Recap of the new features in Hive CPQ in 2024

The BOM features in Hive CPQ have received a significant upgrade in 2024, making it more flexible and easier than ever to set up and manage your Bill of Materials. These enhancements help you to quickly get started with detailed lists of raw materials, components, and assemblies to streamline your manufacturing process. 

Dynamic BOM items

In 2023, we developed a static BOM setup capable of handling multiple levels of complexity. In 2024, we added dynamic BOM items to simplify the setup. These dynamic items leverage custom logic to automatically display specific components in the list.

Unlike static items, which require an individual node for every possible option, dynamic items enhance the setup by populating automatically based on user selections during the configuration process. Our Hive Design Studio provides an insert script template to help you get started efficiently.

BOM output data

Enhance your Bill of Materials by incorporating output data properties, such as the calculated dimensions of materials that need to be cut. This information remains hidden by default and can be accessed through a “View details” button.

BOM table

A BOM table in Hive CPQ ensures a quick and easy setup. In an Excel file, define conditions and rules to suit your BOM requirements. Then, simply upload this file to the Design Studio.

• Visible in the Design Studio, including clickable links for node references. You can easily identify which node is being referred to. Missing nodes are flagged in the table, and when viewing or attempting to delete a node, the Design Studio highlights its usage in the BOM table.
• Attributes for BOM: Define key and value pairs to add to any BOM item, which can be processed and used by integrated applications.
• BOM table pricing: Define pricing details such as list price, purchase price, and sales price for BOM items in the configuration. Prices can either be static values or dynamic expressions.

The brand-new Repeater feature in the Design Studio simplifies and accelerates the setup of your configurator while maintaining a clean and organized structure.

For example, if you’re selling locks and customers typically purchase around 10 at a time. You can streamline your process by starting a group for one lock, complete it with its subitems and logic. Then, use the settings to enable node repetition.

This approach minimizes the risk of costly errors and makes maintenance effortless. It also adds flexibility – if you introduce a new color for your locks, you won’t need to manually update all 10 locks; the change applies automatically across the repetitions.

Empower your customers to customize their order by allowing them to add, remove, and reorder repeated blocks. You can maintain control by setting a minimum and maximum number of repetitions.

In 2023, we set up the foundation for sub configurators, making it possible for you to reuse parts of a configurator in a different configurator. This helps to reduce maintenance, by having one central configurator where you set up the logic.

In 2024, we optimized this feature. Sub configurators are now:

• Able to send data and logic to their parent configurators, e.g., so you can include it in the final BOM
• Insertable in documents, such as quotes or technical sheets
• Supported in the Hive API, using unique labels

Create announcements on the dashboard

Inspire, help, and enlighten customers on the platform they’re using. Share news specs, products, or updates that are happening in your company with your audience. Your marketing and sales team can help you set this up or add discount codes to trigger customers to buy more.

Publish announcements on your dashboard:

• Insert images
• Insert HTML
• Add (automated) translations
  

Generate a description of your configuration

Via the Design Studio, you can automatically generate a description of the configuration. This helps users to understand exactly what they’ve configured before they place their order. They can consult the description in the Project overview section. Additionally, you can choose to expose this to integrations using the API.

Visualization & UI upgrades

• Improved interaction between 3D and the configurator: New 3D buttons and settings, enhanced experience for the control settings.
• Switch between 2D & 3D: Easily switch between 2D and 3D views, allowing for a much smoother configuration process in the environment you’re working in.
• Hovering input fields: By clicking on a specific part of the 3D model, the configurator will open the input field to configure that part of the product, ensuring accuracy and improving the experience.
• Customize the look of your selectors: Go for large images, show or hide component descriptions and labels, wrap the selector in a visual frame.
• More improvements: visualization slideshow, extra font choices, theme settings for background design and for JavaScript editors, and many more!

As always, we’ve listened closely to our customers and their feedback on how to enhance the Hive CPQ platform. This year, we introduced several features inspired directly by customer requests. Here are the most significant new features we successfully launched based on their input:

Environments

The new Environments menu in Hive CPQ brings enhanced organization and flexibility to your workspace. With this feature, you can:

• View and manage your Hive CPQ environments in one centralized location
• Easily create new environments, such as a staging environment for testing new configurations or product updates
• Set up multiple organizational units, e.g., for each brand within a holding, allowing every brand to have their own dedicated staging and production environments, complete with unique branding, specific configurators, and tailored settings.

Product Store upgrade

By customer request, our Product Store has also changed over the year. Some of the improvements include:

• Link price catalogs to categories
• Product history search: Display certain components (e.g., width and length) to the search results for easier access and understanding.
• Exploded views: Filter components using exploded views for certain categories

Beyond the continuous improvements to our platform, we’ve also been working hard to make Hive CPQ easier to integrate with other platforms. In 2024, we focused on enhancing our standard Microsoft connectors.

The MS Dynamics 365 Finance connector, initially launched in 2023, was significantly expanded this year. It now enables seamless data transfer between the dealer platform, Hive CPQ, and Finance. Simultaneously, we consolidated the Business Central connector, and its first version is already available on Microsoft AppSource.

The key benefit of these extensive connectors is their ability to address specific use cases without requiring custom integrations for every scenario. This ensures faster deployment, greater consistency, and reduced complexity.

• Omnichannel CPQ: Set up your configurator’s branding and logic to suit each of your channel’s unique needs.
• Share configurators across environments
• Enterprise versioning
• More BOM upgrades
• More possibilities for customizing UI
• Further enhancements to the Microsoft connectors, more connectors available in Microsoft AppSource.
• Upgrade Salesforce connector