For all these questions, I'd like to know if it supports these out of the box or if we would need to do some custom development...
Is it possible to tie a specific price group to a specific member or set of members? I.e. a specific company gets a specific price group. When their buyers log in, then automatically see a different set of prices and everything adjusts accordingly.
Are volume discounts possible?
Can there be a "gift message", gift wrapping or other items added to an enitre order?
Are there any shipping providers other than the SinglePriceService?
Does uCommerce have its own user account system? Where can we see those accounts in the admin area?
Are there any ways to export order information for loading into an accounting system?
Any way to print or modify an order on the back end?
Lots of questions there. I'll try and address them all in one go.
Jason: Is it possible to tie a specific price group to a specific member or set of members? I.e. a specific company gets a specific price group. When their buyers log in, then automatically see a different set of prices and everything adjusts accordingly.
Yes. You can configure as many price groups as you want. To assign a specific price group to a specific set of customers you configure a catalog per group and select that when a customer logs in.
Jason: Are volume discounts possible?
Depending on the complexity of the rules for volume discounts you can either have it work out of the box using variants or do code that is run whenever a customer adds a product to the basket.
Jason: Can there be a "gift message", gift wrapping or other items added to an enitre order?
Yes. You can do this a couple of different ways: Either by creating products specific to the value adds, with custom order lines, or just by adding a dynamic order property to indicate the selection made of text entered by the customer.
Jason: Are there any shipping providers other than the SinglePriceService?
Not at this point. They are very simple to implement though.
Jason: Does uCommerce have its own user account system? Where can we see those accounts in the admin area?
No. We integrate with Umbraco to handle users and members (customers).
Jason: Are there any ways to export order information for loading into an accounting system?
We have a prototype of a product we call uConnect. It does export orders today, but it's not part of the standard product. If you're interested I'd be happy to enroll you in the beta for uConnect.
Jason: Any way to print or modify an order on the back end?
Printing, no, but we support extensions of the uCommerce Admin UIs so you can add your own printing support. I know of multiple solution partners who have created something similar.
You can do some modification of orders in the backend but it mostly relates to order flow, not changing the order data. Again you can hook into the UIs and extend them if you need this functionality. Usually this type of functionality is best left to a backend processing system, but as I said you can add it to uCommerce.
Jason: Is there a way to offer different shipping options to different users?
No. Shipping options are tied to individual stores. If you can work your customers into segments, think B2B, B2C or gold, silver, and bronze, you could create a store specific to each segment which would enable you to have different shipping methods configured.
A workaround would be to use the additional fields on the shipping method for differentiating shipping method from each other, e.g. use the short description field to hold customer binding information. A bit hacky though :)
Jason: Is it possible to make the variants always add $5.00 to the price of the product instead of having to enter the price for each product explicitly?
So the variant price would always be added to the product family price? That's actually pretty easy to achieve. We've got a nice extension point for calculating pricing. If you hook in there you can modify the default pricing behavior of uCommerce and have it reflect the rule you describe.
Jason: So if the members uses the standard Umbraco members, why is there no Member Types or Member Groups in the demo store install?
That's because you decide which types and groups you want to work with and configure uCommerce to reflect that choice. Basically you can have uCommerce create members for you whenever a customer checks out.
Jason:Also, how hard is importing a list of products/categories from another eCommerce system?
You have a couple of different options for that. 1) Go through our API. The article uCommerce How To: Create A Product Using The API will be useful to understand what that entails. 2) Use straight SQL integration with a product SQL Server Integration Services.
Jason: Are there any guides or tutorials for creating a dynamic order property?
Jason: Any tutorials on creating a custom shipping provider?
No, but I'l make sure and create that particular piece of documentation. You'll need to implement implement IShippingMethodService and register it in your web.config. With that in place it will be available from the uCommerce Admin UI.
Hi Elvin, You can do whatever you'd like to do in all versions of uCommerce in terms of extension and replacing (of what is available of course). It's only the out-of-the-box features that are limited in the free and pro version. You can see the feature set here.: http://www.ucommerce.net/en/products.aspx
If you want to know about specific features, can you please elaborate a little? Just so it's perfect clear what i say yes to ;)
I haven't got any reply to this so I thought I'll ask again. Does the Free version of Ucommerce allow you to customise Cart Calculations, Variable Shipping costs, etc..
If anyone has can provide me with any information, that will be awesome.
Thanks for getting back, I obviously wasn't reading because you did reply. I do apologise. Basically, I'm just trying to analyse and evaluate the capabilities of uCommerce without actually having to purchase a license. So, let me get this straight, you're saying it's absolutely possible to overwrite or rejig a Free version of uCommerce to do basically whatever you want and not be restricted in any way right? And that, the difference between a free and a paid version would be the out-of-the-box features, right?
Yes that is correct. You can do what you want to do (wihtin the capabilities of uCommerce of course). If you have an upcomming project and / or just looking to evalute the project, I'd be happy to schedule you in for a demo of the platform. Then we can take all the questions you may have in order to help you in your decisions.
If so, please feel free to send me an email at: msk at ucommerce dot net
Questions About uCommerce Features
For all these questions, I'd like to know if it supports these out of the box or if we would need to do some custom development...
Is it possible to tie a specific price group to a specific member or set of members? I.e. a specific company gets a specific price group. When their buyers log in, then automatically see a different set of prices and everything adjusts accordingly.
Are volume discounts possible?
Can there be a "gift message", gift wrapping or other items added to an enitre order?
Are there any shipping providers other than the SinglePriceService?
Does uCommerce have its own user account system? Where can we see those accounts in the admin area?
Are there any ways to export order information for loading into an accounting system?
Any way to print or modify an order on the back end?
Is there a way to offer different shipping options to different users?
Is it possible to make the variants always add $5.00 to the price of the product instead of having to enter the price for each product explicitly?
Lots of questions there. I'll try and address them all in one go.
Jason: Is it possible to tie a specific price group to a specific member or set of members? I.e. a specific company gets a specific price group. When their buyers log in, then automatically see a different set of prices and everything adjusts accordingly.
Yes. You can configure as many price groups as you want. To assign a specific price group to a specific set of customers you configure a catalog per group and select that when a customer logs in.
Jason: Are volume discounts possible?
Depending on the complexity of the rules for volume discounts you can either have it work out of the box using variants or do code that is run whenever a customer adds a product to the basket.
Jason: Can there be a "gift message", gift wrapping or other items added to an enitre order?
Yes. You can do this a couple of different ways: Either by creating products specific to the value adds, with custom order lines, or just by adding a dynamic order property to indicate the selection made of text entered by the customer.
Jason: Are there any shipping providers other than the SinglePriceService?
Not at this point. They are very simple to implement though.
Jason: Does uCommerce have its own user account system? Where can we see those accounts in the admin area?
No. We integrate with Umbraco to handle users and members (customers).
Jason: Are there any ways to export order information for loading into an accounting system?
We have a prototype of a product we call uConnect. It does export orders today, but it's not part of the standard product. If you're interested I'd be happy to enroll you in the beta for uConnect.
Jason: Any way to print or modify an order on the back end?
Printing, no, but we support extensions of the uCommerce Admin UIs so you can add your own printing support. I know of multiple solution partners who have created something similar.
You can do some modification of orders in the backend but it mostly relates to order flow, not changing the order data. Again you can hook into the UIs and extend them if you need this functionality. Usually this type of functionality is best left to a backend processing system, but as I said you can add it to uCommerce.
Jason: Is there a way to offer different shipping options to different users?
No. Shipping options are tied to individual stores. If you can work your customers into segments, think B2B, B2C or gold, silver, and bronze, you could create a store specific to each segment which would enable you to have different shipping methods configured.
A workaround would be to use the additional fields on the shipping method for differentiating shipping method from each other, e.g. use the short description field to hold customer binding information. A bit hacky though :)
Jason: Is it possible to make the variants always add $5.00 to the price of the product instead of having to enter the price for each product explicitly?
So the variant price would always be added to the product family price? That's actually pretty easy to achieve. We've got a nice extension point for calculating pricing. If you hook in there you can modify the default pricing behavior of uCommerce and have it reflect the rule you describe.
Thanks for the quick response!
So if the members uses the standard Umbraco members, why is there no Member Types or Member Groups in the demo store install?
Also, how hard is importing a list of products/categories from another eCommerce system?
Are there any guides or tutorials for creating a dynamic order property?
Any tutorials on creating a custom shipping provider?
Thanks,
Jason
Jason: So if the members uses the standard Umbraco members, why is there no Member Types or Member Groups in the demo store install?
That's because you decide which types and groups you want to work with and configure uCommerce to reflect that choice. Basically you can have uCommerce create members for you whenever a customer checks out.
Jason:Also, how hard is importing a list of products/categories from another eCommerce system?
You have a couple of different options for that. 1) Go through our API. The article uCommerce How To: Create A Product Using The API will be useful to understand what that entails. 2) Use straight SQL integration with a product SQL Server Integration Services.
Jason: Are there any guides or tutorials for creating a dynamic order property?
It's very straightforward. From XSLT you do CommerceLibrary:SetOrderProperty('MyProperty', 'MyPropertyValue'). If you need to set a dynamic order property on individual order lines you use CommerceLibrary:SetOrderProperty(index, 'MyProperty', 'MyPropertyValue') or from .NET purchaseOrder["MyProperty"] = "MyValue";
Jason: Any tutorials on creating a custom shipping provider?
No, but I'l make sure and create that particular piece of documentation. You'll need to implement implement IShippingMethodService and register it in your web.config. With that in place it will be available from the uCommerce Admin UI.
Awesome. Thanks for the detailed responses!
Glad to be of assistance :)
Are these all possible with the free version of Ucommerce? Is it possible to fully customise/extend a free version of Ucommerce?
Hi Elvin, You can do whatever you'd like to do in all versions of uCommerce in terms of extension and replacing (of what is available of course). It's only the out-of-the-box features that are limited in the free and pro version. You can see the feature set here.: http://www.ucommerce.net/en/products.aspx
If you want to know about specific features, can you please elaborate a little? Just so it's perfect clear what i say yes to ;)
Best regards
Morten
Hi,
I haven't got any reply to this so I thought I'll ask again. Does the Free version of Ucommerce allow you to customise Cart Calculations, Variable Shipping costs, etc..
If anyone has can provide me with any information, that will be awesome.
Hi Elvin. Yes. It is possible.
Hi Morten,
Thanks for getting back, I obviously wasn't reading because you did reply. I do apologise. Basically, I'm just trying to analyse and evaluate the capabilities of uCommerce without actually having to purchase a license. So, let me get this straight, you're saying it's absolutely possible to overwrite or rejig a Free version of uCommerce to do basically whatever you want and not be restricted in any way right? And that, the difference between a free and a paid version would be the out-of-the-box features, right?
Yes that is correct. You can do what you want to do (wihtin the capabilities of uCommerce of course). If you have an upcomming project and / or just looking to evalute the project, I'd be happy to schedule you in for a demo of the platform. Then we can take all the questions you may have in order to help you in your decisions.
If so, please feel free to send me an email at: msk at ucommerce dot net
Then we can take it from there.
Best regards
Morten
Thanks Morten, appreciate that. I will definitely get in touch should there be anything.
Cheers,
Elvin
is working on a reply...