SoftwareCentral · New shop administration

How the new shop comes together

The new shop is three pages on top of the SoftwareCentral you already run: the shop itself, the approvals page and My Account. They use the same applications, approval flows, mails and deployments as the classic shop — what changes is how shoppers and approvers work with them, and a set of new things you can configure.

Shop, Approvals, My Account From basket to installation Where to configure what

1 The three pages

PageAddressUsed by
The shop/ShopModernShoppers: find, order, uninstall and repair software, follow their orders. See the user guide, The shop at a glance.
Approvals/ApproveModernApprovers: decide orders, see their history, set a temporary approver. See Approving orders.
My Account/MyAccountModernShoppers: their order history. Opened from the shopper's name in the shop. See My Account.

Shoppers and approvers normally never type these addresses. The rollout switch decides who gets the new pages when they open the addresses they already use, /Shop and /Approve — and the links in the approval mails. Until you turn it on, nobody sees the new shop. See Rolling out the new shop.

Classic shop The classic shop stays exactly as it is, and ignores everything on the New Shop settings tab. You can run both side by side while you pilot.

2 The path of an order

Basket→ Check out→ Approval→ Deployment→ Status back to the shop
StepWhat happens
BasketHeld in the shopper's session only. Nothing is written to the database, so an abandoned basket leaves no trace. Programs with order details ask their questions here.
Check outThe order and its items are registered, with the order details and attachments, and the shopper gets the order-confirmation mail.
ApprovalItems that need approval get the application's approval flow, and the approvers are mailed. Items that do not need approval go straight to deployment. An approver approves, declines or sends the order back; the shopper is mailed each time.
DeploymentAn approved item is deployed to the device through Configuration Manager or Intune, the same way as from the classic shop.
StatusWhat the device reports comes back to the shop: the card shows Installed or the status the device reported.

Three things change the path:

  • Install before approval on an application deploys it at once and runs the approval afterwards; an order nobody approves in time can be declined automatically.
  • Previously approved: when allowed, a shopper who was approved for the same application before is not asked again.
  • Uninstall, repair and reinstall never need approval.

3 What a shopper sees

Every shopper sees their own catalogue: the applications offered in the shop that they, and the device they shop for, are allowed to get.

Which applications those are follows from the same rules as in the classic shop: how each application is published to the shop, the collections and groups it is assigned to, its life-cycle status, and your shop settings. On top of that, the new shop adds shelves (Featured and Trending), messages, info fields, search tags and colour themes.

Why is an application not there? When a shopper cannot find something, ask them for a debug report from the shop's settings panel. It shows, step by step, which rule removed each application for that shopper. See the troubleshooting page.

4 Which device

Everything a shopper orders is installed on one device, shown under their name. The shop finds it, in this order, from:

  1. the SoftwareCentral client on the computer, when it is installed;
  2. the device the shopper chose before, which the shop remembers;
  3. the shopper's primary devices in Configuration Manager and Intune, when you use them in the shop — one device is picked automatically, several are offered as a choice;
  4. the computer the request comes from, looked up by its network address.

If none of these give an answer, the shop cannot open. See The SoftwareCentral client for why the client is the most reliable of these, and Your device for what shoppers see.

5 Where to configure what

ToGo to
Pilot the new shop, then give it to everyoneSettings › SoftwareCentral › New Shop
Shelves, glass cards, A–Z position, languages, install requestsSettings › SoftwareCentral › New Shop
Logo, title, filters, view, sorting, attachments, approvers' optionsSettings › SoftwareCentral › Shop
What an application shows and how it is approvedThe application's shop settings — see Preparing applications and Approvals and mails
Messages at the top of the shopManage Shop Messages
Extra rows in the details, findable by searchManage Shop Info Fields
Words that help shoppers find applicationsManage Search Tags
Colour themes and logos per themeShop Designer
What shoppers reportedShop Debug Reports
The mailsMail Template Editor