[ic] Preorder & Stock Alert Question

Dave Barr dave.barr@cricinfo.com
Tue, 3 Oct 2000 11:53:04 +0100


Debian 2.2.17, MySQL 3.22.32, IC 4.5.6 (latest CVS), perl 5.005, patch 03

Hi,
This is mainly pointed at the developers in Akopia and have a quick 
question about the Pre Order and Stock Alert functions, I notice that 
with Interchange and the Construct Demo they are available when an 
item reaches an inventory level of "0"... great idea! We're in the 
process of setting up business rules with our main fulfilment house 
and having a Preorder/Backorder system will be invaluable. However 
(as I'm sure you are aware) they have not been fully implemented;

Preorder works as a normal order with the status ending up as the 
norm of "pending" instead of "Back Ordered" which makes sense with a 
multi-item order, but not per se with a single item order. The 1st 
conformation eMail makes no mention of this either (that any item on 
order is back ordered) and it is a manual process of amending the 
order per line via Admin (which works well, bar the fact that Billing 
Country 'disappears' when a partially shipped conformation eMail is 
sent [?]) which allows the customer to see the state of their order.

Maybe (like Amazon...pleeugh) a partial ship of order routine could 
be built in?
I guess that's me being pedantic again [sorry]...

I realise this is a minefield subject, and am not making a complaint 
[honest], its a fantastic start and am merely trying to understand 
where this will be heading as I will have to automate alot of this as 
we will not be doing fulfilment in-house and will be sending data 
back and forth between the third party fulfilment house and our 
remote cart server... joy  ;)

As for the Stock Alert, it sends a conformation mail and that is 
where that ends...(i.e. no writing of data to userdb) I guess 
(hopefully) this will be added to the userdb and be activated by 
"Alerts and Recalls" under mail_list in the customer control section 
of Admin?.. Or do you have other ideas?

Enuff waffling, sorry for the long mail, if anyone has any comments 
or have been working on similar ideas I would grateful to hear about 
them.

Many regards
Dave





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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dave Barr        eCommerce Technical Manager      CricInfo Ltd
www.cricinfo.com   dave.barr@cricinfo.com    Tel: 01249 700748
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