I'm evaluating Magento for a particular client of mine. They want to enforce a particular workflow for browsing the catalogue. They're a travel company which puts together custom holiday packages and want to make sure users enter things like the number of adults / children before selecting accommodation (as number of people will affect available accommodation and pricing).
Note that accommodation is just an example, there are several other different components to a holiday package. And they've given me a 7 step (mostly) linear workflow they want users to follow before we get to anything which might resemble a checkout process (and even then their concept of "checkout" is quite different to Magento's).
I'm thinking of storing accommodation (and each of the other package components) in separate product categories. Then I can restrict what users can see as they browse the catalogue based on what they've already added to their shopping cart.
My research indicates that Magento doesn't really do this kind of thing out of the box. Am I mistaken? Are there add-ons which would support this kind of thing?
If I was to go down this road, would I be redesigning (or indeed, replacing) a large chunk of Magento's catalogue browsing functionality?
Well there are several approaches that you can take to implement something like this; but all require that you do custom development work.
You could define your packages as simple products with attributes for each of the specific package options and use that to filter each package from the others, now you would need to create a new module that adds a route on the frontend that is going to be your multistep form that will get all the information once you have all the information you can get a collection of all the products(packages) that match those attributes.
Now the deal there is if that price changes depending on the options selected if that's the case then you might need configurable products or something custom to change the price of each package.
It's really hard to say without real specifications of what your client needs, but if the question is if it's possible with Magento then the answer is yes it all depends on your level of skill :)
Kind Regards
So I ended up going with Magento as a product base and extending it using some custom code (been a while since I've developed in a LAMP environment!)
I created a static block which is used as the root of the workflow. There are 8 steps in the workflow which get listed in an ordered list. Each item has two custom Magento widgets next to it, which are a) a little tick image displayed when you've completed the workflow stage and b) a link which displays when you're up to that stage, clicking the link takes you to an appropriate catalog page (eg: choose accommodation, hire car, confirm shopping cart, etc).
I disabled the normal top catalog navigation to encourage users to keep within the workflow. That is, the mouse over to see more catalog detail of the "holiday planner" is disabled (although you can just navigate to the correct urls if you know them, or are smart enough to use the SEO link at the bottom of the page!).
Everything in your holiday is added as cart products (which has the positive side effect of Magento will remember your holiday if you get part way through it).
There is a big state machine in a helper class to determine what stage of the workflow you're up to. This checks your cart to see if products with particular sku's or from a particular attribute set are added.
I also overrode many URLs and redirects (eg: after you add a product) to send the user back to the root holiday planner page. This added to the workflow as almost every action you did or product you add bounces you back to that workflow page (which always tells you what the next step is).
Related
Goal
I am upgrading a custom in-house module for magento EE. The module groups clients together and has special rules that can be applied to the group or individuals of the group. I need to add an extra tab that allows, on a per group basis, to select items and/or categories. When they are selected people within this group will not be allowed to see those categories or products.
What I have
I have the the tab created and I know what I need to do on the front-end to achieve my goals. The issue is creating the selector. I have played with it for a couple hours and made no real headway as of yet. I have only been doing magento development for the past 5 weeks, so I am very new to this framework.
What I need help with
I would like to select the categories and items in the same fashion as when you go to Catalog->Categories->Manage Categories. The left column has a tiered list. I would like to have one like this but with check boxes for selection. When looking at Promotions->shopping cart rules->actions(tab), select a rule, choose the actions tab. In the second fieldset, if you add a new rule 'category' and then select the icon for the tiered tree that is exactly what I want. Same idea for products, its okay if the look is different. Just need to be able to do it both ways.
I need to be able to store the selected values, and retrieve them (easy once I know how to store them).
Please provide any code, guidance, or links to tutorials which are in the ball park. It would be much appreciated. I'm sure the generic option of being able to select things in this manner would be helpful to all.
I'm setting up a Magento site and have some design requirements that we can't quite get right. What is the best way to setup for the website, store, store view and then the categories for the needs below?
Overview:
One domain name, one set of customers
3 similar product lines that appeal to different industries
Specific Requirements:
The home page should show static content about the company and featured products from all three main categories of products
Each main category of products should have a distinct visual design that carries through when looking at any of the products in those categories
It should be seamless for customers to move from one category of products to another and have the design change without having to choose a store from a dropdown etc.
Home Page: Design A, any and all products may show.
Category 1: Design 1, products only from cat 1 show
Category 2: Design 2, products only from cat 2 show
Category 3: Design 3, products only from cat 3 show
Every combination of websites and stores and store views that we have tried results in strange behavior like changing a store and getting "There was no Home CMS page configured or found." instead of seeing the unique design and category it should be showing. So far we can only get the designs to be different by making new CMS pages which doesn't seem practical.
This seems like something that Magento is made to do and I have to be missing something.
Thank you for any help.
-Shane
Your design needs imply work and considerations from multiple areas of configuration. I'll tackle them in turn. The tl;dr is that there may be more than one way to accomplish what you want, with the number of options at your disposal depending on your needs.
1) One domain name, one set of customers
Domain names (URLs) are configurable for all configuration scopes: Global (aka "Default"), Website, and Store (aka "Store View"). Ultimately, Magento configuration comes down to the most granular/specific scope, which is the store ("Store View") scope. If a configuration value is not specified at the store scope, its value is derived (inherited) from the website or global scope.
Customers are configured to "belong" to all websites or to an individual website (System > Configuration > Customer Configuration: Account Sharing Options). There is no out-of-box capability to restrict customers to a particular store.
2) 3 similar product lines that appeal to different industries
Depends on things discussed below.
1) The home page should show static content about the company and featured products from all three main categories of products
Assuming that you are using the standard configuration of having the Mage_Cms module serve up the home page (System > Web > Default Pages), that CMS page should be visible for all store views. CMS blocks and pages are restricted based on store. Now, later on in your post you mention that you see different behavior in the home page "instead of seeing the unique design and category it should be showing", which indicates that you would like to have different but analogous content for each store's home page. You can use one homepage to do this, but rather than specify content in the content area, you'll need to include your content by specifying a block in Layout XML Update - this block will load a particular category based on the store.
2) Each main category of products should have a distinct visual design that carries through when looking at any of the products in those categories
Establishing theme variants from global scope is possible at the website- and store-wide scopes. Theme variants can also be specified per CMS page, product, and category [each entity having a tab in its admin panel for effecting this change], with the latter having the option of "waterfalling" its custom theme settings to "child" categories and products. Which approach you take depends on your catalog hierarchy as well as the variations present in your themes.
It should be noted that if you need to present different category structure, or if you need to enable/disable products differently based on context, then you will be dealing with multiple websites. This is because category structure relies on root categories, and only websites are associated with root categories. As a reminder, "websites" in Magento have no implicit connection to distinct URLs, it's just an unfortunate naming convention for a scope level.
3) It should be seamless for customers to move from one category of products to another and have the design change without having to choose a store from a dropdown etc.
Based on this final stated requirement, and assuming that you are relying on Magento's native navigation, you are locked into one category structure, and will be using the approach of waterfalling category design, which you will set for each top-level main category under your single root using the "Custom Design" tab:
Another approach would be to create three distinct websites with distinct root categories and then build a menu by hand which links to each of the three stores, but I think this is less ideal based on your stated needs. You could also use one root category and then hide categories by website. Again, less likely that this will be appropriate for you.
Based on the information above you might end up clarifying or adding to your question. I'll update my answer in response if necessary.
I want to implement the functionality in magento, the link of this is below :
http://ledflashingwatch.com/clocker-watch-illuminati-series/
when you click on strips, it changes strips image but when click on dial, it changes separately. And also add to cart will differentiate the product on these two values.
Can anyone advise me on how to proceed towards approaching this idea. And which type of products to use for this.
You can ask me questions if it's still not clear to you. And do tell me if it is not possible.
This feature is not available in Magento out of the box.
There are several possible approaches, but the user interface component will have to be custom built by you.
If you want the selected products to appear separately in the cart (like in the example you linked) choose simple products.
You could also use a grouped product with a custom interface.
If you want them to be added to the cart as a single product, but internally they are separate, use a configurable product. This is the option I personally would prefer.
You could also use a bundled product - It all depends what exactly you need.
I suggest first getting a good idea of the differences between the product types. Then study how they are reflected in the quote as quote items, i.e. visibility, parent and child items etc.
Once you know that, the implementation will be rather straight forward.
Build the UI. Build the request parameters for the add to cart call. Done.
Ok so what I want is to have multiple simple products draw from the same stock.
Scenario
I have a sinle nail file (Stock:500)
I have a box of nail files (50/box)
I want it so that if someone buys a box then it deducts from the 500 stock of the singles. Essentially what we do is if someone buys a box, then we ship them 50 of the single files in a box.
Any easy way to do this?
This isn't a native function of Magento, so there a few approaches you can take to emulate it:
Use an external stock management package to keep track of stock and modify Magento to use that. This will require more backend modification.
Attempt to fool Magento by using product bundles in clever ways. This will require more frontend modification
Develop or find a Bill of Materials plugin for Magento. I didn't see anything after a short search, so you may have to build it. Have that module check the constituent materials for a product before allowing it to be added to the cart.
Hope that helps!
Thanks,
Joe
Consider:
Create a template for the products that you wish to order this way. This template need only be the files you need to modify, by default it will find the missing files from your default theme;
In the template you can place some PHP to write out some extra javascript, of the prototype variety;
This frontend code hides the real quantity box, with prototype 'hide' for the relevant css id to make it a hidden form field;
The code shows its own quantity box, also an extra field for how many of the fifty packs are required;
An onchange event on these boxes gets the values of the boxes, does the required multiplication and addition, then updates the hidden 'real' quantity box with (boxes*50)+singles;
On submit the customer sees in the cart the total quantity of the product ordered - this will be total units, not broken down 'per box'. If this is a problem, you can put some words to explain that or modify your main template to handle this and present to the customer the boxes+singles breakdown;
Set your products to use the 'new theme' that has your template update code.
Test, test, test!
As mentioned by Joseph this cannot be done out of the box. The above workaround is only partial, however, so long as you make it clear to customers that they are buying 500 units instead of 500 boxes then you should have a reasonable solution.
Is it possible to have a bundle product that when added to the cart adds each of the bundle items as individual line items.
I want to allow my customers to configure their product (let’s say it’s a computer) and then in the shopping cart, remove an item they don't want - or change their mind about - from that bundle. They might then choose to add a new item instead - or a bunch of other (non-bundle stuff, just normal shopping).
The idea being that they have a fast method of adding most of the stuff they want in this bundle, but they can then edit their cart to add something that wasn’t available as an option to them when configuring the bundle.
I don’t want to overload the user with too many options in the bundle product page.
I might have missed an option in Magento, but currently it adds all the bundle items into the caret as a single line item, making it uneditable in the way I want.
Any suggestions please?
This behavior in Magento is intentional, as you may not want to let a customer order a PC without a CPU or memory. In your case, this assumption appears not to be the case, but that remains the method for using bundled products.
There are a few options open to you to avoid this situation. Firstly, you could use some product type other than bundle, and actually add simple products to your cart rather than the bundled ones. This would allow customers to add options at will, but would not preserve any promotional pricing on the products, as Magento checks those prices/discounts on every page load, and would kick out any changes you set manually.
The other option would be to allow customers an easier path to changing the bundle product that they have chosen. When rendering the bundle product, you could render a little X button (or whatever you find appropriate), which would lead to an action you specify, whose job it is to change the bundle options, resave the cart item, and redirect the user back to the cart. This is probably the cleanest solution to the problem.
Hope that helps!
Thanks,
Joe