Productive discussions, the exchange of valuable experiences, and tackling the many current challenges in E-commerce—were just some of the highlights of the Shopware event that took place on January 20. Most notably, it provided a fantastic opportunity to explore the new features offered by Shopware 6.5. Among the attendees was the team from Salestube powered by hmmh. Here’s a brief overview of this incredible event.

Events like these offer a rare and invaluable opportunity to share ideas and experiences with fellow E-commerce professionals. This is especially crucial given the rapid evolution of the industry in terms of both competence and technology, not to mention the ever-increasing expectations of our clients.

Boost Day 2023 by Shopware took place online on gather.town. The event was designed to collect and exchange feedback from Shopware partners, including our team. Our objective was to come up with solutions to tasks that were directly or indirectly related to the Shopware platform, with the initial challenges sourced from Stackoverflow.

Throughout the event, we had the chance to consult with other participants at any time, which was one of the primary goals of the project. Our team contributed by providing 10 answers, asking questions, and actively participating in numerous discussions, adding valuable insights along the way.

During our initial search on Stackoverflow, we ran into some “obstacles.” These were not so much technical issues as they were related to the way tasks were structured and how communication was handled.

One of the main difficulties was that the questions were often too broad, vague, or imprecise. For example, when faced with a task described as “It doesn’t work/There’s a problem on my end,” it was challenging to address, especially given the limited visibility or understanding of the environment. Nevertheless, we managed to come up with potential solutions.

Many of the questions were framed in a way that made them difficult to solve. As a result, we often spent more time trying to decipher the underlying issue than focusing on the actual tasks.

Once again, teamwork proved to be essential in successfully tackling the challenges we encountered at the event.

While addressing each question, it was crucial to have another team member perform a ‘sanity check,’ something we regularly do when debugging issues. Additionally, another person was needed to ensure that we correctly interpreted the questions. This experience was a great test of our team’s communication skills, which, I must say, were impeccable throughout the event.

In summary, I would compare Boost Day 2023 by Shopware to a more challenging version of our daily developer consultations. Why more challenging? Because, in most cases, we couldn’t directly ask the authors of the questions for clarification, and the language barriers they faced made the task even more complex.

The major updates in the new version of Shopware include upgrading the minimum PHP version from 7 to 8 (specifically from 7.4 to 8.1) and transitioning from Symfony 5 to 6. Equally important are the enhancements to features, such as expanded API optimization capabilities and a simplified update process.

Several new functions were also introduced. Although these will be available in version 6.4, they were highlighted as key updates for version 6.5. These include Multiwarehouse, the shift from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch, and the ability to copy and paste flow configurations between stores using Flow Builder.

The latest version of Shopware brings a host of new features to the products module, which will undoubtedly make it easier for vendors to manage and utilize. You can now effortlessly add attributes to products, assign them to categories, and designate related products.

Shopware 6.5 also introduces several enhancements to the payment modules, including integration with new payment methods. This allows online stores to offer customers a wider range of payment options, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal.

Further refinements have been made to the shipping module as well, enabling vendors to better manage their shipping costs and delivery methods. It’s now much easier to set different shipping rates for various regions and select preferred courier companies.