Operator retraining brief (CBX 4)
- Version
- 3.x
- Updated
A focused checklist of the concrete admin changes staff need to be walked through after upgrading — what moved, what a word now means, and what behaves differently. Use it as a training script. Companion: the higher-level whats-new-for-operators.md.
Only two things actually change in day-to-day use: how you edit answers, and dark mode. Everything else is unchanged.
1. Editing answers (the one workflow change)
What went away
- The "Options" item in the CBX admin menu is gone. There is no separate global-option library screen any more.
- The "assign an existing option" / "Reused Answer" step when adding an answer is gone. You no longer pick from a shared list; you just create the answer.
- The concept of one option shared across several questions no longer exists.
What it is now
- Open a question and edit its Answers directly. That single editor holds everything about the answer: its title/description (per language), price / SKU / weight, availability, image, rule, calculations, and any custom fields — all in one form (grouped into collapsible sections).
- Every answer is independent. Editing an answer's title or price changes only that answer.
The behaviour change to call out in training
In CBX 3, if the same option was used in several questions, editing it changed it everywhere. In CBX 4 there is no shared option — each answer stands alone. If, before the upgrade, you relied on "edit once, change everywhere," you now edit each answer. (The upgrade splits each shared option into separate answers as part of the migration, so your existing products look and price exactly the same afterwards — see the developer note on migration status in the answers-collapse deep dive.)
Terminology to relearn
| You used to say / see | Now |
|---|---|
| "Option" (the reusable thing in the Options library) | just an Answer, owned by its question |
| "Assign an option to this question" / "Reused Answer" | "Add an answer" (no assigning step) |
| "Global custom fields" (on the option) vs "answer custom fields" | one set of custom fields on the answer |
| The "Elements" list screen / title (the questions list) | now consistently labelled "Questions" — same screen, just the name the UI always used elsewhere. Nothing about editing it changes. |
Nothing about the customer-facing store changes — shoppers see the same questions, answers, prices and carts as before.
2. Dark mode
- CBX's admin screens now follow your Joomla administrator template colour setting (light / dark / auto). If your Joomla admin is set to dark or "auto", CBX goes dark too.
- To change it: it's the Joomla administrator template setting (Templates → your admin template → Colour scheme), not a CBX setting.
- Purely visual — no screen, field, or button behaves differently in dark mode. If a screen looks wrong in dark on your site, it's usually custom CSS your integrator added that hasn't been updated for dark yet — flag it to them (they have a docs section for it).
3. Customer fields: "Delivery" is now "Shipping", and email/invoice placeholders have new names
- Everywhere the customer/address screens said "Delivery ..." they now say "Shipping ..." (Customer Fields settings, customer edit form, order views). Same fields, same behaviour — only the word changed, and "ZIP Code" is now "Postal Code".
- The
{...}placeholders in notification and invoice texts have new names — e.g.{billingfirstname}is now{billing_first_name},{country}is{shipping_country_name},{vatin}is{vat_number}. Your existing saved texts were converted automatically during the upgrade — nothing to fix. But anyone who types placeholders from memory, or pastes from an old internal snippet document, must use the new names from now on: the old ones are dead and will print literally. The current list is shown next to the text fields as before.
4. Two things about questions and rules
- A question's type is fixed once the question is saved. A saved question offers only the types it can safely become — radio buttons, dropdown, clickable images and checkbox among each other, text box, text area and choices among each other — and shows its type as plain text when there is none. The answers, rules, calculations and settings of a question assume its kind of value; to change the kind, create a new question and move the answers. A new question still offers every type.
- A rule on an unanswered number no longer treats it as 0. "Width is below 5" does not hold while the customer has not typed a width yet. Where the old behaviour was wanted (show something until a value is entered), add the question's "not answered" chip with OR. Numbers compare as numbers now (2.5 is above 2.10), dates by day.
5. Nothing else to relearn
Building products, pages and questions; calculations; rules; taking and managing orders; customers; currencies, tax, shipping and payment setup; reviews; notifications; the dashboard — all identical to before. Existing products, carts and orders are unaffected.
Training checklist
- Show that the Options menu item is gone and answers are edited inside a question.
- Create a new answer end-to-end (title in each language, price, SKU, availability, image).
- Explain "answers are independent now" and the edit-each-not-edit-once change.
- Confirm existing products/prices are unchanged after the upgrade.
- Show how to toggle admin light/dark (Joomla template setting) and confirm CBX follows.
- Point out "Delivery" → "Shipping" wording on the customer screens.
- Show that a saved question offers only compatible types; explain "create a new question" for a change of kind.
- Walk through one rule with "below"/"above" on a number question and decide whether "not answered" should count.
- Update any internal snippet docs with the new
{placeholder}names; confirm saved notification/invoice texts were converted by the upgrade.