The upcoming Magento 2.3.4 release will be available late January and will be the first quarterly upgrade of 2020. This upgrade covers hundreds of bug fixes, enhancements to security and performance, feature updates to core functionality and more.
Here is an overview of the key updates and what to look out for, with a focus on Magento Commerce 2.3.4.
Security Enhancements
Magento 2.3.4 comes with over 30 security enhancements for retailer’s online stores to prevent exploitation of customer information or takeover of admin sessions.
These security enhancements include:
- Removal of custom layout updates and the deprecation of layout updates to remove the opportunity for Remote Code Execution (RCE).
- Redesigned content template features so that only whitelisted variables can be added to the templates.
Along with this update, Magento always recommends that online retailers are diligent and take action to minimise risk further, such as “IP whitelisting, two-factor authentication, use of a VPN, the use of a unique location rather than /admin, and good password hygiene”.
Performance Boosts
Magento 2.3.4 also has several boosts to performance which can improve speed, efficiency and structure.
These performance boosts include:
- 250 enhancements to core quality, which improve the quality of the Framework and these modules: catalog, sales, PayPal, Elasticsearch, import, CMS, and B2B.
- Elimination of redundant non-cached requests to the server on catalog pages.
- Refactoring of PHTML files to better support parsing by the bundling mechanism.
- Addition of the ability to disable statistic collecting for Reports module by default.
Updates to Page Builder
Magento’s Page Builder also benefits from key enhancements in Magento 2.3.4, with a number of upgrades to improve usability and functionality.
These updates include:
- Improved product sorting.
- Improved product carousel.
- Optimised content for rendering on the storefront using the Venia Theme (PWA Studio).
New B2B Features
Magento has strong functionality for B2B retailers, and Magento 2.3.4 comes with added features that allow online retailers to fully maximise their B2B offering.
These new features include:
- Ability to export requisition lists into CSV format.
- Granular ACLs for B2B modules.
- Over 20 further enhancements and platform fixes.
You can read the full list of B2B enhancements in Magento’s release notes.
Inventory Management Enhancements
Magento 2.3.4 enhances inventory management functionality, including fixes to well known performance issues and GraphQL bug fixes.
These inventory management enhancements include:
- Addressed issue with higher than expected loads on the database server in scenarios involving the shopping cart.
- Update to the Inventory Reversations CLI command to reduce memory usage.
- Update to multiple quality issues, relating to credit memos, grouped products, source and stock mass actions.
Read Magento’s detailed release notes for inventory management for more information.
Live Chat Powered by dotdigital
dotdigital also sees an update in Magento 2.3.4 with their live chat tool. All Magento 2.3.x merchants will receive a free live chat agent, powered by dotdigital – even if the merchant is not a dotdigital Engagement Cloud customer.
Improved GraphQL
GraphQL is improved with Magento 2.3.4 tool, with improved coverage on search, layered navigation and cart functionality.
These bug fixes include:
- Linking of carts to customers for multiple devices.
- Improved return of pricing data for rendering on storefronts.
- Fixes to product tax and product level discount information.
- Promotion data in cart.
- Line item and cart level discounts.
- Category filtering by ID, name or SLUG.
- Filtering by customer attributes in layered navigation.
Magento has released detailed release notes on GraphQL bug fixes.
Hundreds of Bug Fixes
This release also fixes hundreds of known issues within Magento that merchants and agencies have reported.
This includes fixes for:
- Infrastructure and code cleanup.
- Installation, upgrade and deployment.
- User interface.
- Analytics and reporting.
- Cart and checkout.
- Catalogues and orders.
- Product bundling.
- B2B features and functionality.
- Customer management and reviews.
- Payments.
- Search.
- Shipping and tax.
Magento 2.3.4 Release
Magento 2.3.4 will be available on January 28, with pre-release available on January 14.
If you’re in need of an experienced Magento agency to support your patches and upgrades on the platform, get in touch.
