CAS Merlin help portal

Highlights

- Changed menu bar in M.Sales
For better understanding the M.Sales menu bar, the old icon based menu has been replaced by a textual menu to easier find the needed menu entries The menu entries are now grouped by
    - "Quote": with save, load, import, export and switch vresion entries
    - "Add": with all add and insert possibilities and
    - "Share": with the options to share a quote with customer in via Digital Quote, set the quote owners and open the comments section
 Besides this, a new save button is shown next to the back and forward buttons for a faster possibility to save the quote.

- Add initial default group assignment for M.Sales quotes
In M.Model there is a new setting to set a usergroup as initial quote owner. The selected user groups appear in the initial M.Sales save dialog. Users can see them there (to be aware who will have access) and still remove them before saving.

- Improving the performance in the product catalog of M.Sales
When having a lot of products in the product catalog of M.Sales this can lead to performance issues. To avoid this from this version on only 20 products will be shown at the same time (same applies for folders or product finder results). If there are more than 20 products in the catalog the next items will be loaded when scrolling to the bottom of the dialog (infinite scrolling).

- Filtering of detail tables based on M.Doc table filters for printing
To be able to see how the configuration content would look like in a document there is now the possibility to filter the detail table on the price tab based on the M.Doc table filters for printing. There is a new dropdown to select an M.Doc filter as filter for the detail table. Multiple attribute selections for one feature can be shown. The following content is shown in the columns:
   - Feature name, material number and quantity (not for variables)
   - Selected attribute, material number and quantity
   - Variable values
   - Prices

- New text variable of type multi-language is now available in M.Model, M.Sales and M.Customer and also in the Digital quote and for printing via M.Doc
This new type of text variables was especially created for contract configuration where multiple text input in different languages might be needed. For example to be able to create a text variable with the default content "Das Zahlungsziel beträgt 14 Tage." but also providing the english content for this text e.g. "Payments are due within 14 days.". For this variable no default values are possible and the variable can't be used in the ruletree.
In the client applications the user will see a (RTF) text editor in which each language is shown in a different tab. When printing this variable the value for the chosen language will be printed.

Go-live of the new Admin App with the license manager!
The new Admin App is now available. When clicking the "Upload License" button in M.Model the app will be started in the browser where the administrator can upload a new license file and manage all existing licenses for the users. Each license , it's expiration date and license type will be listed in the upper part in a tile. In the table below users can be added to assign the licenses to them. A floating or universal license will automatically be added to every user in the assignment table. A named license can be assigned to any user. But as soon as the named license was assigned it will be locked for this user for 90 days until there is the possibility to reassign this license to another user.
In this version the final design was overtaken, many tooltips, error handling and dialogs have been adapted to have this nice angular application now available.
In future this app will be enriched by multiple further administrator related functionality.

Enriched Quote View functionality
- New welcome message section for the quote view
In the edit mode of the quote view there is a new editable (via rich text) welcome section for the address letter in which the sales person can add a personalized welcome message to his/her client. If the address letter was filled by the sales person it is shown to the user in the read only mode, otherwise it will be hidden.

- New print button and print preview
The new print button opens a nice print preview which allows the user to have a nice printed document of the quote view or to even save it as a pdf file.

- A table of content was added for the quote view
A new table of content can be opened in the quote view for an easier navigation in the quote view. It contains all products and sub products which are included in the quote on which the user can navigate to by clicking on it. It will smoothly slide in and out and on the mobile view of the quote view it will be opened in fullscreen.

- Empty features will be hidden
If there are empty features in the configuration the quote view filters these feature to hide them in the preview as well as in the edit mode.

- A hint will be shown to the sales person that customers can't be tagged in the comment section
A new hint will be shown to the sales person if a thread isn't public (checkbox "visible for customers") that customers are not listed. Otherwise no hint will be shown.

M.Model improvement

- Inspection Mode shows which pricetable was used
When uploaded in inspection mode the modeler can see the pricetable that was used during the calculation.
This message is shown in the price explanation as first entry (e.g. "using price table 'germany'").

Highlights

Design improvements in M.Sales
- Scrollbar position  will be stored for current product and reset when switching the quote item
   - The position of the scrollbar will only be stored for the current product. When switching the product it will be reset to always see the top of the screen.
- Small preview images for product description
   - Small preview images are shown below the product image gallery as an additional way to switch between tiles. This preview is collapsible to gain more space for the images. The collapsed state is persisted in the browser storage.
- Drag & drop in the price table to simply reorder the items
   - It is now possible to drag and drop items in the price table to allow rearranging products easily. It is allowed to change the order on the same level and to reorganize sub products (in and out of multi modules). 
- Reduced amount of products loaded initially due to performance optimization
   - Due to performance optimization for big workspaces containing a lot of products the product catalog now only shows and initially loads up to 20 products at the same time (same applies for folders or product finder results). If there are more than 20 products they will be loaded when scrolling to the bottom of the catalog.
- The adding or removing of sub products is now greyed-out if this is not possible
   - If it is not possible to add or remove a sub product due to restrictions in the cardinality these options will be greyed-out in M.Sales. Same applies also to duplicating or deleting the sub products.

M.Hub - Digital Quote adaptions
- Better distinguish between edit and preview mode in digital quote of M.Hub
   - On top of the digital quote there is a new bar showing whether the user is in preview mode (the view which the customer will see) or in edit mode. If the preview mode is open the bar will be colored blue and there is a button in the bar to switch to edit mode. If the edit mode is opened the save button is available on the right side of the bar. After saving the preview mode automatically will be opened again to check all changes as the customer would see the digital quote. The language switcher was moved to the action buttons right next to the main page.

M.Customer shopping basket
- Introduction of a mobile view for the shopping basket of M.Customer
   - For a better usage of the mobile view with a shopping basket for M.Customer the following features have been introduced:
     - The hamburger menu was removed from the top left side of the basket and a back button is shown instead. If the user opened the request offer page from the basket the back button leads back to the basket. And from the basket the back button leads back to the configuration view of the selected of the first product.
     - The new home button next to the request offer button leads back to the product catalog.
     - The save and print button is now placed in the three-dot-menu on top right side of the basket, The document can only be printed as soon as all products are fully configured otherwise it is greyed-out. If products in the basket contain missing selections for mandatory features a red indicator next the products will be shown.
     - The language switcher and other customizable action buttons will be hidden from the basket and only be available in the menu of the configuration view.
     - When clicking on any product the according summary page will be opened containing all configuration details of the product. To make any changes the user needs to press the edit icon on top of the summary to come back to the configuration view of the product.
- Mandatory start products for M.Customer
   - In the .config file of M.Model the modeler can define mandatory start products which always need to be included in the basket. The products marked as mandatory start product are automatically added in the basket when starting M.Customer and cannot be removed out of the basket. Even when pressing the clear basket icon all products will be removed but the mandatory start products.

M.Core and M.Model adaptions
- Custom metadata for offer parameters
   - A new option to customize the metadata for offer parameters is now available so the modelers can add additional information for offer parameters. These metadata can be accessed in M.Model and M.Sales.
- Extension of the variant table in M.Model to allow the usage of the special value "not-activated"
   - To extend the usage of the variant tables also in the context of features that are conditionally activated, it is now possible to use e.g. "not-activated OR C1" in a cell of the table. The "any mode" does not include the "not-activated" case.
- Enable e-mail communication via "STARTTLS"
- For a secure communication for internal and external mail exchange there is a new configuration option to enable the e-mail communication with standard security protocol "STARTTLS".
- Performance optimization in the core of Merlin
   - Elements which are marked as invisible and never will get visible are filtered out by the backend to save the amount of data sent to M.Sales or M.Customer due to performance optimization.

Highlights

Design Improvements in M.Sales
- Resizable Panels in Repair Dialog
   - The Repair Dialog consists of three panels. The two bottom panels took up 50% of the dialog's width each. To improve the usability in scenarios where one of these panels contains a lot of content, it is now horizontally resizable for the users need.
- Reduced configuration page view for small screens
   - When using a small screen for M.Sales the configuration page is now shown in a reduced view. The left side will completely be hidden. The price overview is available on the price tab and the product description can be seen when clicking on the info button next to the header.
- New color configuration of loading indicator and new progress bar for document preview in M.Sales
   - A new color configuration for the progress bar in M.Sales is now available in M.Model. The color is used for a list of loading indicators such as:
      - the loading bar below the M.Sales header that is running e.g. if a server request is currently in progress and
      - the dot-dot-dot loading animation in
         - loading catalog dialog content
         - loading details table content
         - loading content of repair changes dialog
         - linking some existing quote with an opportunity in genesisWorld
         - loading the initial printing preview
         - loading the print placeholders in inspections mode
   - There is also a new progress bar shown when opening a document preview which can take a few seconds.
- Merlin ID will be sent when printing in M.Sales
   - To be able to e.g. check which of several quotes are sold, the Merlin ID can now be filled when using the placeholder for it in printed documents. If there is no Merlin ID created for the quote yet the placeholder will be filled with "draft". If the quote has unsaved changes the user will see "<Merlin ID> draft" in the placeholder.
- Project specific version is added to M.Sales "about" dialog and the dialog shows third pary licenses M.Sales is using in a new link
   - The "about" dialog in M.Sales is extended to see also the project specific version for the client. This project specific version can be defined by the projects and it will only be shown if this information is provided.
   - In the "about" dialog a new link is available to see a list of all used third party licenses.
- Optimized quote finishing process in gensisWorld integration
   - For an easier understanding of the quote finishing process with an integrated Merlin CPW in genesisWorld the following things changed:
      - The button to finish a quote is now renamed to "Finish".
      - When finished M.Sales will close and jump back to the sales opportunity in genesisWorld.
- Marketing information will be completely hidden if set to invisible in M.Model
   - If the marketing information in M.Model is set to "always hide" the info icon in M.Sales will be completely hidden. So the markeing information can e.g. be used to show some specific information in the document but hide it in the configuration form in M.Sales.
- Price type abbreviation is shown if more than one price aspect is selected
   - If multiple price aspects are chosen to be visible in the configuration form in M.Sales the abbreviated price type name and full price aspect name will be shown. If only one price aspect is selected the full price type name will be shown together with the price aspect name.

 M.Customer shopping basket and license adaptions
- The product summary page is shown next to the shopping basket and the request offer page can only be accessed via the basket
   - As soon as the basket was opened in M.Customer next to it the summary page for the first product in the basket is shown and the user can navigate through all basket items and the according summary page will be opened to see the configured details for the chosen product.
   - The request offer page is now only accessible via the shopping basket and can only be opened if all products in the basket are fully configured (all mandatory features are selected).
- Show prices for all basket items in M.Customer
   - All basket items are now listed in the shopping basket of M.Customer with the total price. Of the product contains sub products the user will see the total price on top level including the sub product(s) price. As soon as the top level product will be expanded in the basket the prices are split for the product and its sub products.
   - the price type can be switched by the switcher next to the total price of the basket.

The new Flexible Rule Interface is released
- With the generic rule importer an M.Model user is now able to import rules into Merlin CPQ from another system. The rules must be stored in csv or excel file. Regarding the content of the rule input file, there are strict requirements that need to be fulfilled. Two files are generated into the workspace: a *.mrf file, that contains the rules, and a *_report.html file to leads the user to fixing different issues with the input file.
   - Rule operators: Following rule operators are supported right now: IMPLIES, NOT-WITH, CORRESPONDS, ACTIVATES and MAKE-MANDATORY. If the imported rule operator does not match with any of the mentioned operators or it is missing, the import will fail. The right side operand of the ACTIVATES and MAKE-MANDATORY must contain only one feature reference, otherwise the importer will also fail.
   - Rule operands: An imported rule must contain 2 operands (left and right side), and the operands must be presented in a specific format, otherwise it will be rejected, and the import will fail. In general an operand can contain reference to a product structure elements, logical expression, relation expression, literals and some helper methods.
   - Rule (import) id: Every imported rule must have an import id and it must be unique. This id will be saved as metadata.
   - Rule Metadata: The supported rule metadata are: valicity start, validity end and comment.

Highlights

Extensions of the new released Remote Workspaces & Versioning
Remote Workspaces & Versioning went live and takes over the tasks of the previous SVN to synchronize personal changes of a personal workspace with a group of people, a shared workspace.
Files will be locked as long as a user makes changes in M.Model to avoid as much migration effort as possible. All changes of a local personal workspace need to be published to a shared workspace and the files get unlocked again. The following functionality was extended by this version:
   - If there are any issues during processing a pull, reset or connect operation to remote workspaces, missing files will automatically be recovered in M.Model,
   - If the user tries to edit a file which is not lockable a warning will be shown and the changes will not be prevented.
   - If a user did not connect the personal workspace with a shared workspace no locking of files is necessary to be able to edit every file.
       - Impossible actions like pull, reset and push are removed and not accessible in that case.
   - There is the possibility to exchange workspaces with other people who have no access to the belonging database by exporting and importing a workspace as an .worx file.
   - If the user changes e.g. images in the workspace which are used in another file, the Remote Workspaces tries to lock these files and changes e.g. the new image path. If the files are not lockable the user will get a warning instead but the editing will not be prevented.
   - For a better user guidance , a new progress indicator will be shown when connecting to a shared workspace because for bigger workspaces this can take some while.

First release with the new shopping basket in the end-user configurator M.Customer
M.Customer is not anymore for configuring and requesting one specific product but instead introducing a shopping basket to have the ability to configure and request many different products.
- After the user selected one product from the catalog the product can be configured and added at any time to the basket.
- The basket can be opened from the product catalog and the configuration form at any time. There is an item counter next to the basket button to indicate the amount of added items.
   - In the basket all added products are listed in tiles.
       - Each basket item can be removed and the amount of each item can be changed.
       - Sub products will automatically be added to the basket together with the top level product. In the basket the top level product can be expanded to see and change the amount of the belonging sub products.
- The whole basket can be cleared by the clear button on top of the basket.

New license manager app to better manage and assign licenses to users
- A license file can now be uploaded in the new Licenses Manager App.
   - All licenses the license file contains are listed in a table. Each component and the belonging license type will be shown (Universal license, Floating license or Named User licenses with the maximum amount of licensable users.)
- In the new table "Assign users" all users can be added from keycloak. A universal or floating license will automatically be added for the user and the belonging component. If there are available named user licenses they can manually be added to a user. Once a named user license was assigned to a user the license is locked for 90 days. Afterwards the license can be removed from the user and it is again free to assign it to any other user. There are many tooltips if a license can not yet be removed or a user can't be removed from the table due to existing locked licenses.

Improvements and extensions for M.Sales
Introduction of non-configurable items in M.Sales:
  There might be use-cases to sell not only configurable products but also non-configurable products (e.g. screws, filters, etc.). These products will be listed in the product catalog of M.Sales in a separate folder. The static articles can be added to the basket like normal products but without being configured. Data which can be maintained for theses articles are the product name, material number, marketing description and prices. Prices for non-configurable articles can not be edited by sales users but discounts can be given but in contrast to free entries the unit price can also not be changed.

Respect the validity time chooser for inspection mode:
- The validity time chooser in M.Model allows to define for which point of time a quote can be created, E.g. configuring fireworks is only possible around New Year's Eve.
- The date selection field for the validity time is shown in the quote detail tile on the quote page of M.Sales in inspection mode where you can set a specific validity time for the quote.

Limited amount of information shown in repair dialog of M.Sales:
- If a repair in M.Sales leads to more than 50 changed products, the list of changed products will be collapsed in the details dialog due to information focus and performance improvements.

Price calculation improvements
Filtered price explanations for visible price aspects:
- If a price type has the unit price set to invisible or the price type is a direct successor of a price type with invisible unit price, the price explanation will be filtered in M.Sales.

Add prices and discounting to details table dialog:
- The detail table that is opened by clicking the info "i" icon next to each product line on the price tab in M.Sales is extended by price information. The same price type selection that was done on the price tab is respected in the dialog. By the menu on top right corner of the dialog the price selection can be adapted in the dialog as well. This selection changes the shown prices on price tab as well. Clicking on any price shown in the dialog shows the price information.

Enrichments for document generation
Inclusion of detail tables based on modelled conditions:
With this new feature the modeler has the ability to conditionally include tables into generation or skip them because it can be necessary to have different detail tables in documents depending on e.g. if there was a discount added or not.
A new section "Table conditions" is added for all table types in M.Model.
- The condition area works like filters and the modeler can use placeholders on the left, conditions in the middle and static values on the right.
   - E.g.: "Single price" ">" "0"
- During document generation, the condition is evaluated and the whole table is either included or skipped altogether. Same applies to the table being available to be displayed in M.Sales or not.
- Detail tables in the price table of M.Sales return with empty rows and an info about why it is empty (everything is filtered out or condition is not fulfils) will be shown.

Modelling Improvements in M.Model
New configuration option to define in which order product will be added in M.Sales:
- In the .config file in M.Model within "M.Core - Configuration - Multi modules" there is a new setting to define the order of added products in M.Sales. The options the modeler can choose from are:
   - Add products at last possible position in quote
   - Add products according to global product order
   - Add manually added products at last possible position and products added by rules according to global product order
When adding a new product this setting is considered and the product is inserted at the best-fitting position.

New M.Model option to allow clearing mandatory features during a repair of a quote:
- If the ruleset changed and a mandatory feature was selected in an previous created quote which will now be forbidden by rule or it is not available anymore, during the repair the configurator took the next possible attribute, as the feature is mandatory and must have been filled.
To have the possibility to avoid this behavior in the .coreconfig file in M.Model there is a new setting to define the behavior for these cases for every features. The modeler can choose between:
   - Value not expandable: Value must not be removed by configurator
   - Fixed value: Value may not be changed by the configurator
   - Flexible Value: Value can be changed by the configurator

Highlights

Improvements in M.Sales
- One or multiple products can be defined as start product. Additionally, it is now possible to define these start products as mandatory or options, the default is mandatory. Every start product will automatically be added to the basket, if a product is marked as mandatory the delete button in the basket is disabled, through which the product can't be removed from the quote and a hint is shown to the user.

- Cloned opportunities in genesisWorld are now supported in M.Sales. When cloning an opportunity from genesisWorld the user can now choose whether the linked quote should be copied to the cloned opportunity to have the ability to start from a copy of the  quote content instead of starting from scratch.

- For a better user experience, when using the product finder in the product catalog of M.Sales, there is now a message shown if a selected filter criteria leads to no results.

- A new simple omnibar is introduced in M.Sales for a quick access via the keyboard of main functions.
The omnibar can be opened by pressing "." on the keyboard. It shows a list of options and a search bar. When a hotkey for one of the options is available, this hotkey is shown as well. Selecting an option triggers one of the existing functionalities, e.g. saving or opening the catalog. Navigation through the list of options is possible via arrow up or down and an option can be selected via enter. All functions from the main menu of M.Sales are added in the omnibar.

M.Doc improvements and extensions
- The handling of rich text was improved for M.Doc. Having a rich text in M.Doc follows the following rules:
   - there is no difference if the placeholder itself is wrapped in a rich text control or not
   - paragraphs modelled in the source document must always be considered
   - font style from the source document should always be considered.

-A checkbox "Generate images for M.Sales for contained charts" has been added in the excel ".mapping-file" and pricetype, when calculation via excel is enabled. Only when this checkbox is ticked the contained excel charts will be considered and generated for M.Sales during configuration for all products.

M.Model extensions

- It is now possible to define several possible attributes in a single cell of a variant table. There are linked as an "or-rule". All values can be allowed as well by leaving the according cell in the variant table empty.

Highlights

M.Sales, Dashboard and  Quote View were improved and extended
- A new banner at the bottom of the quote view shows a legal policy and the cookies information.

- The quote parameter were moved from the menu in the configuration form to the quote tab. The quote parameters are grouped according to their category in separate areas.
The document print settings are in a separate column than the quote parameters which also contains the quote details, like versions and comments.
The quote parameters can be edited as well, after every change the user can revert or apply the changes.

- RTF variables are now resizable.
Clicking on the bottom right corner of the RTF variable editor to resize the whole field. Within RTF variables it is now also possible to upload bigger images.

- Vivi got a complete redesign:
When clicking on Vivi there is now a new Vivi menu in the assistant. There are dedicated tabs for the recommendations and the optimizations. But the user can also switch to Vivi variant analyzer via Vivi. 
New animations and hints make Vivi even more personalized and more nice and understandable.There is a new option to mute Vivi when the user get's too many annoying information. At any time Vivi can be unmuted again an icon symbolizes when Vivi is muted, which will forbid any pop-up.

- For more customization option the shown gadgets in the dashboard of M.Sales is now fully adaptable.
There is a new menu "add gadget" which will open a dialog containing all available gadgets of the dashboard with an according icon. The user can define which gadgets to place on the current dashboard view. Each visible gadget on the dashboard can be deleted via the new trash bin icon.

Highlights

Design improvements for the Quote View - the Digital Quote of M.Hub
The image display in the Quote View was redesigned, The mood image on top of the Quote View can be set via Merlin Settings in the section "Quote View - General appearance - Tile image". The Quote gallery contains all images defined in the .sudesc of the configured products. The carousels in the single product sections contain all images for the specific product defined in the .sudesc and all combination images from this product.

Further improvements for M.Sales
- The pagination and sorting was improved in aspects of performance and usability when working with many quotes.
- M.Sales supports now discount limits set via variables in M.Model.
- Using M.Sales embedded in genesisWorld got an important improvement: When pressing on "Save" or "Save and close" in respective genesisWorld window triggers not a "Save" in the belonging M.Sales quote as well which is available from version 14.1.3 of genesisWorld. Previously the quote needed to be saved separately and couldn't be connected to the mask of the genesisWorld object.
- For an even more simple and faster start into M.Sales a new gadget was introduced in the dashboard of M.Sales listing the top five recently used quotes of the user.

Extensions in M.Optimize Vivi Variant Analyzer 
- The visible pricetypes in the Vivis Variant Analyzer was adapted to the visibility of M.Sales, based on the definiton of M.Model and the user rights.
- A new button was introduced on top of Vivis Variant Analyzer to be able to navigate back to M.Sales without any changes in the opened quote.
- The navigation back to M.Sales in Vivis Variant Analyzer was reworked to get only relevant information about changes in the belonging quote. Additionally the user does not need to update the configuration in M.Sales anytime when coming from the Variant Analyzer.

M.Customer enhancements
- It is now possible to further customize the subject of the e-mail sent to the seller and end-user after requesting an offer in the enduser configurator M.Customer. Any quote placeholder known from the document generation can be used in the definition of the e-mail subject to use specific data from the configuration.
- Text variables in the configuration of a product in M.Customer can be defined as RTF text variables in M.Model. The user will see a special text editor in M.Customer to enter the text with many design options. This can be used for example to self design a customized text printed on a configured cup or the seats of your car.
- There are many new options for the shown text blocks, buttons and the checkbox option inside of the request offer page. Any text paragraph and button text can be customized in the translation table. The previously mandatory checkmark to accept the privacy policy before being able the request an offer can now be configured as optional in M.Model. 

Improved modeling of multimodule cardinallities in M.Model
In all situations, the admin can define what happens when a cardinality rule is violated because there are too many sub-products. They can either automatically be deleted or a lighting symbol can be shown in the configuration form and the sales person needs to decide which sub-product to delete manually.
Previously this was only possible for rule-based cardinalities. Tying a sub-product to a quantity variable is now easier.

MariaDB is the new standard database for new installations
For new installations of Merlin CPQ MariaDB is now the new standard database which can be changed in the Server Manager.

Configurable admin mapping for genesisWorld
When using genesisWorld there is now a new option to configure whether an admin of genesisWorld should be mapped to Merlin admins or not. The existing behavior has not been changed for existing mappings except the user uses the new CAS Auth Server IdP Provider, for this case the Administrator mapping needs to be added manually once.

New Inspection mode for generated quote documents
After uploading a workspace to a tenant being in  inspection mode, the generated document shows many new hints as comments in the document itself to better understand how the data was filled and generated.,
The comments show which text paragraph was filled by defined document placeholders, quote parameters and for prices all numbers are explained in detail. Thus the user gets many new information and can easier find and understand issues during the creation of document templates.

Improved Excel Export in M.Model
Within the interface configuration of M.Model there is a new category for the configuration of Excel export possibilities, Within these options you can explicitly which products, multi modules and which specific fields should be exported to which Excel file columns.

Highlights

Integrated Inbox app for Smart Design
In Smart Design there is now a new app available called „CPQ quotes“ which opens the dashboard in M.Sales, everything else can be started via the Dashboard.

M.Sales - Price table optimizations
The column „Name“ and „Material number“ inside of the price table in M.Sales are now fixed horizontally to better use the space for the table.

Product finder improvements
Besides products it is now possible to also include knowledge modules, offer parameters and activation rules when modelling a product finder in M.Model. 

New placeholders for options in M.Doc
Two new placeholders were introduced to print the difference of the price aspect total discount and the difference of the price aspect discount:
   - Difference of the price aspect total discount: %%ELEMENT_TotalDiscountDiff+TAB_XY%%
   - Difference of the price aspect total discount: %%ELEMENT_RabattAbsolutDiff+TAB_XY%%

Variable discount limits in discount rules
New possibilities to define discount limits are now available in M.Model. If variable discount limits are used, the smaller value of the variable or static value defined the limit.
Static limits can therefore always be used as a fixed upper limit. The following options are possible:
The modeler can define
   - a default discount, via static value or variable value,
   - to forbid negative discounts,
   - to show a warning if a discount was exceeded by a static value or variable value
   - the upper discount limit by a static value or variable value.

New warning dialog if a license is about to expire
A new warning dialog is shown on startup if any license will run out in less than 4 weeks to be able to renew it before it expires.

New options in the Dashboard of M.Sales
The previous Inbox was renamed to Dashboard as there are now multiple analyzes graphs and shortcuts available besides the Inbox.
The emotional startscreen with the welcome message is now available as an integrated tile in the Dashboard.
The layout of the whole Dashboard can be chosen and switched and the tiles placed on the Dashboard are now moveable by the user according to the chosen Dashboard layout.

New feature in M.Optimize Vivi Variant Analyzer
To be able to jump back to M.Sales without any changes, there is a new button available on top of the variant analyzer after opening the feature combination graph via M.Sales.

Performance optimizations in the configuration core
In the backend the configuration core many changes were made to optimize the performance, to make the core faster, more correct, more stable and easier to debug.

Highlights

New setting in M.Model to define which price aspect should be visible or hidden on which level of the quote
Each price aspect can now be hidden in M.Sales on all levels (attribute, product or quote level, not limited to only the unit price). In M.Model the aspects to be displayed are customizable.

Introduction of a new Maintenance-Service for archiving old quotes in the database
With the new maintenance-service for archiving quotes the size of the database shall be reduced and performance increased. With the following new setting "merlin_core_maintenance_max_quote_age_month", all quotes older than set in this threshold (default is 60 month) will be saved as a "merx-BLOB" (Binary-Large-Object) in the database and the contents itself removed from the data layer.

New options and improvements in M.Sales
- For a better concept to highlight what is important or changeable in M.Sales, several icons used in the configuration form of M.Sales have been overhauled for an even nicer look and feel.

- External sates can be used in rules for a detailed definition of the used workflows
M.Model allows to create rules with special external states. M.Sales considers these rules and displays them in the repair dialog, e.g. if the workflow state changes to "Accepted by customer".

- Product quantities can now also be set to a floating number for M.Customer and M.Sales
The floating amount of products can espacially be used in the basket, e.g. to buy 1.5 person days of a special service.
The decimals of the allowed floating number for each product can be defined in the .sudesc file in M.Model for both, fixed cardinalities and rulebased cardinalities.
The floating amount will be displayed in the catalog of M.Sales as well as in the quote table, all quantities can be entered according to the configured number of decimal points in the .sudesc. Even when printing the amount of products will be displayed in the way it is configured in M.Model.

- Quote parameter in price operations
For the case that discounts or prices need to be calculated based on the value of quote parameters, e.g. for national discount factors, there is a new option in price operations in M.Model.
Furthermore there is a new setting to forbid negative discount values.

- Refactored startscreen in M.Sales and extended new dashboard
The startscreen in M.Sales was mainly simplified and reduced by a lot of functionality. The goal thereby is, to have an even more emotional entry point in the application and to reduce the complexity when starting M.Sales.
Mostly all action buttons were removed and the user can only decide between two different starting options, creating directly a new quote or opening the new dashboard with the integrated inbox,.
In the new tile "shortcuts" within the dashboard the following three options are choosable "Create new quote", "Create new quote from template" and "Import from quote file". The other previous action buttons like "Show quotes", "Show Customer Requests" and "Show saved feature combinations" will be available with the next Merlin CPQ version (11.2.0) as predefined filters above the inbox.

Since version 11.0.1 and version 11.1.0 a new license model is introduced
Using on of these versions (or above) new licenses need to be generated.
- The previous module M.Variety was split, the dashboard is now part of the new dashboard and inbox combined page in M.Sales. The previous variant tree is now only accessible with the license M.Optimize which includes all assistant features such as "Vivi(TM) Variant Analyzer" and "Vivi(TM) Multi-Criteria Optimizer".
- The M.Hub license now only contains the workflows and commenting features. 
- The digital quote or quote view as well as the inbox are now part of M.Sales an accessible with the M.Sales license.

The new long term supported version of Merlin CPQ is now live!
Highlights of version 11.0

Introduction of the new product finder in M.Sales
- Most of the time the product catalog is full of different products. It can be difficult to get an overview of the matching products and to navigate through a long list of products in the product catalog of M.Sales. Therefor the new product finder will help users to navigate the M.Sales catalog using different filters. To introduce these filters a new ruletree ".productfinder" was introduced. Each productfinder will be defined for a certain group of products having multiple different filter possibilities to better find the matching product. The modeler can easy use the common modeling tools to define which filter leads to which list of available products. Here are some filter examples to find a matching car:
   - Set the maximum price (user input) the car should cost.
   - Set the latest possible delivery date (choosing a date in the calendar)
   - By using radio buttons the user can choose between different options like should the car be an electrical one or should it have a manual transmission.

New action menu in M.Sales
As the possible actions within the menu on the configuration form increased a lot the menu was split into multiple different action menus where options for the same topic were bundled. There is an action menu for all
- saving options ("save", "save as", "save as template", "export to file")
- loading / switching options ("load", "import from file", "switch version")
- adding options ("add product", "add free entry", "insert from template", "insert from saved quote", "insert from customer request", "insert from feature combination graph")
- collaboration options ("set owners", "share digital quote with customer", "open quote comments")
- switch configuration view ("show feature combination graph")
- futher general options ("start new", "edit quote parameters", "choose language", "switch tenant" and "about Merlin CPQ").

Enrichment in the quote view to be able to accept a quote
The new "Quote Acceptance Button" is displayed on the bottom of the digital quote if the quote state is "Waiting for Customer". An additional info panel is shown for quote states "Accepted by Customer", "Lost" and "Won".

Quote View and Outdated Rulesets
A sales person will be informed if a ruleset is outdated but the customer can still see outdated rulesets. 

3D Visualization in the Lead Generation application M.Customer
3D visualizations are now also displayed in the product gallery of the enduser configurator M.Customer to give the user further visualization options of the configured or requested product.

Extending the assisstant "Vivi(TM) Multi-Criteria Optimizer" by the unit normalization factor
Background: What does the Multi-Criteria Optimizer actually optimize?
If there are for example two different price types in the workspace, CO2 emissions and margin and the user wants to minimize the CO2 emissions by 100% and maximize the margin of the quote by 50%. Then the optimizer maximizes the following values:
   - (-100%) * CO2 emissions + (+50%) * margin
Now suppose that the typical values are 10 tons of CO2 emission and 10000 euros margin. Then the calculation above is completely dominated by the margin and the CO2 emisston are basically irrelevant. Therefor a better thing to calculate would be the following:
   - (-100%) * 1000 + CO2 emission + (+50%) + 1 * margin
Here, emissions and margin are roughly balanced and complete with each other in a meaningful way.
It is now possible to configure exactly such a factor in M.Model for each pricetype in the new field "Normalization factor".

Further modelling possibilities for the definition of cardinalities
Cardinalities can now have a default amount but also be defined as variable-based. If the variable is empty or not activate is "does nothing". Setting a default is optional which leads to the same behavior as the operators "implies as default" and "sets (unchangeable)".

Highlights

Highlights and extensions of the M.Hub
- Better collaboration possibilities
It is now possible to work on quotes that were generated by an M.Sales embedded in genesisWorld with an M.Sales that is not embedded in gW.
- New Quote Edit View
The Quote View has now a dedicated edit mode for the sales people to define more details about what the customer should see in the generated quote view. A new preview button in the quote view shows the final view of the quote for the sales people before sending it to the customer. The price types the customer can see and choose in the quote view are now editable. There is also a new notification after the quote was sent to the customer.
- New rights for workflow and custom prices
A new right to define who can edit the price types the customer will see is now available as well as a new right for each workflow to define who is allowed to change the workflow,
- Better integration between the Inbox and M.Sales
There are two new buttons for a better integration of the two modules Inbox and M.Sales. On top of the Inbox there is one new button to directly create a new quote in M.Sales. On the top left side of M.Sales there is also a new button to easily jump back the Inbox from M.Sales.
- New Co-Worker license in M.Sales
Users with the new co-worker license are allowed to load a quote, switch workflows and make price and discount changes as well as writing comments and see the quote preview via M.Doc live. But there are also some limitations as it is forbidden for those users to make changes in the configuration, to create new quotes or set quote parameters, change the amounts in the basket and it is also not possible to generate a quote document via the print button.

New features for M.Sales
- New marketing information settings
- There are further new settings to define on which level marketing infos should always be shown are should always be hidden and images can be displayed besides the marketing information as well.
- New configuration filters
All configuration filters in M.Sales are now displayed in a new dropdown. Activated filters are shown as tags above the configuration. Clicking again on one activated filter tag removes the tag and the corresponding filter again. The following filters can be activated from the dropdown:
   - Show incomplete mandatory features
   - Show locked features
   - Show recent changes
   - Show overwritten prices, discounts and attribute names
   - Hide greyed out attributes
- Discounting improvements
Discount strategies are now controlled only from M.Model. Some renaming has been made and strategies for discounting are now defined in a new M.Model tab. The visibility can be defined on different levels.

Predefinition of M.Customer quote owners
There is a new setting in M.Model to assign initial quote owner groups. On every M.Customer offer request saves the customer user as well as the valid selected initial owner group(s) are assigned. If none is selected or valid, the fallback group which is created in Keycloak is assigned. If this does not exist there will be an exception.

Showing charts in M.Customer 
Dynamic excel-charts can now be displayed in M.Customer same as in M.Sales which can be dependent on the configuration and change live with every configuration step.

Make M.Model better, faster and even nicer to use
- Faster login to M.Model
There is a new workspace specific preference in M.Model to remember a selected server to be able to login even faster.
- Customized display of single-selection features in M.Sales
In the context menu of single-selection features the display mode can be changed to dropdown list or radio buttons. This works only for single-Selection features but not for variables or workflow features. A small icon on the features in the feature structure of M.Model display that the default display mode has been changed.
- Easier modelling in document mapping (.docmapping)
Document mappings can be copied from one language to another. Existing mappings of the target language remain unchanged. Empty cells of the language are filled with mapping from the source language.
- Improved sorting of product structure in .clientorder files
When adding a product to a .clientorder file  the elements are now grouped by knowledge module and sorted by the feature structure order within each module. The names of elements in huge .clientorder files are now searchable. The modeler can search for the name of the element, which than gets highlighted and can be moved to the desired position.
- Better negation possibilities in .ruletree files
For better handling when negating many attributes at the same time it is now possible to either select the entire rule(s) or select multiple nodes from multiple rules. Via the context menu all elements can than be negated in the same time (when selecting a whole rule, only these elements will be negated which can be negated all other elements will be ignored).
- Mightier ruletemplate tables (.rtt files)
It is now possible to copy and paste parts from one .rtt file into another .rtt file. Even negations for .rtt files are supported from now on.

New Merlin Maintenance Service
As the Merlin databases are consistently growing as there is no deletion or archiving of "unused" and old data a new Merlin Maintenance Service was created which runs nightly for a certain amount of time to perform various cleanup tasks. If the service runs out of time, all tasks will be stopped and continued next night. New app settings are introduced to control the maintenance service. The first task is to delete unused files from the Control Repository, containing workspace files, legacy quotes as well as legacy quote attachments (file variables). Unreferenced workspace files are deleted by default. Quote attachments should have been migrated automatically and quotes can be migrated manually using the quote importer. After both are done, deletion of those can be activated as well.

Highlights

Extensions in the new interface files
It is now possible to define multiple interface files. Therefore the new processing order inside of the interface files needs to be filled. GenesisWorld does not need to be added twice. All server lists will be merged in the backend. The use case checkboxes in the interface files should be enabled. It is also possible to have multiple quote export configurations. It multiple files export to the same field in genesisWorld the last exported value "wins".

Document embedding via file variables
New file variable type restrictions can be set in M.Model for the type image, documents or all.
In addition there are new placeholders for theses file variables for documents. It allows only docs. format and macros will be stripped.

New 3D Vis File Placeholders
In the previous version 10.17 of Merlin CPQ multiple 3D visualizations at the same time were enabled. The old 3D snapshot placeholders have been removed.
New ELEMENT and STANDARD placeholders were created that allow
   - to print (multiple) snapshots for a given vis-file name
   - selecting which snapshot will be printed by position.
But the summary row merging for ELEMENT placeholders is not supported. 

Performance and Modelling improvements in M.Model
- Selecting a lot of rules at one ("select all") is much faster now (it increased for ~120 rules from 10s to 100ms now).
- Coping & pasting many rules at once does not lead to an M.Model freeze anymore.
- Searching inside the product structure of large workspaces is much quicker.
- Improved user feedback in bill of materials calculation table. Hint will be displayed if the variable to add is not marked as a post-processed variable. Material numbers are included when exporting a translation table to excel.
- There is now the ability to reorder arithmetic price operations.
- Additionally it is now possible to reorder tabs in .ruletree files.

M.Sales improvements
- The catalog mode in M.Sales is more compact now to get more information and products without scrolling.
- Attributes can be marked as non-discountable.
- The access to the application can be even more controlled by rights.

M.Variety is now integrated to M.Sales
To better understand the impact of selecting one attribute to your configuration and the further valid variants, the user can open the analyzer tree of M.Variety at any time from M.Sales via the new button "Show feature combination path". This button is placed in the ...menu in M.Sales. In addition after important configuration parts, the modeler can also define in M.Model when modelling hints to place a specific button at a certain place in the configuration form. The started configuration will be overtaken to the analyzer tree in a toggled-out mode. The selected elements will not be opened as single nodes in the analyzer tree but the content can still be seen and parts of the configuration can be selected to see important single nodes. Further features with all possible attribute selections can be opened and compared in a tree view. The cheapest or most selected path of other users can be visual highlighted and the best matching path again can be overtaken to M.Sales to finish the configuration. 

Extensions at the heart of Merlin CPQ
Product knowledge table now have three "rule generation modes". The implications, variant tables (new) and the combined mode (doing both the plications and the variant table at the same time)
- Implications mode
   - The modeler selects a subset of "conditional" columns. This means conditional columns imply non-conditional columns which can lead to alternative dialogs.
 - Variant table mode
   - Options which would lead to a (partial= configuration not present in the tables are greyed out. This will not cause alternative dialogs by itself.

Exlusions across products
- The modeler can define exclusions between multi modules. Non-changeable and changeable "define" with negated right hand side. This only works with attributes (not features or variables). Complex left hand side allowed but negation is only possible on the right hand side.

Highlights

Introduction of the new M.Model file type for visualization configuration (.vis)
The new vis-files allows multiple 3D views in the product gallery of M.Sales and M.Customer and one snapshot per view in the printed document to show e.g. different 3D views for the interior and exterior of a car. The new file type also allows to model different views for different languages and aggregates the visualization for a better overview. 

New Merlin setting for text field length
The default setting for every text field is 1300 signs for an Oracle database and 3600 for all other databases. If this is not enough, previously it was necessary to manually modify the database but now can easily be adapted via the new Merlin setting "merlin_global_max_textfield_length=<value>".
CRM parameters also respect this new setting.

Further M.Model improvements
- The print performance for workspaces with lots of or larger documents has been improved.
- A new standard placeholder for the Merlin ID is now available.
- There is a new setting to define quote parameter as optional or mandatory.
- In the new genesisWorld interface new filter possibilities were introduced. The user can define filter according to his or her requirements.
   Available conditions are: "Equal", "Not equal", "Set"and "Not set". All conditions are linked with a logical AND.

Screen readable end-user configurator and adapted DSGVO information for the end-user
M.Customer is now screen readable and can be controlled via the keyboard.- The user gets enriched DSGVO information in M.Customer which has to be accepted before a new offer request can be sent.

Highlights in M.Sales
- Some minor adaptions have been made to gain a more compact M.Sales with more space and less scrolling. 
- Mandatory CRM parameter are now marked with an asterix and printing is disabled if there are missing mandatory CRM parameters providing a hint text for the user. 
- The initial focus is set on input fields in dialogs. 
- Fill print-placeholder from M.Sales or M.Customer
- For printing it can now be specified if the M.Sales or the M.Customer value should be taken. Additionally there is a new permission for restricting it.

Highlights - the version of go-lives

Go-live of the new Multi Criteria Optimization
Using the new optimizer leads to the following changed workflow while configuring with Merlin:
The sales person will enter the basic requirements based on the customer needs. After all important selections were made the configuration will by completed by using the new optimizer for one specific product of your basket. The product is optimal for the criteria that matter to the customer. After the optimizer completed the configuration the sales person will fine-tune the configuration and saves a lot of time and can send out the offer way faster than previously. The optimizer works in the following way:
- In M.Model relevant criteria for the optimizer needs to be modeled as price-types.
- The optimizer can be started in M.Sales in the basket for each product.
- In a new dialog the sales person can choose which criteria to optimized by using a slider for each price-type.
- All unfilled mandatory features will by filled.
- Pinned features are fixed and won't change.
- The optimizer will try to hold features that are filled but not pinned. if any filled feature will change a change or alternative dialog will pop-up.
- Variables will not be filled by the optimizer. 

Go-live of the Rebrush in M.Variety
The following goals were achieved:
- Simplify the application and focus on the important information.
- Make the analysis tab more intuitive, more clear and easier to understand.
- Have a better and more modern design.
There was a complete overhaul for the overall application. The headers, text-fonts and sizes, used element and icons changes in general.
Additionally on the analysis tab the following things changed and were achieved:
- The amount of information was reduced enormously to focus on the attribute nodes and the different variant paths.
- Less colours are used - the colours are now only used to highlight and focus the user to special buttons and important information.
- The nodes in the tree appear in a really new design. Not coloured and really simplified and only having the attribute name inside the node. Thus, the needed space for the whole tree was reduced.
- Between the nodes there are line which can be highlighted by the new path highlighting options to show the cheapest or most expensive path in the tree or the low- and the highrunner,
- A new detail dialog appears clicking on any node providing the information which previously appeared on the node itself. The dialog is split into two parts to separate all information for the attribute itself and the information regarding the total path (combination of attributes which were selected before the attribute the user clicked on). The following information is provided:
   - Marketing text and image
   - Prices for the selected price-types
   - Occurrences
   - Path completion state and details about the amount of selected mandatory and optional attributes within that path.

Go-live of the Flexible interfaces
The new flexible interfaces give the possibility for an easy import and export of product structure into Merlin and the other way around as well as an import and export from and to Excel files.
- The product import from genesisWorld needs a mandatory identifier to recognize elements. There is a special currency handling for the price / selling price. Moving of elements is only possible if the parent has an import identifier.
- For the Excel product structure import there is not special handling of prices.
- For the quote saving into genesisWorld the quote-/completion state is not translated.

Further minor changes in M.Sales
- M.Sales shows now a hint if a configuration is in a dirty state, means there are unsaved changes.
- Via a new checkbox you can remember the tenant selection to not choose a tenant after every upload.
- 3D imaged are now persisted and can be printed in the document.
- It is now possible to mix different output formats for different documents.
- The notification area became even smarter and only show the latest relevant notifications and hides old irrelevant entries.
- A new tooltip shows the completion state for each product in the basket of M.Sales to better understand how many features are missing in the configuration to get the "checkmark" in the basket which indicates, that a product configuration was completed. 

Highlights

New options in the end-user configurator M.Customer
- In the template of the e-mail which will be sent to the sales person when an customer requests an offer via M.Customer a link to open the quote directly in M.Sales can now be added. Therefor the following new placeholder was introduced:
   - <a href="%%STANDARD_EXT_Sales_Quote_URL%%">link</a>
- To be able to share a link to your M.Customer application via facebook with a nice defined preview there is now a new configuration possibility in the configuration file in M.Model by defining the URL and setting the preview image which needs to be either in *.jpg or *.png format.
- Hint texts can now be added to folders, features, attributes and variables in M.Customer. Previously the hint texts were only be available in M.Sales. Now, when modelling a hint text there is an option to select the visibility for M.Sales and M.Customer. Thereby you have the option to model different hint texts for the different applications or to use the same text for both modules. The translation can also be added in the translation table.

M.Variety extensions
- When searching for a specific feature or attribute in the feature selector of M.Variety all matching search results ewill be highlited in the selector to better see the matching results. If the result is an attribute the respective feature will automatically be expanded.
- When opening the feature selector in an already existing and expanded column the selected feature will be on top of the selector and automatically expanded.

News from M.Sales
- To work even faster in M.Sales it is now possibly to toggle or untoggle all price columns at once by a new checkbox.
- If an element was discounted the discounted price will be shown on top and the original price will now be displayed striked-through to better recognize the already discounted elements.
- If there are file variables in the configuration form of M.Sales there will be a new checkbox 'Include files from quote' to check or uncheck whether uploaded files of these variables shall also be downloaded when creating a new quote document. In the metadata of these variables in M.Model it can be defined whether the files of these variables shall be part of that new option or not.
- In the product description of M.Sales excel charts can now also be added and displayed being calculated by every configuration step, changing the chart live during the configuration. 
- If a sales person entered all relevant user wishes in M.Sales there is a new option to auto-complete the quote by multiple criteria. All pricetypes will be listed in the new dialog and by using a slider the sales person can set different weights to all relevant price types to define by which criteria the quote shall by optimized. The optimization can only be used once for a quote.

Highlights

M.Customer - Release of the application design overhaul
We are really glad to announce the release of the whole rebrush of the end-user configurator M.Customer.
The following list contains a summary of the changed parts of the application:
- New design elements, fonts, text sizes and button styles are introduced on every page.
- The new product catalog has three different views which can be selected by the end-used.
- The product start page, before the user starts with the actual configuration is more emotional, the description in in a transparent background placed before the big emotional product image gallery.  - The summary page shows up in a complete new even more emotional design. The used space for the configuration information is reduced and the focus is again on the emotional presentation of the configured product(s).
- The handling of sub-products in the whole application was improved and extended. The amount of sub-products can now be changed directly in the navigation panel. The configuration details of the sub-products even with all price information is now also summarized in the summary page.
- A more intuitive and more emotional alternative dialog shows easy understandable the different alternatives the user can select. 

News from M.Model and M.Doc
Placeholders for summary row for all price aspects
- Previously it was only possible to print aspects from the summary row for the chosen primary pricetype. Now it is possible to select the pricetype in the placeholder. E.g.: "%%STANDARD_Rabatt_Absolut%%” or “%%STANDARD_PrTb_myPriceType_Rabatt_Absolut”.
This allows to print independent from the primary pricetype and also it is possible to print the aspects for multiple pricetypes. Additionally a new placeholder for the linked discount was added too so that now all price aspects can be printed.

Price placeholders for option changes
- There are new price placeholders for combined tables which output the price change in option items which are always signed with + or -. This works by taking the price value either from the option for added items or from the parent for removed items, multiplied by -1.

More possibilities in the regression tests in M.Model
- In the past there was only one root product possible when loading quotes in regression tests. Thus that one was always selected as initial context. Now multiple top-level products can be selected. To stay backwards-compatible the single top-level product will be selected as default. If there are multiple top-level products the user has to change that himself. That allows to leave the initial context just by ending the perform_in block and starting a new one.

Summary of some smaller features
- Variables were removed from the translation tables to reduce the data of the table.
- Label image for attributes are added in the translation table to define a visual indication which will be placed next to the attribute in the configuration form of M.Sales.
- The heading of the product description was removed and the subheading was renamed to subtitle.

New features in M.Sales
- It is now possible to also switch to a newer quote version and not only to load an older version of the selected quote.
- For options also attribute discounts can now be given.
- For the new „Green configurator“ price aspect names can now be translated to be used to display not only prices but e.g. „eco friendly points“. The new attribute label images in the translation table can also be used for the „Green configurator“ for a visual indication of the eco-friendliest choice in the configuration form (see also the new demo on our homepage: https://www.green-configuration.de)
- Old product structure names are displayed in read-only mode.

Editable dashboard in M.Variety
- The dashboard in M.Variety is now editable. The layout for the whole dashboard can be chosen out of a list and the displayed charts can be reordered in the dashboard by drag & drop, tiles can be removed and added again. 

Highlights

New possibilities in M.Sales
- It is now possible to upload files in the .sudesc for each product which will be displayed in the product description of M.Sales and can be downloaded by the user.
- For long lists in dropdowns of M.Sales, there is now the possibility to navigate through arrows and confirm a selection by pressing enter.
- The possibilities in the inbox of M.Hub are constantly improved. A new filter is now available for date columns to define a time range to reduce the quotes listed in the inbox.
- Some minor adaptions have been implemented to improve the design when using M.Sales on tablets. New tab icons have been introduced, filters and search fields got a new design and the needed space has been reduced by showing only one price type in the configuration form.
- The smart assistant Vivi is now also available in M.Sales. Vivi provides AI based recommendations based on what was chosen for specific elements. The way recommendations are shown can be configured in three different ways:
   - The highlight mode shows only a banner on the recommended attribute.
   - For recommended attributes with the passive notification mode, Vivi indicates to have new recommendations but without showing it immediately.
   - For recommended elements configured in the active notification mode, Vivi opens directly a pop-up showing the recommendation.

Further tools and new features in M.Model 
- The new operator "set invisible" can be used by defining a complex logical expression on the left-hand side with a respective feature, attribute or folder on the right-hand side. If the condition on the left occurs in the configuration form, the element on the right side of the rule will be hidden in the configuration. These elements will only be hidden in the configuration form but not in the summary or when printing documents.

- Additionally it is now possible when using the operator "set cardinality" to define a complex condition on the left side of the rule. These complex conditions can also be debugged an are part of the new contradiction report.

- Modelling the global workflow for the M.Hub require now a priority which needs to be set on the workflow feature from 1 to 10. The priorities are evaluated in the following way:
   - The global workflow state is derived from the whole quote.
   - The global workflow is derived from each quote entry individually.
    - The quote entry with the highest prioritized workflow defined the total global workflow.
These priorities are needed to be able to override a quote state by the global state of another quote. The global workflow state can still be used for user selection, which has the priority "5". It is impossible to trigger a conflict with a user selection.

- New group rights are available for offer parameters to have the ability to hide offer (CRM) parameters for a specific group. E.g. the anonymous group can be used to hide offer parameters from M.Customer. The default state is that all parameters are visible, they need to be unchecked manually to hide them.

- By the implementation of some memory optimizations the product structure can now be loaded very fast even from old rulesets without big memory spike. Only the requested ruletrees and auxiliary files will be loaded.

M.Customer design adaptions 
- For a more easy and intuitive usage it is now possible to delete or change the amount of added sub products in a configuration of M.Customer via the navigation panel.
- Cells of the new big alternative dialog with the same entry are merged, for a more easy understanding of the differences between alternatives.
- Marketing texts of features or attributes are now displayed in a new dialog.
- For a better navigation possibility on each page of the configuration form a back and next button is placed to easily jump to the next or previous page.

Highlights

New setting for the definition of maximum numbers
- To avoid database problems and issues with the precision during price calculations there are new settings introduced to define the maximum allowed number for the all Merlin applications. The default maximum number for prices, variable values, quantities and offer parameters is +/-10^9.
- If numbers exceed the defined maximum the configuration will not be valid anymore and the user will get a notification and the exceeded numbers are highlighted in the configuration for a visual indication fo the causing values.

New rights management for all Merlin applications
- Introduction of the new concept of setting quote access rights. For each quote you can now define different user groups or specific users as owners of this quote instead of the previously used definition to set a quote to private or public visibility. This can be set when saving a quote or via the new button "set owners" in the menu of M.Sales to change the owners of the quote after the initial saving dialog. 

New possibilities in M.Hub 
- In the inbox of M.Hub further filter possibilities are added to be able to filter for specific values like specific workflow states in a dropdown listing all available different states.
- The size of each column of the inbox can be changed to see the full content.

Smaller adaptions in M.Sales
- For a better overview when using more than one price type in M.Sales only the abbreviations will be shown instead of the full name. If only one price type is selected, the full name will be visible.
- As genesisWorld can right now not handle one quote containing different currencies the user will get a notification to be informed about this issue when trying to save a quote using multiple currencies. The dialog can be checked not be displayed every time to not annoy the user.

Enrichments in M.Model
- The operator "defines (changeable or unchangeable)" can now be used with complex conditions. Previously it was only possible to have a feature, a variable or an attribute on the left side of a defines operator. Now it is allowed to define a complex condition on the left side as well. When defining a new condition that is already fulfilled in an existing quote the "defines (changeable)" rule will never be triggered during a repair and the "defines (unchangeable)" rule will always be triggered.

- The activation of the recommender fo M.Sales or M.Customer has to be defined in M.Model. The model for the recommender was built by a nightly running job in the database, This can now be triggered to run immediately by an new option in the configuration menu of M.Model by the option "Recommendation model calculation". Within that dialog the user can also choose the tenant for which the recommendation model shall be built as well as the source tenant for the model.

- Fast loading of product structure from old rulesets without big memory spike is now possible. Less memory is used by loading only required files and further cache optimizations.  

The first features of the new Siemens Teamcenter importer are available
- The new importer allows the user to select an MS Excel sheet containing the product structure and optional rules. An html generated report shows which and how many elements have been successfully imported, which were skipped and which failed. For the failed elements further details about the concrete failure reason are available.

Overhaul of M.Customer
During an ongoing redesign phase the whole M.Customer look and feel will be improved to be even more emotional and stylish for the end-users:
- The area of the technical data below the product image gallery was redesigned. The information will be presented in a better overview with more space to easier focus on the relevant data.
- The change and the alternative were completely redesigned.  In the new design it is more intuitive to understand which elements were built-in and built-out based on the last configuration step.  The alternative dialog is enriched by many images for the attributes on the one hand and the combined product images on top of the alternatives.
- The summary page in the end-user configurator got also a complete rebrush. The focus is an emotional huge image in the background of the configured product. A new panel with the configuration content can be free configured in it's position, the size of the content is reduced and the fonts, text-sizes and buttons were redesigned as well. The background image can be defined in M.Model as default the first

Technical changes
- Merlin CPQ version 10.12 is compiled and running with Java 17 which needs to be installed. 

Highlights

Improvements in M.Sales
- In the price details dialog conditional price operations will now be displayed with further details information. It shows the description of the operations and explanations about which conditions were met and how the price than was calculated.

- Price precisions has been updated: In M.Model the price precision can be defined. This setting will be considered in M.Sales and all price input field will be validated based on the precision definition. The precision of percentage values can not be defined and is fixed to two decimals.

New features for the new module M.Hub
- In the inbox of M.Hub in which all quotes are listed with their meta data like date of creation, status and total prices, it is now not only possible to assign an assignee but also to assign a sales person.

- The global state of a quote can now not only be set via rules but also by user selection. For any change about the status the M.Sales user will be informed about tha status change during the configuration,

- The design of the quote view was improved.

Adaptions for the definition of default values in the attributes of the variables in M.Model
- Previously default values were set when the product was built in. But therefor variable with default values had to be activated at the time of build in of the product. With the adaptions the default values can now be set as soon as the variable is activated. Variables with default values do no longer have to be activated by te product, but can now also be activated later during the configuration. And existing default values still work and do not have to be updated.

Reducing complexity and increasing performance
- Impossible elements can be precalculated. The new precalculation feature in M.Model detects whether element of the product structure are impossible even though it is not directly implied by the user selection. By reducing the amount of possible elements for the whole configuration we gain increased performance by reducing the calculation complexity.

New features in the end-user configurator M.Customer
- The smart assistance Vivi got animations. Whenever Vivi has new information the user can recognize it via the animations inside of the face of Vivi.

- The colors used for Vivi, the recommender banner and the recommender panel (on the left side of the application) can now be configured in M.Model.

- The default size of the gallery on the configuration forms of M.Customer can also be configured in M.Model. The configuration possibilities are: "big gallery", "narrow gallery" or "closed gallery". 
But it is still possible to change the size inside of M.Customer, the setting defines only the default size when starting M.Customer.

Highlights of the new LTS - Merlin CPQ 10.10

Merlin grows - we are glad to introduce our new module M.Hub
With the new M.Hub module, we enable you to create a more effective order process. This especially refers to the apparently concurrent but still important processes, such as meetings, releases, internal checks and feedback loops with the customers. M.Hub functions as a collaborative module for quick and direct exchanges during the entire order process.

Here you can learn more about the module M.Hub: https://www.cas-merlin.de/aktuelles/faq-mhub/

Even more emotional - with the new possibility of embedding external videos in M.Sales and M.Customer
- M.Sales: External videos can be displayed in M.Sales as part of the product gallery. All images and videos can now be opened maximized.
- M.Customer: The added videos will automatically be played on the product cover page after choosing a product from the catalog in M.Customer. The video will also be part of the product gallery in the configuration form.

Further highlights of our sales configurator
- Showing recommendations in the configuration form: Recommended attributes will be highlighted green in the configuration form. The not recommended attributes are shown in light red color.

- Redesign of the price explanation: The design of the details about the price calculations was redesigned to get better and more intuitive overview of the calculated single prices and further price aspects for each attribute price.

- It is now possible to show quote parameters read only.

- For a more easy way to use, dates (also calendar weeks) can now be entered manually without using the calendar widget.

- Having a long list of different attributes within one feature the user has now possibility to use a filter in the dropdown of the attributes.

- Embedded M.Doc Live in qupte page: An M.Doc Live document can be opened as before in a separate tab but now also directly on the quote tab showing every change of the configuration form live in the generated document.

Improvements for M.Doc
- Marketing text and images can be printed everywhere in the document by introducing the following new placeholders:
   - To insert a product image in a quotation table you can now use "%%ELEMENT_IMG_Product+TAB_<XYZ>%%". To print the marketing text for an attribute use "%%ELEMENT_Marketing+TAB_<XYZ>%%".
   - To be able to print images in a detail table use the placeholder "%%ELEMENT_IMG_Marketing+TAB<XYZ>%%".
   - Within a combined table use the placeholder "%%ELEMENT_IMG%%" to print images.
   - Within free text sections use "%%STANDARD_IMG_Product%%" for product images and "%%STANDARD_Marketing%%" to print marketing text.

- Previously when running Merlin in Docker the side effect was that MS system fonts like Segoe UI are not available the print took some available fonts that often did not match the original. Now it is possible to define fallback fonts.
E.g. Segoe UI will be replaced with Selawik which is quite similar and the fallback rules can be extended.

New right in M.Model to consider the completeness factor in the configurators
- A new setting is available to define whether invisible mandatory features (which are no visible by rights) must be filled for a complete configuration or not.

Extensions for the Merlins variant management M.Variety
- It is now possible to select a specific tetant for M.Variety. After login to M.Variety you get an overview of all available tenants in which the desired one can be selected.

- In M.Variety a specific path can now be saved as a new quote and existing quotes can be loaded into M.Variety for further analytics.
   - One single variant of the variant tree in M.Variety can be saved with all additional information like variable inputs, empty selections or not activated note as private or public quote.
   - The saved quote can be loaded through all Merlin applications.
   - Existing quotes of other applications can also be loaded in M.Variety. But one specific product must be selected in case the loaded quote contains multiple products or sub-products. 

- Additionally in M.Variety the so called product impossibles are now filtered out. Which means all features and attributes from the product structure which are never possible  to select for the chosen product by rules will be filtered out from the product structure and the attribute selector to simplify and reduce the possible selections for the user of M.Variety.

Improvements and changes in the core of Merlin

-  All prices are now stored in a numeric representation in the database. The default configuration for prices is set to the maximum price of 10^9 and the default precision is set to two decimal places (example with default max. price and max. precision): 999,999,999.99). But the maximum price as well as the maximum allowed precision can be configured in the merlin settings. This new setting will lead to a failed saving when trying to save a quote containing a price greater than the defined range, If the quote contains a precision which is greater than the defined allowed maximum precision the decimal places are rounded.

New tool for contradiction analysis:

- A new concept is introduced to visualize which rule(s) leads to a contradiction. Using this tool you will get better support for debugging numeric rules, debugging of activation errors and debugging default rules and leads to better understanding of the involved constraints from the product structure.
The report directly links to references rules and the affected parts of the product structure. E.g.: rule A together with rule B leads to value C or build-in of attribute D. 
The supported rule files which will be checked within the contradiction analysis are: Ruletrees, Bundles, Rule templates, Massrule files and Product tables.

[MER-20746] - The impossible element calculation modes now identify every impossible element
[MER-22497] - For Merlin Cloud an issue was resolved with a RestService which was called twice 
[MER-22781] - For project specific price operations there is now the possibility to add metadata to price requests via extension points

[MER-22147] – Filter in the product finder can be deleted again
[MER-22411] – The price representation in configuration tabs is now unchanged
[MER-23100] – Reordering items in the basket was improved due to performance issues
[MER-23134] – Keycloak will start correct after a machine rebooted
[MER-22350] – Adding an initial default group for M.Sales quote assignment is now possible
[MER-22612] – The initial default group will be prefilled in the saving dialog of M.Sales

[MER-21696] – System offer parameters are now available in the product structure view of text elements and conditional elements
[MER-22814] – Manually filled text variable do not get overwritten by other rules anymore
[MER-23024] – The issue to import quotes with missing names was fixed
[MER-23061] – Due to performance optimizations mass rules files will now be cached 
[MER-23091] – Resolving performance issues during configuration for bigger workspaces
[MER-22914] - Allow dynamic fetching of images / descriptions for catalog items

Highlights

[MER-22748] - Fix that in some cases new only-with elements have not been disabled correctly
[MER-22764] - Hyperlinks are now supported in document generation
[MER-22819] - During configuration, a maximum request count error is now avoided
[MER-22995] - Edited prices do not vanish anymore after product duplication
[MER-22350] - Possibililty to add an initial default group assignment for M.Sales quotes
[MER-22923] - Created extension points for M.Doc 
[MER-22926] - PriceOperation interfaces have been moved to core.access

[MER-21831] - Now assured that there are no complex cross-product influences anymore
[MER-22549] - In variant-tables, new characteristics are now correctly prohibited after adding
[MER-22678] - Product table now recognizes changes in a feature if characteristic was moved
[MER-21991] - Pagination in the catalogue in case of a huge amount of products
[MER-22840] - Specializable factory for Price Calculation Contexts added
[MER-22263] - Improved manner how merlin settings are set in tomcat deployment