New XMPie User with uStore Functionality Questions

[Blanche Brantley]

We are new to XMPie. We have had online stores for years using EFI’s Online Print Solutions (OPS) but are now transitioning to uStore.

We went through six days of XMPie onsite training, and I have also gone through the online videos and tutorial to reinforce the training, and I still don’t know where to begin, as there is a basic overall logic or functionality that seems to be missing or of which I am just not comprehending in XMPie’s version. 

Forgive me, but I have to explain how OPS does things in order to explain my questions.

In OPS, you set up a customer/store. Then you enter what OPS calls the “cost centers”, which would be divisions, office locations, etc. for that customer. I’ll call them “Offices” for a more generic term. I guess XMPie considers them “Groups”? So I went to set up Groups, and I can’t seem to find any place to enter the addresses, phone numbers, etc. for the Offices. In OPS, when setting up an Office, there are also selections for allowing this address to be pre-populated into templates, using it as a delivery address, billing address and other settings. So Question Number 1 is: Where do I enter all this information for the Office?

Once you have these Offices set up in OPS, when a person registers, they choose their Office as part of their registration information. This sets up their Profile and puts them into the correct Office so they see the products they are supposed to see on the site. Question Number 2: It looks like we have to create a custom registration page, but how to go about that when there is not going to be anything to put into the Office pulldown menu on the registration page?

Assuming a person has registered and are using the site, when they chooses a customizable product to order, the information from their Profile is automatically pre-populated into all the appropriate customizable fields (You have to use system-defined field names on the templates.) on the piece (assuming that option was turned on for the Office they are registered to). I see in the XMPie instructions how you can make this happen field by field, template by template, but we will have hundreds of templates. Question Number 3: Is there not a way to set this to automatically happen system-wide or at the Office area?

I have several stores I have to rebuild and I just can’t figure out how to begin. (Yes, I have gotten as far as setting up the uStore.)

Any help or direction to documentation I am unaware of would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Blanche Brantley

Prepress Manager

MLI Marketing Solutions

[joe.pr...@dynamiccolour.co.uk]

Hi Blanch, maybe a solution to question number one, or a partial solution anyway. You can set global address lists on a per store basis. You go to setup and go to the delivery settings tab and then assuming you have shipping enabled, tick "Allow shipping address selection from a global list". You can then upload a list of predefined shipping addresses... This isn't exactly what you're after but I think its as close as uStore is going to get to what you want. Someone may know a better way.

I guess you could then take the values from the address list in your customisations steps as predefined values (using the "Take values from datasource" option in the customisation dial), but you're right this would be manual and arduous to do for hundreds of products... You might want to look into a solution you can apply globally using JavaScript instead. I think that could be done fairly easily if you're using consistently named Dials.

There is definitely going to be functionality in OPS that doesn't translate to uStore, but then again the same is likely true in reverse!

[Wayne]

1 is: Where do I enter all this information for the Office?

  Group Billing Addresses part of the Store Setup Under Permissions

2: It looks like we have to create a custom registration page, but how to go about that when there is not going to be anything to put into the Office pulldown menu on the registration page?

A custom registration page would required that uses the uStore API the user can then be assigned to the appropriate group automatically

3: Is there not a way to set this to automatically happen system-wide or at the Office area? 

This is a manual setup in uStore generally the pre population of fields is done via a Database Lookup.

    However is you have purchased the uStore API you can write your own Dial Control to make this easier.

    For example I have written a custom Dial Control to easily select or combine user details in a Dial

Hope this helps

Regards,

Wayne

 

[Blanche Brantley]

Thanks for the information. We will look into this.

[markb]

Hi Blanche, I ran across this thread today and was curious how you have made out with your transition from OPS to uStore. Have you found work arounds / solutions in uStore for most of the OPS architecture items you are familiar with?