If you missed the live demo of OroCommerce 6.1 or just want a quick refresh, this post is for you.
We called this release “B2B Digital-Assisted Selling at Its Best” for a reason: it delivers practical tools to help sales teams move faster, support teams respond better, and buyers get what they need, without forcing anyone to abandon how they already work.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s new in 6.1, how it helps, and what we covered during the Q&A.
Missed the webinar or want to revisit a specific feature?
Watch the full OroCommerce 6.1 demo recording
Making eCommerce Work for B2B Buyers
Many B2B companies still take orders by PDF, email, or even fax, not because they’re behind, but because their buyers are comfortable with those methods. That’s not a failure of digital transformation. It’s a reality that platforms should accommodate.
OroCommerce 6.1 embraces that reality. Instead of forcing change, it supports how your buyers already order and helps your team digitize from there.
OroCommerce’s AI SmartOrder reads unstructured purchase orders (PDFs, Word docs, even screenshots) and turns them into draft orders. Sales reps get to skip the manual entry and focus on validation. In the webinar, we showed how SmartOrder flags mismatched SKUs, detects pricing issues, and can process most orders in under three minutes.
OroCommerce’s AI SmartAgent gives buyers a faster way to get answers without calling or emailing anyone. It lives inside the buyer portal, understands natural language (even with typos), and responds based on the buyer’s role and access level. During the demo, SmartAgent helped a buyer compare products, check inventory, calculate tier pricing, and place an order – all through conversation.
Conversations introduces built-in messaging to the buyer portal. It keeps all discussions tied to the transaction they’re about (RFQs, quotes, orders) and visible to both sides. Buyers stay informed, and reps don’t have to dig through inboxes to figure out what’s going on.
With a new Customer dashboard, when buyers log in, they now land on a dashboard showing what matters most: recent orders, open quotes, spend trends, and personalized recommendations. You choose which widgets show up, what content is highlighted, and how to surface promotions.
Automating the Busywork That Drains Your Team
Everyone talks about automation. But in B2B, it has to be specific: reduce friction, improve accuracy, and make workflows less dependent on individual intervention.
That’s where the second pillar of 6.1 comes in.
Address Validation helps catch shipping errors before they happen. OroCommerce now checks addresses in real time (via UPS or FedEx) during checkout or order creation, suggesting corrections and reducing failed deliveries and returns.
Invoice Portal gives buyers self-service access to view and pay invoices online. It supports Stripe, ACH, and credit cards, and even lets users without logins pay through secure links. Finance teams get fewer calls. Buyers get what they need, when they need it.
Order Management Enhancements make the admin side clearer and more efficient. During the demo, we showed how sub-orders now recalculate automatically, new order statuses clarify source and state, and permissions offer tighter control over cancellations and edits.
Field Sales App equips traveling reps with everything they need to sell on the go. The mobile-first interface supports offline ordering, personalized recommendations, customer visit tracking, and price overrides—so orders don’t get stuck just because someone’s not at a desk.
Giving Developers and Admins the Tools to Scale Smarter
6.1 introduces a few major shifts that help IT teams and developers move faster.
- Checkout APIs and Workflow Logic in PHP: Developers can now define logic in PHP, making it easier to debug, reuse, and customize. IDE auto-completion, breakpoints, and syntax checking are now part of the workflow dev experience.
- GraphQL Mesh Extension: OroCommerce’s new extension lets you pull together APIs from OroCommerce and third-party systems into a unified GraphQL schema. It reduces API calls, simplifies data access, and enables cleaner frontend experiences, especially for headless or hybrid builds.
- Accessibility and Performance Gains: Storefront response times are now 19% faster. Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS) have improved, and accessibility scores across key storefront pages hit 100/100 in Lighthouse. These aren’t just compliance checkboxes; they improve usability for all customers, while boosting SEO performance.
- The “Golden Carbon” Theme: We also introduced a fresh storefront theme, built to be fast, modern, and developer-friendly. It sits alongside the default theme and can serve as a clean base for customization.
Have questions or ready to explore what 6.1 could mean for your business?
Q&A
We received great questions during the live session. Here are a few of the most useful ones:
Can SmartAgent respond in multiple languages?
Yes. The AI understands and responds in the language of the query, no extra setup required. You can also configure it to respond in English only, if you prefer.
Where does the AI get its data from?
Only from the data inside your OroCommerce instance. That includes synced product info, customer orders, price lists, etc. No hallucinations, no public data scraping.
What if the AI can’t match something in a PO?
AI SmartOrder flags it and prompts a rep to review. You can accept, adjust, or reject any field. It’s designed to speed things up, not take control.
Will this work with our existing ERP setup?
Yes. AI SmartOrder doesn’t bypass your workflows, it just creates cleaner draft orders that can feed into your existing ERP pipeline faster and with fewer errors.
Are AI features included, or do we have to pay extra?
For enterprise customers, AI SmartOrder and SmartAgent are included. No per-document fees, no usage limits.
