Short Read:
Blue Yonder released the new version of the Category Management Suite on March 2, 2023. The changes to the suite can be summarized under three main ideas:
- Expanded SaaS offerings with new products and integrations with desktop applications
- Continued development of new features in desktop applications
- Updated design work and continued focus on quality across the suite
Blue Yonder has announced an exciting new offering, Category Knowledge Base Essentials. This will help to bring the capabilities of CKB to organizations who are not looking for a full implementation of the program. Space Planning Web has been updated to support opening from and saving to flat files locally, adding essential functionality to the online experience. Space Planning desktop and Space Automation Pro have been updated to allow a web connection to a Blue Yonder hosted instance of CKB hosted on Azure, allowing you to work locally while connected to a cloud instance of CKB. And Open Access has been integrated into the Luminate Portal enhancing the online experience with other Luminate products.
In addition, Blue Yonder has demonstrated their commitment to continue development of their desktop applications. New features have been added to Space Planning to allow highlighted with images active and expand on the use of shelf brackets. The performance of Floorplan Generator has been improved and the messaging throughout has been updated to be more consistent with Planogram Generator. Several new configuration options for Planogram Generator have been added to Open Access. And a new Telemetry system has been added to the Category Management Services for monitoring, logging, and tracing CKB activity.
Planogram Generator has undergone a redesign to better organize settings and illustrate their impact on the planograms. This is in response to your concerns as to the complexity of PG and the time for training new users. Quality concerns and user-reported issues have been addressed in each product to further demonstrate the commitment to the customer experience. Also, major components of CKB have been updated based on Blue Yonder’s expanded capabilities. The Image Server is now accessed using the Category Management Services API’s and the settings for the Batch Processing Server have been moved to the Consul service.
Our summary of the changes to the suite is below. Please feel free to review our thoughts on the suite and reach out to us if you have any questions. We are happy to assist in any way we can.
Alerts:
- Activation Codes have been updated for all products in the Category Management Suite
- A guide to using Telemetry with the Category Management Services should be made available in Q2 of 2023.
- Installation of the Batch Processing Server now requires two separate installations as the service and the Console Applications are now installed independently.
- A patch is expected to address an issue in SA Pro where named queries cannot be used with the ExecuteQuery command if CKB is using LIAM Authentication.
- Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL CKB connectivity must be version 18.6.4 or earlier as newer versions are not supported.
Click on the application name to jump to the summary:
Space Planning
Space Planning 2023.1 includes several useful updates that you are sure to appreciate. One of the most notable updates is the new ability to highlight while images are active, which enables you to quickly identify products by their images while a highlight is enabled. This feature is easy to use and requires no additional configuration, making it a valuable time-saving tool.
In addition to the highlight feature, the Shelf Bracket functionality has been improved in several ways. Shelf brackets are now visible when working in 3D view, making it easier to visualize and plan the layout of products. Capacity calculations have also been updated to account for capped products, resulting in more accurate data outputs.
Another valuable addition to this version is the Websocket Database Connection, which allows users with CKB hosted on a Blue Yonder Azure environment to install Space Planning on a local device. This update makes the installation process simpler and more efficient.
Overall, the latest version of Space Planning offers several helpful updates that are designed to make the space planning process more efficient and accurate. You can feel confident in your ability to plan and optimize your space with these updates.
Space Planning Web
Space Planning Web 2023.1 now offers File-based Project Support. This allows Space Planning project (.psa) files to be opened in Space Planning Web. You may then save a project directly into CKB, but it should be noted there will not be a live connection to your pc to enable saving to a file locally.
Opening a file into Space Planning Web will open a remote copy and saving a file requires downloading a new version of the file each time a save is performed. Those of you who may be working on a project for a long time and need frequent saving to prevent data loss are encouraged to first save the project to CKB. You can open the project from CKB, save periodically, and then download the final version.
Floor Planning / and Floorplan Generator
Blue Yonder has made a variety of enhancements and fixes to Floor Planning for 2023.1. These include technical, accessibility, and functionality changes. Major changes for this release include performance, stability, and UX enhancements to Floorplan Generator. There is now more consistent messaging when generating floorplans along with better performance when creating target floorplans with split sections or other suboptimal scenarios. FG will now consider merged planograms over the individual planogram when a better result can be achieved. There are also several improvements when using Allocation Groups for better handling of unsegmented fixtures or where multiple groups are being used within the same fixture run.
From a support standpoint, Floor Planning has been certified for the latest versions of Revit with 2021, 2022, and 2023 compatibility. There were also several stability fixes introduced to aid in integrating Revit data into Blue Yonder. Building on enhancements made in previous versions pertaining to adjacency data, there have also been improvements to the data accuracy when saving Floorplans to a CKB environment. While the LIAM Web Socket Database Connection Functionality introduced in Space Planning will not be available immediately in the 2023.1 release, it is now scheduled to come shortly after to Floor Planning as well in the next service release.
CKB / Open Access
With the 2023.1 release, Blue Yonder is introducing a new product offering, Category Knowledge Base Essentials. CKB Essentials is a Blue Yonder SaaS offering with a subset of current functionality, making the capabilities of CKB more available to organizations who may not have the need or the budget for the full version. While Batch Processing may be added with the licensing of Planogram Generator or Web Publisher, the base offering will contain:
- Web connectivity between Space Planning and CKB
- Open Access
- Image Server
- Category Management Services
In base CKB, database tables were added to support the new Assortment and Performance Import for Planogram Generator as well as tables added to support Strategic Space. Telemetry support has also been added for Category Management services. Telemetry is the automatic recording and transmission of data from remote or inaccessible sources to an IT system in a different location for monitoring and analysis. This new system is capable of monitoring, logging, and tracing activity in CKB-Services and CKB-ConsoleApps. By default, Telemetry is not turned on for on-prem implementations. Information and guidance on how to enable and use the Telemetry system is expected to be available in Q2 2023.
Structural changes have been made to CKB as well. The Image Server is now accessed through Category Management Services and the settings for the Batch Processing Server are now stored in Consul.
Category Management Services
Category Management Services have been updated to support only the HTTPS protocol for security reasons. New API Endpoints have been added as well including:
- Data Transfer for PG Data Imports
- GET all object hierarchy descriptions or nodes
- GET planogram and floorplan images
- GET all planograms assigned to a product
- GET all planograms assigned to a store(s)
Open Access
For the 2023.1 release of Open Access, the big news is the additional control for Planogram Generator you have through the web. This includes the ability to define how target planograms are created, match template and auxiliary planograms, and configure imports for assortment and performance data.
Open Access is now available within the BY Luminate Portal ensuring a seamless experience for those using other products in the Luminate Platform. This integration comes as Blue Yonder extends the LIAM (Luminate Identity Access Management) system into the Category Management Suite.
Blue Yonder has removed the limitation on the number of accounts that can be supported in Open Access. You may now search their expanded list of accounts quickly and easily in the Accounts drop down list with the provided search functionality. Also, the viewer control for viewing floorplans in Web Publishing has been changed to increase performance and restore the ability to show extended data.
Space Automation Pro
The old Open Access Web API connection has been discontinued and replaced with a new LIAM-authenticated web socket which will allow a local installation of Space Automation Pro to connect to a Blue Yonder Azure hosted CKB environment. This means Blue Yonder cloud users will no longer need to go through Citrix to use SA Pro and can instead use it locally. This will make development more seamless and greatly assist with storing code using your organization’s source control solution of choice.
To use this functionality, the Blue Yonder Onboarding team will provide the required configuration settings for the hosted environment. These settings must be configured in both SA Pro and in Space Planning. This is, of course, optional, and a direct database connection is still supported.
The release does address a few customers reported issues. It does not address an issue using a named query using the ExecuteQuery command if CKB is using LIAM authentication. A patch will be provided after the release to address this.
Planogram Generator
With the release of 2023.1, Planogram Generator has undergone an interface change. Within each phase, action-relevant settings have been reorganized into different categories. Visual illustrations have been added to settings dialogs to help you understand the options available to you in terms of configuring actions or understanding fixture linkage or product-banding options. Over the years, BY has received several comments about PG being too hard to learn. These changes are all about improving usability and understanding for new users. It is important to note experienced PG users may need some time to adjust to the new interface. Additional changes include:
There is now a warning indicator for small boost increments. If you are boosting towards a high number (ex: 500) in steps of a very small number (ex: .01) a yellow warning indicator will now appear next to the action warning this could affect processing speed.
An Import action list feature has now been added. This enables you to insert, replace, or merge action lists from one template to another.
Planogram Generator is now available in Open Access. Most of the functionality from PG Preparation, PG Administration, and Console has been combined and moved into Open Access. Ideally, an administrator would set up the configurations and only allow space planners to use what is already configured.
Performance Improvements have been made. Performance has been improved by adjusting the cache, adjusting the timing of when Space Planning override calculations are refreshed, and changing how user formulas are stored.
Some additional things to be aware of:
- Any actions that used to have a “single” and a “multiple” such as banding, move to same fixture, or allow motion, have now been combined into single dual-purpose actions.
- Action lists are not forward compatible but are backward compatible. You can bring in an existing action list from an old version and it will work for 2023.1. But an action list built in 2023 may not work in later versions.
- The enable checkbox has been removed from the action properties window. Now you can only use the enable and disable buttons on the main PG control menu.
Assortment Optimization
For the 2023.1 release, Blue Yonder Assortment Optimization has continued to focus on issue resolution, demonstrating their commitment to delivering a quality user experience. The 2023.1 Release Notes document for Assortment Optimization notes more than 50 issues resolved. Activation codes have been updated for the new version and the Online Expert has been renamed to Assortment Optimization Help to help clarify its purpose. There are no new features in this release.
Our Take
With the release of 2023.1, Blue Yonder has released several enhancements which extend the capabilities and integration of their SaaS offering. The ability for Space Planning Web to interact with flat files and the ability of Space Planning and Space Automation Pro to interact with a SaaS database make the desktop suite and the SaaS offering work in better harmony with one another. Enabling Open Access to be accessed through the Luminate portal makes for a more unified user experience for web applications. And the introduction of Category Knowledge Base Essentials provides a means for more organizations to benefit from the capabilities of CKB.
For users who are not SaaS clients, the biggest changes can be found in Planogram and Floorplan Generator. A great deal of work has gone into making both applications more functional and easier to learn. The Planogram Generator user interface has been updated with a focus on trainability and usability. Floorplan Generator has been updated to be more consistent with the Planogram Generator experience while also receiving functional and performance updates. As well, the flagship desktop applications have received some new features with updates being made to Space Planning, Floor Planning, and Category Knowledge Base including new API endpoints for Category Management Services.
SaaS users will likely see the most value in updating due to the new integration options. On prem users who use Planogram or Floorplan Generator will see great value as well based on the updates to the user experience. Traditional desktop users who do not benefit from SaaS and do not user Planogram or Floorplan Generator will see a handful of important updates in functionality, and a continued focus on addressing bugs and customer issues.
As we often stress, it is important you know many of the features added and the issues addressed were driven directly by you, the users. If you are not already a member of the Special Interest Group (SIG), we encourage you to get involved. This direct line between Blue Yonder Product Management and their user base will continue to drive development in the future. You can find more information and sign up at success.blueyonder.com.
We at Cantactix stand ready to assist you should you need any assistance as you determine whether to move forward with the 2023.1 release.
If you are interested in getting additional insight into the new features and how they can benefit you, please contact us. Interested in upgrading? Learn more here.