Advanced Hotkey Support and New Layout

[d-a-v-i-s]

Are Advanced Hotkeys working in the new layout for anyone? This post from March of 2021 says they're added, but I've been unable to get them working and support seems clueless. There's a hotkey menu in the new layout which implies they're working. The help center article on "Other Barcode Uses" has a notice saying that the scan action report is only available in the legacy layout, but doesn't clearly say the barcode actions (which are just hotkeys mapped to a barcode) don't work in the new layout.

The basic hotkeys, including Shipping Presets work fine, but the advanced hotkeys (and I'm specifically looking for "Read weight form scale" (w), "Get Rate" (r), and "Create label" (s)) all appear broken.

[d-a-v-i-s]

Sounds like the same issue. The barcodes we're scanning to do the Advanced Hotkey actions are just barcodes mapped to the appropriate hotkey letter.

I haven't seen the forced migration email yet, but if they don't fix this before they force us onto the new layout, it's going to suck. Was support able to provide any help or answers?

[pleasure]

We just reached out to support this morning after failing to find a suitable workaround on our end to gain our efficiency back. Last month we received an email from Shipstation with the subject, "Upcoming Changes to ShipStation" notifying us:

On Wednesday, May 5th, your account and all users will be moved over to the new layout without the ability to move back to the old layout.  

We're running into several UIX issues that have really slowed us down. The creation and initiating of printing labels seems to be a tad slower as well. Also, I believe that in V2 Legacy, when an order was Quickship printed (S) in the grid, it would automatically advance to the next order... which was very handy and now it does not. The typography and styling makes it a bit difficult to easily pinpoint important information as well. The V2 Legacy customer hover over history popup was helpful and the new layout tries to implement it, but falls short. You actually have to click on the person's name to bring it up, and ironically, it deselects the order from the grid layout when doing so... plus there's no quicklink to bring up customer's individual orders.

We try not to use the mouse as much as possible and the new layout just seems to be more mouse-required... unless scan to verify/print is used which is not a workflow that we've adopted. We do orders one at a time with pack/label in one step without initial packing slips; packer uses the screen as the "packing slip".

There's just several issues with the new layout that we're hoping we can get a rollback until they're addressed. We had tried the new layout quite some time ago and experienced similar UIX issues; after quite a bit longer in development, we had hoped that now since we were being forced into the new layout, that many of those issues had been addressed but here we are...

[d-a-v-i-s]

I've had a ticket open on this issue for over 6 months with no reply. It sounds like they're forcing some users onto the new layout with no fix as of yet. It seems to be a focus issue as I discovered just today while doing some more testing that some of the Advanced Hot keys (of which "s" and "w" are two) work from the grid view but not from the order view. More info at this link, if it's helpful. https://community.shipstation.com/t5/ShipStation-Features/Advanced-Hotkey-Support-and-New-Layout/m-p...

[Moderator-Davis]

Hey there! 

Thanks for providing this perspective for us yall, it is appreciated. 

I know that my team is working on this hotkey behavior thats been reported! I don't have an ETA for its resolution right now, but as soon as I have any update!

[service10]

Davis, I just spent almost two hours on a support chat with Austin D. about this very issue. He was none the wiser until I reported this to him. So, if support didn't know, and support managers we're aware of this issue either, what's it looking like that a fix is soon to be implemented? Heck, when can we expect an update? 

I mean it's clear that this forced migration to V3 has broken key functionality that has been reported multiple times via multiple threads. Even for months... WHY what this migration forced when the dev team clearly knew of the issues? This topic is over a month old with no ETA on a resolution... 

Seriously, some transparency would be incredibly helpful... 

[Moderator-Davis]

Hello @service10, 

I understand the frustration you are expressing here, and I am happy to provide all of the information I have!  

We are absolutely working on the reported behavior around these advanced hot keys. I cannot provide a specific ETA for its release, but I know that engineering team is actively working to resolve this issue. The moment I have any sort of timetable for release I will update the thread here so that we are all staying on the same page.

Your patience is greatly appreciated!

[d-a-v-i-s]

Since ShipStation seems to be forcing the new version on users and I'm aware that at least some functionality on the new version is broken, I had our entire team try the new version for a day and then took some notes on their feedback.

• The Rate Calculator/Rate Browser no longer allows you to generate a label with an origin different from your default location.
• The Order screen forgets your default scale, meaning you have to select it before you can pull a weight from the scale.
• Creating a new order seems at least partially broken. I had reports from our team that setting up an order in the new version failed and automatically dumped them back to the old version where it succeeded.
• Slow - Big complaints on speed from the team. The time between clicking the generate label button and the label showing up on the printer is at least double or triple what it is for the old version.
• Hotkeys - This is one I've been aware of as an issue for more than 6 months. Hotkeys sometimes work, Advanced Hotkeys are 100% broken. It appears to be at least partially related to a focus issue as sometimes clicking somewhere on the order screen will allow you to use a hotkey that was previously failing.

These are the issues our team has run into. I know from browsing the forums that there are a lot of other bugs we're just avoiding based on how we've implemented its use.

Overall, if ShipStation forces this new version on us without significant fixes, we'll have to look at another product. As is, it would kill our shipping team's productivity and probably drive them all crazy.

[service10]

d-a-v-i-s, have you not been forced to update to V3? It was my understanding this was rolled out to ALL customers.

We can confirm that ALL of the issues you are mentioning are backed up by our findings too... 

• The speed of V3 is very VERY slow and almost unresponsive. There seem to be some javascript DOM issues that create the windows and focus views. Focus is possibly created immediately, but the rendering is very very slow. (This explains overwrite issues later) 
• Times to pull up order details page range from 5 seconds to 15 seconds. Wiped cache, even reset latest version of chrome to defaults. Still horrendously slow. 
• In the new scan view, the page crashes MULTIPLE times when trying to process orders. 
• If auto funding is not set up on your stamps account, all orders using the scan view will fail if there are insufficient funds, meaning you must go refund your account instead of a popup allowing for more funding.  
• Scanning packing slips of other orders while in the order details view open will update/overwrite the previous order. This requires closing the order details view and then scanning the next packing slip. (INCREDIBLY SLOW)
• If you are using a scale to read weight, closing the order details view with the package off the scale will reset the weight of the order to 0. This is also true if you scan a packing slip while in the order details view. 
• Barcode hotkeys are INCREDIBLY buggy. 50% or less success rate when scanning. I agree I think this seems to be a focus issue where specific fields or windows are selected. 
• Read weight from scale completely broken. (Hotkey W) which requires physically selecting the scale and pressing the weight button with a mouse. Depending on the scale, auto time out will require a complete refresh of the page. 
• Advanced hotkeys / presets no longer function. 
• V1 layout hotkeys use capital letters, V3 appears to be using lower case, which broke all of our old barcodes. (Not a big deal CONSIDERING THEY DON'T WORK IN THE FIRST PLACE...)
• Batches are no longer automatically archived. They must be deleted as the "process shipments" does not close the batch. 

Again, some transparency would be very nice to have. We've been a customer since 2018. While we're not the largest operation, processing 20 - 50 orders a day is now taking easily 3 times a long. Our workflow is completely broken, and all we are being given is no ETA. 

It is beyond frustrating to spend hours on chat support with no clear answer as to what is being done to fix this bastardization of an "update". Just allow customers to roll back to the previous version while the update is fixed... 

[d-a-v-i-s]

We have not been forced onto the new update. I've become more active here  after seeing reports that ShipStation is forcing it on some customers. We are on the ShipStation Enterprise subscription tier and I'm assuming that's why we're not being forced into the new version yet. (But I know it's coming.) Thank you for that bug list. I wish ShipStation would provide this information instead of forcing it on users to discover all the ways their software and workflows are broken.

[service10]

@d-a-v-i-s, this is incredibly interesting because the option to roll back for gold status subscribers doesn't exist anymore. We were told that everyone was forced to migrate and that there would be no way to roll back. To find out that there are still customers on the old layout and it's literally something like an account status flag is beyond infuriating... It really goes to show just how much ship station cares about their customers. 

@Moderator-Davis, what are your thoughts about getting the option to roll back to the old layout for customers who are not on your enterprise tier? It's clear that the official shipstation has no clue what they are talking about when we are asking for the option to roll back and again, this whole transparency thing is really giving me some sour tastes. 

I want to continue using shipstation but we need some answers as to how to leverage this broken software...