APIs with third party tools. Should I wait for new APIs or should I spend money to integrate current systems?

This really depends on the specifics of your situation. If you are looking at something that will help to grow your business right now, you may want to pursue it. Because the All-New WineDirect won’t be generally available for at least a year, you may want to act now for time-sensitive integrations that will increase your ROI in the short-term. 

6. Should I wait to redesign my website, or can I do it now? Can I still use WineDirect templates?

If you are in need of a new website immediately, WordPress is a great option as it has a lot of flexibility and will integrate seamlessly with the All-New WineDirect. You can also continue to use the current WineDirect templates and we will transition accordingly when the time comes.

7. How will we transition to the All-New WineDirect Platform?

As of now, we are planning to roll out in 3 phases, built around the major sales channels: 

Phase 1: Ecommerce Only 
Phase 2: Ecommerce + Wine Club 
Phase 3: Ecommerce + Wine Club + POS

When the time comes, WineDirect will ensure that your transition to the new platform is seamless, with all your data and key configuration remaining intact.

There won’t be incremental costs to migrate to the new platform. Winery clients may choose to build a new site using the many tools available, which may require use of an WineDirect certified designer, which will be a separate engagement.

8. What is the timing for Canada and Australia?

The rollout of the All-New WineDirect will be based on what services a winery client is using, not where they are located, so wineries in Canada and Australia will most likely be on the same timeline as their counterparts in the U.S.

9. What should I do to prepare for the transition? 

Nothing! A member of our team will reach out when we are ready to get you started and answer any specific questions you may have.

10. What is expected as an Early Adopter for the All-New WineDirect? 

The Early Adopter Program gives you access to new products and features before they're released. Joining the program is a commitment - we need you to test feature functionality and provide feedback to our team. You’ll play an important role in ensuring the features we roll out will help you and other wineries like you. Signing up to be an Early Adopter does not guarantee access to the Early Adopters group, but we will do our best to involve all interested clients. 

As an All-New WineDirect Early Adopter, you’ll be called on to help test specific sections based on tools you’re already actively using. This project is complex, with a lot of turning wheels, so please be patient while we create a detailed project plan for upcoming features that will be ready to test. We will reach out when your winery meets the criteria – at that time you can choose to participate or not.

11. When is the timeline for me to be an Early Adopter?

Because of the different phases and the complexity of the project, there will be several chances to test and give feedback on the new tools over the next year. We will let you know when your opportunity to test comes closer.

Your timeline for being an Early Adopter participant completely depends on your current feature set. If you are a full-stack WineDirect customer using ecommerce, wine club and POS, your environment is complex. It will take us time to ensure that the All-New WineDirect can match the complexity of your DTC tools. We are creating new business logic and workflows from scratch, and we want to ensure it flows beautifully.

12. Have you stopped development on the current WineDirect platform?

Absolutely not. Although most of our team is laser-focused on planning for the All-New WineDirect and enhanced wine club tools, we also have a dedicated team working exclusively on the current platform. In addition to updating features, we are keeping performance, availability and security top-of-mind. We have proactively upgraded all of our databases to improve performance, became PCI DSS Level 1 compliant,  and increased fraud protection by adding reCAPTCHA Enterprise security heading into the busy holiday shopping season.

13. Still want more information?

Watch this video discussing the latest developments in the All-New WineDirect.

Fix: Point of Sale Error

On August 21, beginning at approximately 1pm, we experienced an outage with some users reporting extreme delays or a fatal system error when trying to use the POS application. Our engineers identified and fixed the issue at 3:52pm.

Please verify through your gateway that payment was successfully captured for any orders with a pending payment and pending order status during this incident window. >>Click to view instructions here

Please note: If you've had to complete any payments manually, you’ll need to go to status and change to ‘completed’.

We will have a detailed Root Cause Analysis of the outage available within the next 5 days once we complete our internal analysis. We apologize for the disruption.

New: Delivering Industry-Leading Data Security

WineDirect achieves PCI DSS Service Provider Level 1 Compliance – Highest Level of Security in the Protection of Credit Card and Cardholder Data. >>Read the Press Release here.

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With the massive growth in ecommerce last year, the number of online credit card transactions skyrocketed. Hand-in-hand with this growth comes increased security risks to credit card data. That's why at WineDirect, we took the necessary steps to ensure we continue to protect you and your customers' data.

At WineDirect, we take security very seriously and are pleased to announce the achievement of Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Service Provider Level 1 Compliance. Level 1 demonstrates the most stringent compliance standard for the safe handling of credit cardholder data. The Attestation of Compliance was granted by Certified Auditor 360 Advanced Inc., after a rigorous 8 month audit process. You can rest easy knowing WineDirect has satisfied adherence to the same expectations as platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce.

I recently sat down with Ken Escueta, Director of Platform Engineering at WineDirect, to have a coffee chat about some of WineDirect's recent security upgrades. You can watch it below:

 

It’s important that we do everything possible to safeguard customer data as a key part of our promise to be The Winery’s Champion. We will continue to diligently review and evolve security policies, practices and infrastructure frequently. Thank you for your continuing partnership!

Fix: EMV Refund Flow

If your winery is U.S-based and uses the chip reader with WineDirect Payments, you may notice a change to your EMV refund workflow. We have removed the card-present refund option, aiming to improve both the staff and customer experience.

Previously, the refund flow assumed that a customer would be present in the tasting room for a refund, and the terminal prompted them to insert the card used in the original sale. We found that customers aren't usually physically in the Tasting Room during the refund process. By eliminating this unnecessary process and the additional clicks involved, the refund workflow is faster and reduces refund errors.

Fix: Same-Day Refunds on EMV Terminal

If your U.S.-based winery uses the EMV chip reader, you may have noticed same-day refunds were not being properly refunded in the Zeamster gateway. Our team has now fixed the error and you can now cancel the order in the Admin Panel (Status tab > Cancel Order > Process) to successfully change the status in the gateway (Zeamster) from ‘Approved’ to ‘Voided.’

Thanks for your patience as we continue to ensure smooth refunds for both your winery staff and customers.