Solution Implementation Ideas needed

[twalls]

Looking for ideas on how to implement a solution in Actinic.

I have around 300 base products i.e

FT1001
FT1002
FT1003
.....

And these are ordered differently i.e.

FordFT1001
FordFT1002
HondaFT1001
HondaFT1002
HondaFT1003

This produces around 1500 products which can be ordered.

The products have attributes: Name, Length, Width, colour and a customer might not know all the attributes.

My thoughts are to build a front end search application with backend mysql tables which will narrow the product selection down and then do an external add to the Actinic Cart.

I am not sure what is the best way to hold the information in Actinic. Have the base products and then have duplicates. I would also want to automate the process of building the Actinic tables as I do not want to type hundreds of duplicates if at all possible. I also want to see Fordxxx not just the base product on the invoice.

Any help appreciated.

[Bruce]

Hi,

You will need to have the base products and create duplicates to hold them in Actinic. To be able to automate the process, I would suggest exporting your catalog (File | Export), which would create a Hierarchical .csv file which you can work on to crete the products and then import it back into Actinic. The product refrence of the main product if set to ABC, will reflect on the first duplicate as 1!ABC and 2!ABC for the second and so on.

You can use the 'Product Description in Reports' option in Business Settings | Options to help with the description of the product in the invoices. Selecting this option will create a new tab on the product called 'Report Description' where you can enter the FordXXX to show exactly what was ordered, this value will carry over to the invoice and the packing list. If not used the invoice will only show the name of the base product, as you are aware.

Hope this helps,