Development Update

22nd November 2023

Our team has been working hard to make improvements to the functionality and accessibility of our platforms. Our aim is to provide users with an exceptional experience.  We believe in continuously improving our platforms and welcome customer feedback, to assist us to provide the best services to our users.

Multiple eBook Format display

Development on the Browns Books website is now completed to accommodate a better identifiability where a publisher has an eBook available in both EPUB and PDF formats using the same ISBN.

This allows customers to see if both formats are provided prior to purchase. This couples with existing functionality on VLeBooks where end-users can select which format they would like to use when reading online with VLeBooks.

Admin Reports & Invoices to adapted to User Level 

This allows an account to enable multiple Administrators to receive notifications for admin level reports. These include Order Confirmation, Shipping Notification, Cancelled Lines Report, Outstanding Lines Reports & Invoices at account level.

This feature will improve reporting to our customers, however as this is the first stage of development, changes are held internally and will need to be requested via our customer care team. The next stage for this development is to display this functionality for customers to access directly, giving more control to the user. 

Email Invoicing & Shipping Notifications

Triggers to send emailed invoices and shipping notifications has traditionally been at the point of an item been picked at the warehouse which is great for our direct orders. Although in some cases could provide confusion on delivery estimates for serviced orders.

The development to change the triggers for serviced orders is now live.  Emailed Invoices and shipping notifications will now be triggered at the point of dispatch from the servicing department and will give customers more accurate tracking of serviced orders.

Caching of search results to improve search performance

We have added search caching to the Browns website to improve the performance of large search queries to combat increased overall usage of our title search feature by customers. This should enable a more fluid experience and increase overall workflows for customers selecting titles. This will be followed by many more improvements of our title searching feature in the coming new year.

Customised Classifications

Customers who are using bespoke classification with quotes will benefit from this development.  We are now able to process data from the full marc and not just fields available in the skeletal record to give improved data on ordered lines.

Further Device Optimisation

Over the past months we have dramatically changed the look of many of the pages across the website, primarily to adapt to the changing landscape of devices being used by our customers to access our website. Improvements have been made to accommodate customers accessing the website via smaller laptops and tablet devices. Further improvements will be made in the coming new year.