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.

[pleasure]

We too are noting similar issues that everyone is pointing out as well. A couple of UIX issues that we like to add:

• Although "Group By" in "Orders" was "improved" by having more column options, it now requires an extra click to set "Group By" which is not an issue unless the "Orders" screen keeps forgetting whenever the viewport is refreshed (browser refresh or close/open) and thus has to be set again each time. (not major, just annoying)
  
  
• In Legacy, the last active "View" in "Orders" became the default when navigating away and back to "Orders". Now, the grid always defaults to "All", thus needing to click on a saved filter/view whenever clicking to a different "Store", screen, or refreshing the browser. Again... not major but just a minor item that has slowed us down as "All" is not where we spend most of our time.
  
  

@service10 given that some accounts are still able to switch back to Legacy, it seems that Shipstation is forcing migration on a per-batch set of accounts at a time. We've been customers since about 2015 so we were probably the next batch to get forced to migrate.

This "new layout" has been in development for at least a couple of years and we're surprised that there hasn't been much improvement on the fundamental issues since it was in "beta." We do a lot of development in-house and as far as we're concerned, this new layout should still be considered "beta" and optional for end-users.

From a development perspective, we understand that there might have been a need to build out a whole new frontend stack that was more conforming to utilizing their REST API that would align more so with their published docs... at least, we hope that was the main case for redesigning their frontend but seeing the xhr requests, it doesn't look like it. In fact, it seems their "new layout" is still utilizing several different backend APIs; there's calls to their new "ship2.shipstation.com/api", to "ss2.shipstation.com/apiV3", and to "ss2.shipstation.com/api"

They probably wanted to make things a bit more modular and make things a bit easier to manage/avoid breaking-changes with a larger development team. This may be why things are now "slower" because the entire interface is more REST object-orientated but it's built on a convoluted frontend stack and/or lacks efficient caching/speed optimizations. Analyzing the xhr requests, there's quite a bit of logging and session recording going on using LogRocket on top of what seems to be another event tracking service plus their own in-house event logging as well. Frontends that are heavily object-orientated REST API based can easily become bloated and slow if not designed carefully.

[d-a-v-i-s]

@pleasure I really appreciate the additional insight into some of the ongoing issues. Thank you.

[pleasure]

Ironically, we just received this follow up to our support request sent on Monday (3 days ago). Perhaps they shouldn't have forced migration on so many accounts while they were still pending issues...

---

Hello,

Thank you again for reaching out to ShipStation Support. Our apologies that we have not been able to respond to your ticket yet.

We are currently seeing unprecedented volume in our support queue which is leading to longer wait times. If you've resolved your inquiry or are working with an agent on another ticket, please notify us by replying directly on this ticket to help us work through open inquiries as quickly as we can.

In order to make sure our agents can resolve your inquiry as quickly as possible, please provide all relevant information in this ticket:

- What is the username/email address associated with your ShipStation account?
- Which store and/or orders are affected?
- What is happening specifically?
- What steps did you take that lead to the issue?
- Do you see any specific error messages?
- What outcome did you expect?

Thank you so much for your patience. As a reminder, if your subscription includes chat, agents are available for faster assistance.

- ShipStation Support

[service10]

@pleasure Thanks for sharing. We can confirm that our ticket as of yesterday was elevated to a senior support manager and within minutes elevated to a developer. This is a good sign, however, we still do not have an official response from Shipstation support on what is being done to fix these issues for those who have been forced to migrate. Rest assured we have absolutely pointed them to this forum post.

While we as customers should not be required to perform the duties of a quality control developer/test engineer, it's obvious that ShipStation has no sense of urgency on the matter as they have known about these issues for MONTHS. 

At the moment, continuing to update this forum with issues is likely the best chance for those who are forced onto V3 and experiencing these issues to know that other customers are trying to get answers... 

@Moderator-Davis I will ask again if there is any additional information you can provide? Transparency goes a LONG way here... It's very clear that there are still many customers operating on the old layout and that this forced migration DID not have to happen.  

[dallowayplace]

Well if this is the shipstation bugs thread here goes ours

• any filter with 'do not include' or 'are empty' returns garbage results
• creating simple but identical filters e.g. 'empty tags' returns different results
• shuffling the order sidebar cards crashes both chrome and firefox
• grouping orders by sku either crashes or takes >1m when it used to be instant
• clicking item name on sidebar no longer links thru to listings on some marketplaces
• refreshing stores takes several minutes compared to max 20 seconds
• left clicking a selected order deselects the row - a new UI behavior which all our users have complained about
• hotkeys not working
• barely legible order text in the sidebar - not sure why shipstation thinks critical customer info should be relegated to tiny light grey text but as we're learning they don't actually use the software for its intended purpose.

All the above have been experienced on multiple PC's using different accounts, isps, browsers etc. All the problems began the moment we were forced to new layout. Several of the problems were reported to shipstation during the trial period when we had chance to provide feedback and return to previous layout.

Several of these have since been ticketed but no firm responses, just the usual customer service brush off. Our request to roll back to previous shipstation has been ignored even though they have the option to solve our problems at the push of a button - but they refuse. We are now 90% migrated to our alternative (see https://www.capterra.com/ for good alternatives). 

We remember when you could contact live chat and have someone log into your account and fix the issues live over chat. Now, live chat is basically a bot that pushes out worthless canned responses. Over 10yrs with shipstation you'd think they'd really have to drop the ball to lose us as customers, but the response to these bugs has been insulting and we can no longer trust our business to people who rolled this flaming dumpster into our workplace and ask for money in return.

[pleasure]

A lot has been happening behind the scenes with ShipStation and all this probably started when they were acquired by Stamps.com back in 2014~ish. I'm not familiar with their internal operations, supposedly they initially still operated independently, but I'm thinking that over time more of Stamps.com management started inching in. V2 "Legacy" was a product of the pre-acquisition days and V3 "New Layout", given its release in 2020, was likely mostly developed in the post-acquisition era.

Stamps.com went through an acquisition-craze and snatched up a lot of the other well-known SaaS players like Shipworks, Shippingeasy, and Endicia. Latest significant news is when Stamps.com went private last year after being acquired by a private equity firm and then the CEO was let go almost instantly. There's likely a lot of management and focus-changes happening internally... don't know if the private equity firm being involved now is a good or bad thing.

The V3 release, a product from the Stamps.com public company era, still has several core issues and has been a troubled version since the get-go. Perhaps the private equity firm is re-evaluating, cleaning house, and will right the V3 ship; or... if this forced migration decision was part of the private equity firm's influence, then the near-future is likely more up in the air. I remember hearing talks about consolidation; given that Shipstation and Shippingeasy are both seemingly serving the same segment, perhaps the internal strategy is to combine these two solutions/teams.

[d-a-v-i-s]

Quick update on the forced migrations to the new layout. Our company is still on the old version, but I spoke with support this morning and was told they're planning to have everyone migrated to the new version by the end of this month. I haven't received the email that others have mentioned telling me that's happening, but apparently, that's still what they're telling the support staff.

[Moderator-Davis]

Hey there! At this time, we're committed to moving forward with the new layout. We understand there are some challenges for users making the transition, and we greatly appreciate your feedback so that we can continue to improve ShipStation going forward.

These improvements are part of a redesign that will keep ShipStation adaptive to the evolving needs of our users over time. So at this time, we are not reverting accounts back to the previous layout. 

For additional help getting started, please feel free to check out the following resources: 

• Webinar - Watch a recent demonstration of the new layout. 
• ShipStation Help Center - Step-by-step instructions for common questions. 

[d-a-v-i-s]

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[pleasure]

That's good news for the ones that weren't forced to migrate. So far, from the latest I've seen, they don't seem to be keen on rolling back those of us that have already been migrated 😞 It looks like they'll be using us smaller accounts to debug the "new" interface before risking losing large accounts.