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Can Actinic be tailored?

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    Can Actinic be tailored?

    We have a client who wants a web site to produce on-line quotes for customers, which would then lead - hopefully - to an order being placed but no payment is to be taken at that time. The client has a standard list of products which fit together into a system (it's basically portable alarms for residential home staff) which is usually designed by a salesman, but they want to provide a "do it yourself" option where the kit is ordered and then either self-fitted or a local sparky/recommended fitter is called in to do the job.
    The quote would be displayed on-line and, if it's accepted, a copy of it should be sent to the client's offices.
    They want a self-edited HTML front end (consisting of company profile, FAQ and documents) which leads to a kind of questionnaire - how many rooms need to be covered by the system, what size they are and so on - which would then calculate how many call points are needed, how much cable, etc. We'll probably be writing script to handle the data gathering as the client wants it to be clear and simple.
    Actinic Catalog could be perfect for handling the calculation as it would not only add together the components of the quote into an amount, but also VAT, postage costs dependant on weight and location, etc. It's also very robust and secure, as we know because we already have clients who use it.

    Now to the point. Would it be possible to:
    a) Pass parameters from a form/script to the cart without having a product display (apart from, possibly, some optional extras with "add to quote" buttons).
    b) Create an order without having any payment method displayed or continuing to checkout. Customer details must be captured.
    c) Tailor the exported CSV files to be compatible with their spreadsheet/database requirements (of course, we can write a filtering script but that's an extra step for the client)

    If this was to be done using Actinic, the client is quite prepared to pay for us to have the necessary software. We don't have Developer at the moment but we've been looking at Develop Lite Partner pack plus Catalog/Business and thinking that one of those might be what we need.

    I apologise for being a bit vague about the requirements but the project is in it's early stages.

    Thanks for any help
    Mo

    PS. Not sure why the client doesn't want to take payment at the time of order - we might be able to talk them out of that if it's not practical!

    #2
    Actinic can be extended in many ways to add to its existing capabilities.

    a) It is possible to pass some info to the cart using the Other Info Prompt. You can hide the Actinic way of doing this on certain products and populate that field with up to 1000 of your own script generated characters.

    It is also possible to customise the Cart to contain non-Actinic fields. This isn't so easy to do but works well. See http://www.fastframes.co.uk/acatalog...ad__40_43.html for an example of a lot of customisation, bespoke price calculation and extra info in the Cart.

    b) Not so easily. Why not just proceed through the checkout but don't pay anything. You can have a payment method called Quote Only, that doesn't require any CC details or pass to any payment provider; just acts like the built-in Invoice Separately method.

    c) Maybe not possible. The Actinic executable creates these files and you've no control over that.
    Norman - www.drillpine.biz
    Edinburgh, U K / Bitez, Turkey

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      #3
      Thank you Norman, that's very helpful.
      Would I need Developer/Lite to do this?

      Mo

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        #4
        Not really. Just plain old Catalog if that contains all the features your client needs. Download the 30 day demo and see.

        Most tweaking can be done with nothing more sophisticated than Notepad (plus some idea of how Actinic works).
        Norman - www.drillpine.biz
        Edinburgh, U K / Bitez, Turkey

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          #5
          Originally posted by NormanRouxel
          Not really. Just plain old Catalog if that contains all the features your client needs. Download the 30 day demo and see.
          We already have Catalog installed and paid for by another client, thanks.
          I was just wondering if this would need Developer as I haven't tested it yet.

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