How can this be done?

[keymaster]

Hi,


Can someone suggest whether the following is in *any* way possible?

1. After an order is placed, I'd like to track which supplier I've assigned the order to. Can admin associate an order with some “entity" after it's placed (eg. a supplier, or vendor, or manufacturer, or dropshipper, or anyone like that, etc.) ? (maybe just an extra data field I can use?)

2. If so, can admin determine, for a given "entity", which orders are assigned to it?

3. Is there currently any integrated help desk which knows about orders and customers, so the customer does not need a seperate login uid, and can enter an order # when posting a ticket? Also, does the help desk support uploading attachments?

[groggory]

I don't completely follow....try rephrasing

[keymaster]

Hi,

Thanks for replying.

Basically what is being described is a standard model involving an online store, where the owner doesn't stock any inventory, but instead just markets the store, takes orders with payment, and then has his "dropshippers" (ie. his suppliers) take care of shipping the product from their inventories.

So, the store owner needs to be able to associate different products with different suppliers (in a way that is not visible to the customer). When the customer places an order, the store sends the supplier (whose product is in the order) an email saying "one of your products was ordered, etc.".

The supplier needs a uid/password to come to the backend of the store, list all orders for supplier x(himself), and be able to click on each order in the list to get the order details (shipping address, quantity, etc.). The supplier needs the ability to update the order status from pending to shipped, etc.

The owner needs one or two searchable custom fields associated with the order that he can use to track things about the supplier (supplier is paid, whatever..)

Also, many business models (a graphics design, or a services company for example) might need to upload a file to complete the order (eg. an order to place an image of the customer on a mug that was purchased). So, as part of the order process, the client needs to upload the image file and have it stored with the order.

Finally, no order of this kind is ever perfect the first time, so there needs to be some sort of help desk functionality, associated with the order, to deal with the back and forth of (a little larger image please, or a little lighter colors, etc.) an order.

Basically, I found several contributions on osc that if integrated together might cover 90% of all this: file upload, multi-vendor shipping, and help desk (would need to know about orders to indicate that the ticket was associated with a particular order).

Sorry for the (very) long winded explanation, but it sounded like you were honestly trying to understand what this was all about.

Hope this helps.

All the best.

[groggory]

I see. To the best of my knowledge, this functionality isn't written in MAX. You would have to mod in the appropriate contributions to make it work. Go ahead and get to work on those and as you get to specific problems post them and I'm sure we can help you to the best of our ability.

Also, don't forget to post your code and write a small tutorial for each of the mods you write in. That's how this whole system grows, from a combined effort from lots of people.

Sorry I couldn't help you, but good luck getting that to work. I'm sure lots of people can benefit from your efforts.