Hi,

That sounds exactly like a solution one of our US partners is working on currently (it's for selling windows and it's little more involved, but other than that just about the same): It sounds like a product configurator, storing custom user provided information, plus a custom price calculation.

I'm going to walk you through the individual pieces, which will make up the solution:

Product Config

A product configurator approach is appropriate when you don't know the end config up front like you do with regular ol' variants for example.

I describe one approach to doing a config scenario in 4 Steps to Building an Apple-style Product Configurator with uCommerce. Basically you piece together your end product based on a primary "Configurable" product, which has secondary products, "Options", attached to it via relationships. You might also want to take a look at 3 Steps to Managing Multiple Basket Items as One if you decide to go down this path.

Storing Dimensions

The values the customer provides and which the price calculation in turn will be based on can be stored on the order line using dynamic order properties. This article will help you make sense of it: Dynamic Order Properties: Adding Custom Information to Baskets, Orders, and Order Lines.

Price Calculation

The final piece of your solution is the custom price calculation, which you can plug into uCommerce and override our default price engine.

I'm going to link to a thread that has the info you need, but first I have to mention that the post was written with uCommerce 2 in mind, not 3. It's almost the exact same process, but a couple of things changed between versions:

1) You want to register you custom price service in /umbraco/ucommerce/configuration/Custom.config

2) Method signatures changes a bit, but not drastically so. Just don't copy/paste code in from the thread :)

You'll need to access the order properties on the order lines in your price calculation. The basket is available via the order context like so:

PurchaseOrder order = SiteContext.Current.OrderContext.GetBasket().PurchaseOrder;

There's a forum thread that describes how to it.

Starter Pack

Finally if you feel you need more direct help in how to set it up we do offer a starter pack, which consists of 2x2 hrs of consulting with us on how to best use uCommerce to solve a given requirement. Basically I walk you through the solution in an online meeting and point out where to extend and modify uCommerce to make it behave the way you want.

Hope this helps.

Hi Soren,

Thanks so much for your detailed response - it seems very helpful. 2 final questions if you don't mind...

1) You mention registering a price engine. Am I right in assuming that you can determine which products use this price engine? The reason I ask is whilst our client has complicated products as described in my post, they also sell off the shelf products which should be managed from within native uCommerce.

2) How much is the starter pack? Does it require purchasing the product first? We would be interested in the starter pack, but it would still form part of our process of choosing the right solution i.e. at the point of purchasing the starter pack we wouldn't have definitely decided to use uCommerce (were certainly hoping to use it but it would be too early to commit before categorically knowing its the right solution for the given requirements).

thanks again

Al

1) You can still use the existing pricing engine. Whenever I override the pricing service I usually do it only for products I want to target and leave the default in place for "standard" products.

This would be the general strategy for doing so:

public class MyPricingService : PricingService // Inherit default price service
{
  public override Money CalculatePrice(ProductCatalog catalog, Product product)
  {
    // Check if we're dealing with something other than the configurable plastic product
    // If we are use default price calculation
    if (product.ProductDefinition.Name != "Plasic")
      return base.CalculatePrice(catalog, product);

    // We're dealing with a plasic product
    // Use custom price calculation
    ...
  }
}   

2) You can certainly buy the starter pack without purchasing a license, but I think we should start out by setting up a free online demo for you where we can discuss your project and I can take you through the product. If you feel uCommerce is appropriate for your project and you need further assistance we can look at a starter pack for you.

You can contact me directly at ssl AT ucommerce DOT dk. Got an available demo slot for Wednesday afternoon/evening.

Hope this helps.

is working on a reply...