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This page contains Frequently Asked Questions and documentation on the ECinteractive and is.D-Force® 2 eCommerce Web storefront software integrated with ECi Advantage, COPAS, DDMS, La Crosse, and OMD business systems. On this page:

What's New | Get Started | Migrate From Dealer Station/D-Force | Use Specific Features

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What's New?

Updated! What are the latest enhancements in ECinteractive?

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ECi Releases ECinteractive 11.1.2 Mid-Week

ECi will load the maintenance release Version 11.1.2 live on ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 Web servers TONIGHT.

This software update is scheduled between 9 PM CST TONIGHT (Tuesday), January 10, and 6 AM CST Wednesday, January 11.

This release is an exception to ECi's standard data center maintenance tasks (www.ddms.com/support/massfax/dcMtceWindow.htm). You may wish to set up or adjust your site's Automatic Scheduled Maintenance and site text, if applicable. For details, see your online help.

What's New In This Release?

This release includes the following improvements to your site's usability and flow:

  1. 14521 — Corrected the Print Invoice logic on the shopping site so that the printout and PDF display the correct Total. Previously, the printout calculation included sales tax twice (once in the items total, and once in the subtotal). The Web page view of invoices was not affected.
  2. 14401 — Enhanced the logic for storing item display information on the shopping site to speed up server response.
  3. 14549 — Enhanced the logic for storing approval information used at checkout to speed up server response.
  4. 14560 — Enhanced the logic for storing site statistics data on the Admin Control Panel's Customer Dashboard to speed up server response.

We continue to monitor the results of the current release's performance-related enhancements and will provide an update once we have an adequate sample of comparative data.

For More Info

How has ECinteractive been enhanced in previous releases?

In previous releases, we announced the following software changes:

ECi Begins ECinteractive Release and Training Drive (6.6.5)

What are the next scheduled enhancements in ECinteractive?

In the next few months, the ECinteractive team has an aggressive schedule to release more hot priority features to make your Web presence more competitive and efficient. We have made significant strides in implementing advancements vendors make in content. We continue working with our trading partners, our mutual goal being a better experience in searching and shopping for your customers. Log into your Admin Control Panel for more details on the Home page.

To suggest enhancements, please contact fellow dealers on the
DDMS Executive Advisory Board (on ECiSolutions.com). See also What to Expect When You Report a Software Issue.

What enhancements are coming over the horizon for ECinteractive?

Soon, you will be able to:

  • Integrate with vendor systems via ECi Private Supply Network to view real-time stock levels.
  • Site Preference Admin Control Panel revamped to use our Dashboard interface.
  • Allow approvers to forward or delegate to their stand-in approvers as needed.
  • Business-to-business (B2B) Procurement via ARIBA.

 

Where can I learn how to implement and use the latest features?

See Using Specific Features below for individual articles or search.

 

Getting Started with ECinteractive

Updated! What is ECinteractive®?

ECinteractive® (formerly known as Project Cozumel) is the new Web storefront e-commerce product from eCommerce Industries, Inc.

For your customers, your ECinteractive site offers your branding within a secure user-friendly experience, comparison shopping, powerful search refinement by item attributes like color or material, rich catalog item detail, guest checkout, self-registration, favorites lists, ink/toner matching, enterprise-class procurement approval controls, budgets, price contracts, often-used item laundry lists, reward incentive programs, coupon and promotion codes, access to order history and statements.

For you and your Web sales administrators, ECinteractive's Admin Control Panel offers comprehensive management of site preferences, catalog integration and custom products, customer accounts, feature access privileges, contract assignments, customer approval hierarchies, custom messaging, marketing tools, and reporting. It also offers robust integration with your ECi business system, whether you are running DDMS, COPAS, Advantage, OMD, or La Crosse.

With its enterprise-class features and the professional look and feel of its user interface, it will certainly represent your company well. It harnesses cutting-edge technology, including the latest ASP .NET techniques, SQL Server 2005 database, and AJAX, a new technology that makes Web applications faster and more responsive. We know you'll be excited about this product…and so will your customers! See also our ECinteractive® product information page on ecisolutions.com.

How much does ECinteractive cost if my company has not already invested?

Email ECi Sales or call 800-366-3367 to discuss pricing.

Will ECinteractive work in all browsers?

ECinteractive is designed with cross-platform functionality in mind, and we test each release in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and 8, as well as Mozilla FireFox 3.

Is there a Demo ECinteractive Storefront site?

Yes. Follow the login instructions on the home page to check out all its features for yourself.

For your shoppers, ECi has produced a video series that provides a guided tour of commonly used features in the ECinteractive family of products. The video discusses all the features your customers need to start shopping — account security, catalog browse and search, quick order, favorites, machine matching, news, checkout approvals, and history. In addition to a free version you can add to your Site Text, we also offer a dealer-branded version, custom introductions, and assistance with video search engine marketing to boost your search rankings. For more details and instructions on how to display the videos on your site, see Introducing ECi GoVideo for ECinteractive Dealers!

Is there a Demo ECinteractive Admin Control Panel?

No, not at this time. However, we frequently schedule special Web-based demonstrations. If you would like to schedule a demonstration, email ECi Sales or call 800-366-3367.

Once your site is ready to go live, the ECi Installer will contact you about attending the Web-based training sessions, scheduled weekly.

Is is.D-Force 2 the same thing as ECinteractive?

Somewhat — is.D-Force 2 has everything ECinteractive has. However, is.D-Force 2 catalogs are strictly "direct-buy" content from is.group, and is.D-Force 2 has had unique features funded by is.group for its membership. More information is available on the is.group Web site (www.isgroup.org), and members should contact Janet Eshenour eshenour@isgroup.org for questions about is.D-Force 2.

What records, files, or information should I have to prepare for setting up my ECinteractive site?

As you get ready to set up your ECinteractive Admin Control Panel, you need ten pieces of information to integrate properly withyour back-end business system, your operations, and your customers' purchasing practices:

  1. Admin Users: You can set up master administrators and multiple customer support users with access to the Admin Control Panel. We recommend selecting from your Sales Manager and customer service reps who also have access to your back-end business system.
  2. Dealer Logo: We designed the logo area for images about 200 pixels wide by 60 pixels high. We recommend that your graphic designer provide you with a logo that does not exceed the ideal dimensions, and is no bigger than 5 KB, so your site has a truly professional look.
  3. Site Info: dealer contact information for sales & service (phone, fax, postal/street address, email)
  4. Site Prefs: In your back-end business system's Personnel database, set up an Order Taker (OT) to track ECinteractive orders.
  5. Site Text: Determine the globally available site text for Home, Contact Us, About, and Privacy Policy.
  6. Location: You can set up one or more Locations in ECinteractive with a specific back-end G/L Location, inventory location, and printer ID, and then assign customer accounts to each Location, and synchronize departments.
  7. Catalog: Perform quarterly catalog updates for your back-end business system to ensure that its Item database matches the eContent on your Web storefront.
  8. GUEST customer record: A few casual visitors to your site are hesitant to commit to establishing an account with you. Using an email address, Guest Users may submit orders and view their orders online — without being able to view other guests' order information. Standard practice is to have a GUEST account in your back-end system, set up to accept credit card orders from your unregistered Web site visitors. Consult your back-end system documentation.
  9. Special Items: Identify the items you've set up to display as shipping options (the description, flat rate, additional percentage, free shipping order minimums, and item company and number).
  10. Customer Groups: Identify accounts who have similar feature requirements for Communication, Alternates/Substitutes, Checkout (budget/credit/past due hold, P/O required, credit cards, shipping/department/attention changes, and invoicing), Marketing (Web specials, rewards program, learning center, product showcase), Feature (access to catalog, QuickOrder, history, saved orders, department scope, A/R account balance & remittance, contract/laundry list), and Price (list/customer price display, contract item indicator, sub-decimal display).
  11. Approval Groups/Chains: Identify the customer account end users to include in each approval group and hierarchy.

 

Where is the training handout for setting up my Site?

Our Admin Guide to ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 (pdf) provides the instructions you need to get started selling online with ECinteractive. In the first half of this document, topics include setup, administration and customization of your ECinteractive site. You'll learn how to enter your  company and contact information, define locations, set up site preferences, change color schemes, add admin user accounts, load custom item images and descriptions, create Web specials, and even rank items so they show up first in search results. Site security, site selection (for dealers with multiple ECinteractive sites), and A/R Remittance online are also discussed.

Home Page Display Order tab in Site Text control panelFirst impressions can make or break a relationship, whether it’s a job interview, a first date, a new restaurant, or a new Web site. When shoppers open your Home page, their first impression can lead them either to click the back button or to delve deeper. It should be a place where shoppers want to return again and again.

With this in mind, we've designed the interface to be friendly, easy-to-use, and as intuitive as possible. To help you achieve even better results, we give you more control of the information that's shown on the Home page.

Under Site Text, a new tab for Home Page Display Order lets you customize the arrangement of Default News, Home Page Text, Browse Category Display, and Account Specific News. Account-specific News is now displayed on the shopper's Home page by default, so important notifications can be displayed directly on the Home page without the necessity of clicking the menu to go to Account News. you can use the HTML-capable text editor to customize these elements, hide or resequence elements as you see fit, and preview what the results will look like on your home page.

In a related development, the Site Preferences page now allows you to specify how the Home and Browse pages displays subcategories. If you enable the new Expand Category Display on Home and Browse Catalog Pages checkbox, the complete list of level two categories will display, as long as there are not more than six top level categories. A new Edit Category Display Order button opens a page where you can select the catalogs from your Content Provider. The catalogs in turn drive the categories.

Note: For is.D-Force2 sites, United Stationers Enhanced Content features do not apply at this time, pending discussions between the parties of is.group and United Stationers.

For detailed instructions, see Customizing Site Text and Messages in ECinteractive (www.DDMS.com/Resources/Support/faq/ecommerce/ecSiteText.pdf)

Can My Site Use My Current URL instead of ECinteractive.com/DForce2.com Domain Address?

Yes! It takes some custom development, but you can Request to Mask the ECinteractive.com or DForce2.com Web Address in Favor of Dealer URL (doc).

How do I set up custom items and catalogs, and assign them to customer accounts?

Within the Custom Product Management Dashboard, you can manage your items' categorization, and authorize your catalog to be pipelined through your Enhanced Content Provider.While your wholesaler's catalog is pretty comprehensive, many of you sell custom items that aren't available in eContent, but which you have set up in your backend item database, contracts, and laundry lists.

Our streamlined Custom Product Management Dashboard makes it easier than ever to manage dealer-specific custom items. You can add manufacturers, add custom product details and upload images as needed, create your custom catalog, and map your product categories so that your products are easy for your customers to find.

The new process also makes it easy to authorize your own items to be pipelined through Enhanced Content Providers (wholesalers's Web services including United Stationers' SmartSearch and S.P. Richards Etilize). As a result, your customer can shop Enhanced Content not only for United Stationers or S.P. Richards items, but your dealer-specific custom items as well.

Note: For is.D-Force2 sites, United Stationers Enhanced Content features do not apply at this time, pending discussions between the parties of is.group and United Stationers.

After creating your custom catalog, you can assign your Catalog Groups to individual accounts, guest accounts, demo accounts, or mass change customer parameters for your Custom Catalogs. As always, you can also manage your custom products' ranking in ECinteractive's standard search results. Now you can manage the ranking within Enhanced search results. You can promote any product through Preferred Items and Web Specials.

For detailed instructions, see:

Setting Up S.P. Richards Enhanced Content
(www.DDMS.com/resources/support/faq/ecommerce/ecSPRContent.pdf).

Setting Up United Stationers Smart Search
(www.DDMS. com/resources/support/faq/ecommerce/ecUNIContent.pdf).

Setting Up Custom Items & Catalogs
(www.DDMS.com/Resources/Support/faq/ecommerce/ecCatalogs.pdf).

Note: Your work in the Custom Product Management Dashboard will take effect the following day, after the ECinteractive system generates your site-specific and customer-specific Catalog Combination Indexes (CCIs) during its nightly scheduled processes.

This also gives your Enhanced Content Provider’s system time to run your custom catalog content data through its Pipeline process. If you’re planning a customer launch or prospect demonstration, we recommend leaving yourself a few days in advance to prepare, index and test the items your audience should expect to see.

How do I set up and manage my Customer Accounts?

Customer Records DashboardVersion 9.2 introduces a streamlined Dashboard and Wizard to your Customer Management interface.

Best of all, you can easily Copy a customer. It all minimizes clicks and page loads required to manage customer accounts.

Dashboard View. See popular stats (Orders Placed Today, Current and Previous Month Sales) and actions (Search by Customer Identity Field, Add Customer, or Edit Guest). Pick from a list of Recently Accessed Customer Records. Pick from Recent Site Customers, and know how many are currently online out of your total number of users.

Step-by-Step Guidance. A wizard interface and progress bar guide you through each step, including Info, Acct, Dept, Attention, Location, Contract, Alt/Sub, Checkout, Communication, Feature, Marketing, and Price.

Progress bar. Labeled wizard page buttons and page breadcrumbs make every feature and field easier to find. You can switch between a drop-down list fields and filterable search grids as needed to select accounts, departments, and other records.

Finish Early with Guest Defaults. Once you enter a user's unique contact and account information, you can click Finish. Most dealers set up new users to match their Guest experience. Default settings are now based on your Guest User. Of course, you can always navigate via the Progress Bar or the Next or Previous button to customize user settings as needed. There's even a checkbox at the top of the Add Customer pages to "Add another customer when finished"!

Customer View. See all customer information and actions in one place, including identifying and Account information, Group settings, Catalog Combination Index, Location, Catalog Groups, Contract/Laundry List, and Approval Groups.

Copy User. Quickly add new users for the same account, just by entering unique contact information. There's even a checkbox at the top of the Add Customer pages to "Copy another customer when finished"!

Detach from Setting Group. Detach a shopper as needed from a Setting Group for granular control over their experience. Re-apply a Setting Group to make settings easier to manage.

View Customer Log. Know which Admin User made what changes to what settings on what customer accounts.

Feature Settings Grid. A search grid shows not only how many customers are assigned to each Settings Group, but also quickly edit each associated customer account as needed — making it easy to manage exceptions.

For details, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 9.2.0 (pdf) and the Admin Control Panel's online help.

How do I set up and manage my Customer Group Settings?

ECinteractive allows you to tailor your shopping experience to meet the needs of your customers.

All Customer Settings pages allow you to streamline settings by assigning a customer to a group setting. However, you or an account administrator can change parameters within a setting group You can detach a user from a Settings Group to customize their experience. Settings Groups grids make it easier than ever to manage.from the Customer View page.

Detach User from Setting Group. Once you edit a setting so that the current customer differs from the setting group, the newly saved setting is unique to the customer. You no longer need to create a separate group setting manually.

New Search Grid for Managing Setting Groups, Exceptions. Each Setting Groups page — Alternate/Substitutes, Communication, Checkout, Feature, Marketing, and Price — opens with a streamlined, expandable, filterable Search Grid. Each Setting Group record is expandable to display a list of the customer accounts assigned to this group. You can also filter by each column header, add a new setting group, or edit or delete individual settings groups.

For details, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 9.2.0 (pdf) and the Admin Control Panel's online help. In the second half of our Admin Guide to ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 (pdf), you'll learn how to set up customer groups, where you have the flexibility to address your customers' different needs for shipping, shopping among various departments and attentions, credit card management, budgets, alternates and substitutes, pricing, contracts, laundry lists, checkout and communication requirements, and access to special features, global Favorites Lists, and marketing tools.

 

If you are migrating from Dealer Station or is.D-Force, see Migration Tool for ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2 (pdf). First, you'll print the ECinteractive Export reports from Dealer Station/D-Force, and examine the settings that your end-users have currently been granted. Second, use the reports to determine how to set up your ECinteractive Customer Settings, to group users according to their substitute settings, checkout settings, price settings and so on. Third, create Customer Groups in ECinteractive and synchronize your customer accounts to them. Once the groups are set, you can begin migrating your users, one group at a time. The migration process will transfer Dealer Station/D-Force user data, including user name, password, email address, rewards points, and favorites lists.

How do I set up and manage my Customer Contracts and Laundry Lists?

Our Admin Guide to ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 (pdf) provides the instructions you need to tailor your shopping experience to meet the needs of your customers. In the second half of this document, you'll learn how to set up customer groups, where you have the flexibility to address your customers' different needs for shipping, shopping among various departments and attentions, credit card management, budgets, alternates and substitutes, pricing, contracts, laundry lists, checkout and communication requirements, and access to special features, global Favorites Lists, and marketing tools. You'll also learn how to use the guest account, create approval group hierarchies, and offer buyer incentives with point rewards and additional volume discounts. Site security, site selection (for dealers with multiple ECinteractive sites), account management, order management, and reporting is also discussed.

The Contract/Laundry Lists tab of Customer Management allows you to restrict or lock a customer to selected contracts.On your backend system, you may have contracts and/or laundry lists set up for items a customer purchases regularly.

Now, you can limit shoppers to your backend contracts and/or laundry lists. Previously, the Contracts/Laundry Lists tab in your Customer Management page previously only allowed you to assign contracts or laundry lists to the selected customer. Now, this tab has been enhanced to include three new Select Item Limit options:

  • None lets the shopper view all catalogs and contracts and/or laundry list items assigned to his account.
  • Restrict lets the dealer restrict the shopper from using specific contracts and/or laundry lists. For example, this option lets the dealer set up a restricted contract and/or laundry list of items the shopper cannot view. This is a useful feature for dealers who need to restrict certain items, such as furniture products, from displaying on specific user Web pages.
  • Lock lets the dealer lock the shopper to Contracts Only (All items that are in the selected backend lists will override the customer’s Catalog Group settings. In effect, the assigned backend lists become the customer’s catalog groups.) and Include Contracts (All items that are in both the customer’s Catalog Groups and the selected backend Contracts/Laundry Lists are shown to the customer).

For details and exceptions, please see Lock Shoppers to Contracts/Laundry Lists (www.DDMS.com/Resources/Support/faq/ecommerce/ecLockContractLL.pdf).

How do I set up and manage my Customer Approval Chains?

Approval Group Wizard and Approval Group Dashboard viewsWe've implemented wizards and dashboards for your Approval Group Management pages to make it easier to manage your customer's approval chain setup.

Streamlined Wizard. It's a breeze to add or edit an approval group, set its level of approval (top, customer, or department), and assign members, limits, and approvers.

Multiple Top Levels, Memberships. You can create multiple top levels per account. And any user may belong to multiple approval groups according to their departmental access.

Search Grids. The expandable, filterable search grids make it easy to look up members at different approval levels. New locks prevent you from deleting a group that has subordinate groups assigned to it (so you have a chance to reassign groups as needed) or that have orders awaiting approval (so you have a chance to reassign them).

For details, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 9.2.0 (pdf) and the Admin Control Panel's online help.

You can also print Approval Chain reports in Dealer Station and D-Force. See Migration Tool for ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2 (pdf). .

What are some setup tasks I can postpone until my site is up and running?

As you add customers and build volume, consider the following optional items and settings:

  • S.P. Richards Enhanced Content Features: For customers who purchase items that are in the S.P. Richards catalogs, you can set up accounts to use enhanced search filters, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, additional item images, and product comparison and rich media content. For detailed instructions and an important clarification on the exclusion of items from custom dealer catalogs and other vendor catalogs, please see Setting Up SPR Enhanced Content in ECinteractive (pdf).
  • United Stationers Enhanced Content Features: For customers who purchase items that are in the United Stationers catalogs, you can set up accounts to have access to enhanced content and search capabilities, side-by-side comparisons, richer product details, targeted machine & equipment accessory matching, and relevant alternative items. For detailed instructions, please see Setting Up United Enhanced Content in ECinteractive (pdf).
  • Machine Matching Tool: Activate this feature to let your customers find consumables for machines they have in their home or office, and save a list of their machines for future reference.
  • Custom Confirmation Emails: customize the default emails sent to your customers.
  • DEMO Account: To prepare to demonstrate your site's capabilities, set up accounts with ‘DEMO’ as the account number or user name. Standard practice is for your back-end database to have a DEMO account set up so that test orders do not flow through purchasing as valid orders. Consult your back-end system documentation.
  • Contracts/Laundry Lists: To limit a user to a contract or laundry list, the items and IDs must be set up in the back-end business system's Item database and Customer record.
  • Special Items: Identify items to promote Web special pricing only available for Web orders, and items to promote as popular or preferred.
  • Custom Items and Catalogs: If you have custom items, have a record in your Item database before you enter its images and category in ECinteractive's Item and Catalog Management pages. When you load main and thumbnail images for these custom catalog items, make sure they meet certain restrictions (no larger than 12 KB, no more than 240 pixels wide x 240 pixels high). Only image files with an extension of ".gif", ".jpg", ".jpeg", or ".png" are allowed.
  • Admin Favorites Lists: Identify any Favorites list items that should be globally available to all your accounts, or to be assigned to individual accounts or departments.
  • Rewards: Identify items you will use as an incentive for Point Rewards, along with their ratio value (dollars to points), and identify the end users to serve as your key accounts' rewards administrators.
  • Integrated Volume Discounts: Have volume discounts set up in the back-end business system's Item database.
  • Remit A/R: You can set up an AR Remittance address, even a different one for each GL location, to be displayed when the user views, prints or pays balances online.
  • Site and Account News: Identify promotional information to display for account-specific news.

 

Can I add keywords to items in the online catalog?

It depends. Wholesaler catalog content is maintained by the vendor, and cannot currently be edited by dealers. However, when you add your own custom catalogs, categories, and items, you can specify keywords.

Can I set up a demo account on my site that does not incur transaction fees or clutter up my back-end with invalid orders?

Yes, as of ECinteractive version 7.2 and higher. To prepare to demonstrate your site's capabilities, set up accounts with ‘DEMO’ as the account number or user name. It will not submit to the backend system as a valid order.

Updated! Can ECinteractive work with Procurement PunchOut systems like ARIBA?

Not quite, but soon. With the release of Version 9.0.0, we completed one major integration with the JumpTech scan/dock/checkout punchout system. We also released microsites for the HP Printing Supplies and MeadWestVaco, which use PunchOut technology. See related FAQ below.

PunchOut integration is a high priority, and a future phase of Punchout integration with ARIBA is tentatively scheduled for release Version 10.0 in late October 2010 (subject to change).

Do you have an online user guide?

Yes. For both your online shoppers and administrators, page-specific Help files are found on every page of the storefront shopping site and dealer Admin Control Panel.

Our Admin Guide to ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 (pdf) provides the instructions you need to get started selling online with ECinteractive. In the first half of this document, topics include setup, administration and customization of your ECinteractive site. You'll learn how to add Admin users with different privileges, load custom item images and descriptions, create Web specials, and even rank items so they show up first in search results. The second half of this document provides the instructions you need to tailor your shopping experience to meet the needs of your customers. You'll learn how to set up customer groups, where you have the flexibility to address your customers' different needs and access to special features. You'll also learn how to use the guest account, create approval group hierarchies, and offer buyer incentives with point rewards and additional volume discounts. Site security, site selection (for dealers with multiple ECinteractive sites), account management, order management, and reporting is also discussed.

For your shoppers, ECi has produced a video series that provides a guided tour of commonly used features in the ECinteractive family of products. The video discusses all the features your customers need to start shopping — account security, catalog browse and search, quick order, favorites, machine matching, news, checkout approvals, and history. In addition to a free version you can add to your Site Text, we also offer a dealer-branded version, custom introductions, and assistance with video search engine marketing to boost your search rankings. For more details and instructions on how to display the videos on your site, see Introducing ECi GoVideo for ECinteractive Dealers!

How can I Enhance Our Customer's Shopping Experience?

Enhance Your Customer's Shopping Experience (pdf) ECi DDMS offers numerous tools in ECinteractive and is.D-Force2 to help you retain shoppers and improve their online shopping experience. This handout includes information for each of the following:

  • Machine Matching
  • Registering New Users and User Types
  • JumpTech Integration
  • Multi-Department Ordering
  • Order Approval
  • Coupons and Promotions

 

What materials can I use to promote my site?

ECi has developed two non-branded documents in Microsoft Word for you to use in promoting your own site. You can customize the header, footer, and main content with your company name, logo, URL and so forth:

For your shoppers, ECi has produced a video series that provides a guided tour of commonly used features in the ECinteractive family of products. The video discusses all the features your customers need to start shopping — account security, catalog browse and search, quick order, favorites, machine matching, news, checkout approvals, and history. In addition to a free version you can add to your Site Text, we also offer a dealer-branded version, custom introductions, and assistance with video search engine marketing to boost your search rankings. For more details and instructions on how to display the videos on your site, see Introducing ECi GoVideo for ECinteractive Dealers!

Migrating from Dealer Station to ECinteractive (D-Force to D-Force2)

Does ECinteractive have many of the same features as Dealer Station?

Yes. Naturally, our next-generation Web storefront includes many tried-and-true features from the Dealer Station® family of products. Your customers expect the services you have always provided. Widely-used features in common include: shopping from keyword searches, catalog categories, item number QuickOrder, custom pricing Contracts, Laundry lists, Favorites lists, Web specials, and order history. Multiple levels of order approvals or authorizations. Budget controls and departmental limits. Checking status from order history. Account-specific deals and news. Robust integration with your back-end business system, particularly the customer and item databases and order entry/history applications.

To compare the features in each generation of Web storefront, see the feature comparison charts on ecisolutions.com.

What are some next-generation features only available in ECinteractive?

ECinteractive's all-new user interface utilizes advanced technologies like AJAX, Microsoft’s latest SQL Server database architecture, and the Microsoft® .NET programming framework. For you and your customers, that translates to advanced features such as:

  1. Guest user checkout via a credit card and email address, and self-registration according to the account setting templates you set up.
  2. Higher security measures for login, including longer hidden password, security question for automated password reset, and the ability to begin log in securely from offsite, such as your own separate Web page.
  3. Item-Integrated eMarketing Email Flyer campaigns to help you reach out to prospects and keep customers loyal.
  4. Professionally developed site themes and WYSIWYG, HTML-capable editor for customizing site news, account news, other Web storefront pages, order confirmations, and so on.
  5. Faster cached keyword search and more intuitive advanced searching by brand and product attributes.
  6. Search results dynamically highlight related categories, best sellers, and preferred manufacturers.
  7. Both S.P. Richards Enhanced Search and United Stationers Smart Search, which allow shoppers to filter by product-specific attributes such as size, weight, ink, color, and so on. These tools also allow shoppers to compare similar items by attribute, and offer related items for upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
  8. Rotating, scrollable Web Specials let you offer special pricing for a selection of certain items when purchased online.
  9. QuickOrder by item number (with prefix and SKU in one field) instantly displaying matching descriptions, alternates, or invalid entry alert.
  10. Assigning shoppers to contracts or laundry lists for corporate or public sector procurement organizations with three levels of access to your catalog.
  11. Multiple MyFavorites lists are easy to create, shop from, maintain, and share with other users in the same account or department.
  12. Shop special-order custom items with longer delivery timeframes displayed in product detail.
  13. Shopping via microsites from HP Printing Supplies and MeadWestVaco At-A-Glance Calendars & Planners.
  14. Scan-Dock-Order shopping via barcode catalogs from Jumpcart, using your own or your wholesalers' catalogs.
  15. Checkout integration with coupon or promotion codes created in your back-end system.
  16. Order History and Saved Orders viewable by date range, purchase order number, item, or department; drill down to line item detail; and and copy selected items to Favorites or Cart.
  17. Shoppers can view and print accounts receivable statements and pay online via credit card.
  18. User-friendly wizards, dashboards, and data grids in the Admin Control Panel guide you through setting up your custom catalogs, guest and customer setting templates, customer accounts, approval chains, and customer account administrator privileges.
  19. More flexible Point Reward buyer incentive programs, and volume discounts integrated with your back-end business system.
  20. Integrated Google Analytics to make informed decisions about your marketing campaigns, increase conversions from guest to loyal customer, and empower you to grow your business online

To compare the features in each generation of Web storefront, see the feature comparison charts on ecisolutions.com.

Has password security changed on ECinteractive?

Yes, ECinteractive features a number of password security enhancements:

  • 6-Character Minimum. Unlike Dealer Station's minimum 4-character passwords, ECinteractive requires at least 6 characters. If you migrate a customer with an existing password less than 6 characters, the system will prompt the user at login to change the password to one that meets the 6-character requirement. Users also have the option to change their user name, as long as they enter an ID that will uniquely identify their records in the database.
  • Security Question. ECinteractive now prompts the user to specify a security question and answer. This will be used to verify the user's identity whenever a userID or password is lost or changed.
  • Lost Password Automation. At login, the user can request their password to be reset. The system will prompt for a security question and answer to verify the user's identity, and if answered correctly, an email will be sent with a temporary password to the email address on record. The user will be prompted to change the password at the next login.
  • Admin Password Reset. ECinteractive does not display end user passwords in the Admin Control Panel. The system does allow an administrator to reset the password and security question and answer for an end user. The user can then log in just like during initial setup, and the system will prompt for new password, security question and answer to verify the user's identity.

These security enhancements apply to both end users and admin users.

How has ECinteractive improved speed for accounts with multiple departments?

Unlike Dealer Station, ECinteractive prompts you to synchronize departments with your back-end business system's customer database when you create an account online. Therefore, departmental information is stored on the Web server, and transactions no longer require a call to the database for departmental data. This significantly enhances the speed of transactions for customer accounts with multiple departments.

At what point does ECinteractive pass orders into the back-end system?

Unlike Dealer Station, ECinteractive does not submit a held order whenever a user adds an item to the cart, and therefore no longer ties up your on-hand quantities with unfinished orders. Instead, ECinteractive stores cart data online, including unapproved and saved orders, until the user actually submits the order at Checkout. As a result, orphaned orders tying up on-hand quantities in your back-end business system is eliminated.

Will ECinteractive retain the order history for end users I migrate from my existing site?

ECinteractive accesses the same order history as Dealer Station and is.D-Force. This history is stored in your back-end business system database. The only orders that the end users may lose would be orders that have been put on hold on the Dealer Station server.

How do I import or migrate my customers from Dealer Station® to ECinteractive® (D-Force to D-Force2)?

The migration tool was released in Version 6.9 at the end of April 2007. It will be turned on and available in the Admin Control Panel for a dealer's site on completion of the Migration Tool training. New groups of dealers are in Web-based training to go live every week. ECi and is.group firmly believe that a controlled release schedule leads to the most successful implementation for each customer. It allows our training and support teams to provide the requisite attention to all dealers in a fair manner, and to properly assess server performance as consumer usage increases.

ECi product managers and trainers have sent personal invitations periodically to groups of dealers to attend Web based training, set up their sites, and migrate their customer accounts. Selected dealers include Project Cozumel investors, beta test sites, and other dealers with consideration made for historical online order volume. If you are a Project Cozumel investor or beta test site, your company has been sent an invitation to join our ECinteractive virtual classes.

For detailed instructions, see Migration Tool for ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2 (pdf). First, learn how to print the ECinteractive Export reports in Dealer Station/D-Force, and examine the settings that your end-users have currently been granted. Second, use the reports to determine how to set up your ECinteractive Customer Settings, to group users according to their substitute settings, checkout settings, price settings and so on. Third, create Customer Groups in ECinteractive and synchronize your customer accounts to them. Once the groups are set, you can begin migrating your users, one group at a time. The migration process will transfer Dealer Station/D-Force user data, including user name, password, email address, rewards points, and favorites lists. You can also print Approval Chain reports in Dealer Station and D-Force.

What do you mean by these column headers in the Export Reports?

As you know from the previous question above, instructions for running the ECinteractive Export Reports (either Customer Groups or Approval Chain) can be found in Migration Tool for ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2.

As for the field names or column headers, they correspond directly to fields in both Dealer Station and ECinteractive:

On the Dealer Station side, the column headers correspond directly with the field names in the User Account, Default User, and Site Preferences settings pages, as documented both in the Dealer Station Admin Manual and these online help topics:

  • Adding New and Guest Users
  • Default User Settings
  • Site Preferences Note: sitewide parameters override your responses in User Accounts. The boxes affected by this are: View Held Orders, Order History, View List Prices, View Customer Prices, View Contract Items, View Promo Items, View Qty On Hand, Accept Credit Cards, Show Extended 3 Digit Price, Choose Shipping Options (affected by the Shipping and Handling and Shipping Management boxes in Site Preferences).

On the ECinteractive side, the Export report column headers also correspond with Customer Account fields, documented in online help for the main setting categories for which you will set up your standard groups:

 

What materials are available for training my customers on my new site?

For your shoppers, ECi has produced a video series that provides a guided tour of commonly used features in the ECinteractive family of products. The video discusses all the features your customers need to start shopping — account security, catalog browse and search, quick order, favorites, machine matching, news, checkout approvals, and history. In addition to a free version you can add to your Site Text, we also offer a dealer-branded version, custom introductions, and assistance with video search engine marketing to boost your search rankings. For more details and instructions on how to display the videos on your site, see Introducing ECi GoVideo for ECinteractive Dealers!

 

Using Specific ECinteractive Features

How do I show Quantity On Hand in Search Results and Product Detail?

To minimize backorders and boost buy-now urgency, you can let your shoppers know if the item they are ordering is currently on your shelves — or on your wholesaler's shelves.

These totals display on several pages on your Shopping site:

  • Item lists such as Search Results and Shopping Cart
  • QuickOrder (and its matching Alternates & Substitutions)
  • Product Detail

For In-Stock and Out-Of-Stock items, you can display the default icon, your own custom icon, or text, including the actual count returned from your backend system's inventory database.

10 Ways to Customize the Display in your Admin Control Panel:

  1. Use the default icons: checkmark for in-stock/package out-of-stock
  2. Use text only, default ("In stock" or "Out of stock") or your custom text
  3. Customize the icons by uploading new images
  4. Customize tooltips that appear on mouseover with your custom text
  5. Use [[inventory_count]] variable text to show quantity in custom text
  6. When item quantity on hand is blank or not available, you can opt not to display, or show your in-stock or out-of-stock settings.
  7. Activate Quantity on Hand sitewide using Site Preferences.
  8. Override settings for specific accounts or departments in Global Settings for Quantity On Hand Management.
  9. Set up defaults for new shoppers using Customer Management in the Add Customer Wizard.
  10. New! Test and activate Include Wholesaler Quantity on Hand!

 

This feature is turned off by default. The feature assumes all on-hand quantities in your back-end database are accurate. To minimize discrepancies, you may wish to complete an audit of your inventory counts on your back-end system before turning this display on your Web storefront.

Note to DDMS Dealers: In DDMS Versions up to 8.24.21, when an ECinteractive or is.D-Force2 shopper orders an item you don't stock, the system returns a blank on hand quantity. The Edit Blank Quantity On Hand Setting option in ECinteractive lets you specify how the system should handle and display the information to the shopper on the front end site.
Most DDMS dealers will set the Blank Quantity On Hand to Do Not Display. However, a beta test dealer set Blank Quantity On Hand to Out of Stock, but customized an icon and the tooltip to say, "Delivered next day" as shown in the figure above.

After setting Site Preferences to be able to display Quantity On Hand at the site level, you can control the display for one or more Customer Accounts or Departments from the GlobalSettings > Quantity On Hand Management page. You can also mass change the display of Quantity On Hand for filtered user records using the CustomerAdmin > Parameter Maintenance page. The user setting will override the departmental or account setting. However, if the Site Preference has Quantity On Hand turned off, it will not display for any customers.

Now With Wholesaler Stock Checks!

With DDMS 10.2.20 and ECinteractive 10 and higher, you can add wholesaler facilities' on-hand stock quantities to your dealership's stock for display using an icon in search results and product detail.

Previously, this information was transferred via eGate packets. Now, we've implemented a new SQL pipeline, with additional enhancements released in DDMS 10.2.20.

Behind the scenes on DDMS, the SQL data pipeline must calculate the Quanity on Hand for each item in the search results and product detail. First, your system will look up dealership's inventory records for on-hand quantities. Then, your system will launch a stock check via the Private Supply Network (PSN) to each facility for whom you have set up the Vendor Supply Options to display online. In DDMS 10.2.20, S.P. Richards and United Stationers support this feature. The system instantly incorporates the results into the sum total for display via pipeline on your shopping site's search results and product detail. You can then display an icon that indicates the item is in stock or out of stock/available for next-day delivery, or set up variable text to display the actual quantity in the icon's tooltip.

To take advantage of Wholesaler Quantity On Hand on your site, you must have DDMS 10.2.20 or higher:

5 Essential System Setup Steps

1Log in to your DDMS Support Portal https://support.ecisolutions.com:
Log in to Update Your Software

(Click Software Downloads. Follow on-screen steps for DDMS 10.2.20+)

2On your DDMS server, have your network administrator open firewall ports 9966 and 9965 for the ECi SQL Pipeline, in addition to the existing firewall port for your site.

3We recommend completing your inventory counts to ensure accurate display of your dealership's on-hand quantities and minimize blanks. For details, see Inventory - Count Less, Sell More (pdf).

4Fully synchronize your SQL EBS data to include the updated item quantities in the pipeline. For details, see Using the EBS SQL Import Panel (pdf).

5Set up your DDMS graphical Customer Gateway parameters and Vendor Supply Options for local S.P. Richards warehouse facilities. Then set up your site's Admin Control Panel. See the updated Quantity on Hand (pdf).

How do I Let Shoppers Sort By Price?

With DDMS 10.2.20 and ECinteractive 11.1, your shoppers will be able to sort and limit ECinteractive search results by price. Now you can allow a shopper to select from the following list:

Sort by Relevance — how the search results are sorted today, according to key words and selected attributes.

Sort by Price Low to High — ascending order, with the lowest priced items at the beginning of the list.

Sort by Price High to Low — descending order, with the highest priced items at the beginning of the list.

To allow your ECinteractive® or is.D-Force® 2 Web storefront Search Results page to sort by price, it required significant enhancements to the way your back-end DDMS server communicates with various Web services.

Previously, this information was transferred via eGate packets. Now, we've implemented a new SQL pipeline.

Behind the scenes on DDMS, the SQL data pipeline must cross-reference item pricing for the shopper's Customer account with other details including alternates, substitutes, aliases, and various parameters. It's especially important to resolve item results when your DDMS Item database incorporates item alternate codes you've set up in the (LE) Inventory Parameters screen, such as Normal Alternates, Discontinued Item, Reference item, Preferred Alternate, Like Item Alternate, Out of Stock Item, Generic Alternate, and Customer Specific Substitute. (Note: the fewer alternates and substitutes used in your database, the faster your site will be able to display search results.)

Meanwhile, ECinteractive developers have been working closely with wholesalers to implement their requirements for the Web search engines to be able to sort the catalog data by price based on the DDMS server's pipeline results.

Sort by Price is being released first for standard content and S. P. Richards Enhanced Content. The wholesalers' enhanced content attribute panel will further allow shoppers to limit the list to several default or user-specified pricing ranges, dynamically available depending if the list includes products on that level, as shown below:

S.P. Richards Enhanced Search now allows you to sort by price, and limit to a range of prices.

To take advantage of Sort by Price on your site, you must have DDMS 10.0 or higher:

Log in to https://support.ecisolutions.com,
Log in to Update Your Software
click Software Downloads, and follow the on-screen steps to download and install DDMS 10.2.20 or higher.

Fully synchronize your SQL EBS data.

UPDATED! On your DDMS server, have your network administrator open firewall ports 9966 and 9965 for the ECi SQL Pipeline.

Then, log in to your ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 Admin Control Panel, and activate Sort by Price site-wide in Site Preferences (or control release using Feature Settings for Price group settings).For details, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 11.1.0 (pdf)

How do I set up the Xstamper Microsite?

With the Xstamper microsite now available to launch on your ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2, you can make it easy to shop custom stamps, refills, badges, signs, embossers, and more!

Why Xstamper?

  • Exclusive built-in reservoir re-inking system adds years of service to the life of each genuine Xstamper.
  • Unique materials and construction hold ink better and provide greater elasticity and strength.
  • Cost per impression is lower when comparing the cost of stamp, pad, refill ink, stamp racks, and labor.
  • One price — Each stamp size has one price regardless of the number of lines or copy. No extra charges for logos, signatures or borders.

Easy to Get Started!

1Sign up online to open an account with Xstamper
or call 800-851-2686 or email Mclemente@xstamper.com.
Sign Up NOW!

2See Setting Up & Using the Xstamper PSN (pdf) to complete your DDMS setup and take advantage of:

  • Automated item & pricing file import via O/PUS PSN Control software
  • Real-time stock/price check in Order Entry
  • Purchase order transmission / acknowledgement of vendor-allocated inventory
  • Launching the Xstamper Microsite on your site

 

How do I use the redesigned Mass Settings page?

Redesigned Mass Setting Management Admin Page! (10508)

The redesigned Mass Setting Management page gives you more control than ever over individual settings for alt/subs, checkout, communication, feature, marketing, and price.

As before, you can build the list by account, department, GL Location, Inventory Location, and Attention. Previously, the page did not filter the list, and applied your changes to all six setting groups at once.

Version 11.1.1 gives you two new ways to limit your changes:

  • Filter the customer list according to the values you specify, and the page will display a description of the filters you have selected.
  • Select a single specific setting group, and select a value to apply a new group name to the filtered list of customers.

Pick a group of customers for example, by specifying an account number, then filter the list using one of the columns. For example, you can enter "Accounting" in the Department column. Then pick a setting group from the drop-down menu, and select a new setting group name to apply to the filtered list of customers.

How do I get ECi's GoVideo for my site, and increase my search engine rankings?

For your shoppers, ECi has produced a video series that provides a guided tour of commonly used features in the ECinteractive family of products. The video discusses all the features your customers need to start shopping — account security, catalog browse and search, quick order, favorites, machine matching, news, checkout approvals, and history. In addition to a free version you can add to your Site Text, we also offer a dealer-branded version, custom introductions, and assistance with video search engine marketing to boost your search rankings. For more details and instructions on how to display the videos on your site, see Introducing ECi GoVideo for ECinteractive Dealers!

How do I set up eProcurement Punchout Integrations?

Demo now!eProcurement is an affordable procurement integration that can drive new business with government agencies, large contractors, hospitals, universities, and large corporations.

  • Attract accounts that use electronic procurement
  • Compete in a marketplace that demands such services
  • Offer your customers eProcurement integration with cXML and OCI
  • Deploy electronic purchasing catalogs across customers' organizations
  • Automate purchase order receipt and fulfillment functions
  • Your integrated partners can launch your site in their purchasing system and shop assigned catalogs, contracts favorites and microsites
  • Easily manage your integrated partners through dashboards and wizards
  • Import your integrated partners' department identifiers and map them to your back-office accounting codes; export CSV files to your partners
  • Monitor Web sales to your partners through dashboard

Get a free demo of eProcurement! Contact ECi today.

It's easy to set up and use. For details on setting up your eProcurement license for your customers, see eProcurement (pdf).

How do I set up The Spot for HON Furniture Microsite?

Introducing The Spot for HON Furniture Microsite

As an office supplies dealer, you already sell HON furniture from your existing catalog. Now your shoppers can launch The Spot for HON Furniture microsite on ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2.

"We wanted to provide a HON branded furniture shopping experience," said Kevin Mathis, Vice President, Transactional Business, of The HON Company. "We've made HON more accessible by using ECinteractive's microsite capabilities."

But what's a microsite? The site functions like a specialty kiosk at the mall. As shoppers browse from store to store, sometimes the selection is overwhelming.

With The Spot for HON Furniture microsite, your shoppers can stop at the HON Furniture "kiosk"—without leaving the mall—and review the best selling HON Furniture items with ease.

The HON Microsite window

Advantages of The Spot for HON Furniture Microsite

You set your own prices.

Customers enjoy the convenience of viewing HON Furniture best selling items in one place.

Customers can search for items, compare up to three items and view color options all on the site.

A unique HON Furniture brand shopping experience!

Easy to Use!

Your shoppers will use the Shopping menu to launch the new, easy to use The Spot for HON Furniture microsite.

Your shoppers can select from our best selling chairs, desks and storage options as well as compare up to three items, and quickly add to their cart.

Closing the microsite window takes them to the My Shopping Cart page on your ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 site.

They can check out what they picked from the microsite, or continue shopping

Easy to Set Up!

If you load quarterly updates provided by wholesalers (such as United Stationers and S.P. Richards) or buying groups (such as TriMega or is.group), HON product data may already be loaded into your back-end Item database. Orders for microsite items will be fulfilled using your standard purchase order flow.

Just enable The Spot for HON Furniture Microsite in your Admin Control Panel. For detailed instructions, see Setting Up & Using The Spot for HON Furniture Microsite (pdf).

How do I set up HP Printing Supplies and New HP Printer Finder Microsite?

With a Hewlett-Packard microsite — "HP Supplies Finder" — in ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2, you can make it easy to shop HP printers, multi-function devices, ink, toner, specialty paper, and storage media.

In the new HP Printer Finder, shoppers can select printing features they want, and the filter will offer up a printer selection that best fits their needs.

The original HP Supplies Finder works like machine matching: shoppers enter the model number of a printer they already have. The results immediately suggest ink/toner cartridges, paper, and other recommended supplies.

HP Microsite Window

As with any item in your catalog, any microsite item must exist in your backend system in order to be orderable through your Web site.

Rest assured, when you load quarterly updates provided by most wholesalers, buying groups, and computer/imaging suppliers, HP product data should already be loaded into your back-end Item database. Orders for microsite items will be fulfilled using your standard purchase order logic and flow.

To learn how to activate the HP Printing Supplies microsite for your customers on ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2, see Setting Up & Using the HP Printing Supplies Microsite.

How do I launch the MeadWestvaco Calendars & Planners Microsite?

With the AAG Dealer Connect microsite from MWV (meadwestvaco.com), you'll be your customers' first choice for dated goods like calendars and planners.

But what is a microsite? Picture a supermarket. It may have smaller shops inside, focused on a small subset of products and services like a pharmacy, a salon, a deli, a bakery cafe. But you are still buying your Cafe Mocha while shopping for Everything Else at that location.

Your Web storefront is like the supermarket, and the MeadWestvaco Microsite is like the smaller cafe inside, showcasing a smaller subset of products.

In your ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2 shopping site's shopping menu, the new Calendars & Planners option launches a new window:

AT-A-GLANCE MeadWestvaco Microsite Window

  • Sell AT-A-GLANCE®, Day Runner®, DayMinder®, and Visual Organizer® brand calendars and planners from your ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 site.
  • Upsell from basic, core planning products to a more feature-rich, value-add products.
  • Cross-sell to increase unit purchases — and profit — in the dated goods category.

When your customer adds products to their cart and then closes the microsite window, they are taken to the My Shopping Cart page on ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2. They can then check out what they ordered through the AAG Dealer Connect microsite.

To learn how to activate the AAG Dealer Connect microsite for your customers on ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2, see Setting Up & Using the MeadWestvaco Microsite in ECinteractive.

To load MeadWestvaco items and pricing, see Loading the MeadWestvaco Price File in DDMS (pdf).

You can also activate the AAG Dealer Connect microsite for your Dealer Station and original is.D-Force site. see Setting Up & Using the MeadWestvaco Microsite in Dealer Station.

How to I Manage Favorites Items?

Favorites Items Management helps you better manage your user favorites lists as well as administrative favorites lists. You can easily change one item to another on all lists. You can also delete items on all favorites lists. This page lets you manually enter items or you can import them using a file. Two new Site Preference options let you notify customers when an item on a favorites list has been changed or deleted. For more details, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force2 Administrative Site: Favorites Items Management (pdf)

How Do I Add Trodat's Custom Stamp Microsite?

See Setting Up & Using the Trodat PSN (pdf). Want to set up the Trodat Microsite to sell Custom Stamps on ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2? In this document, you'll learn how to set up appropriate accounts and parameters to transmit purchase orders to Trodat (requires DDMS 10.0 and higher). You'll also learn how to use the O/PUS application to load Trodat item files into your DDMS inventory database. You'll also learn how to use the ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 Admin Control panel to activate the microsite for your Web storefront customers.

How Do I Add Image Map Hotspots to my eMarketing Email Campaigns?

eMarketing flyers now link from more images than "Buy Now" buttons and product shots. The Image Map Editor in Flyer Maintenance lets you upload your own (or vendors') images, and make hotspots link to any item or URL you like!

Upload flyer images from your manufacturer, wholesaler, other trading partner, or your own marketing department.

Create an interactive flyer with multiple hotspot links to your campaign's main call to action, and/or multiple options.

Click and drag a rectangle or circle around a portion of that image to make it clickable — a "hotspot".

You can set a hotspot to link to a URL — such as to a special landing page, contest details, survey, or social media page.

Or you can leave the URL blank — and map hotspots to specially priced items from your ECinteractive catalog.

For detailed instructions on using eMarketing Flyer Maintenance, see pages 11-12 of Setting Up & Using Integrated eMarketing (PDF)

The Image Map Editor in the ECinteractive eMarketing Flyer Management admin control panel

How Do I Set S.P. Richards Enhanced Contextual Banners, Alternates and Substitutes?

Search Results are More Persuasive

ECi continues to work closely with S.P. Richards, our mutual goal being a better experience in searching and shopping for your customers.

"May We Also Suggest" provides an alternate item in case the SKU entered is not an exact match

"This Item Has Been Replaced By" suggests products in lieu of substituted or discontinued items.

Indexed substitutes appear in results in case the shopper searches by a competitor SKU.

Contextual banners promote information or items related to the current Search Results. (You can disable sitewide in Site Preferences or at the user-level Alt/Sub settings.)

If the shopper searches for an item for which the sole match is an Enhanced Substitute item, they will be taken directly to the Product Detail page, where a message explaining the substitution appears at the top.

A new bullet list of Features, Advantages and Benefits will display, where available, on the Product Detail page and in Search Results. (S.P. Richards anticipates that catalog updates to include these bullets will be complete in 3rd quarter.)

There's more...

For details on how to enable, disable, and use selected Enhanced Content features, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 10.2 (pdf).

To show your customers how to use the new features, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Shopper's Site: Viewing S.P. Richards Enhanced Content (pdf).

How Do We Delegate Authority With Approval Forwarding?

What if the manager at the top of the approval chain goes on vacation? Or leaves the organization? Now approval users — or admin users — can delegate approval authority for a set or indefinite time!

Customer View has a new option to enable and set up approval forwarding. Shoppers have a similar option with the same three-step process: enable, set dates, and pick a responsible party.

Customer View has a new option to enable and set up approval forwarding. Shoppers have a similar option with the same three-step process: enable, set dates, and pick a responsible party. When an order requires an approval that would normally go to the original approver, the system will automatically notify the temporary approver at login that an order awaits approval.

The selected party temporarily inherits all the rights and limits granted by the original approving party. So a mid- or lower-level link in the chain can temporarily be granted the same shopping privileges as the top-level approver.

To give your shoppers detailed instructions, see End User Shopper Site: Order Approval Forwarding (pdf) and your site's online help.

For detailed instructions on forwarding approvals from the Admin Control Panel, see Administrative Site: Order Approval Forwarding (pdf) and online help in the control panel.

How Do I Transfer an Approval Order Among Users?

Now you can help more when your customers need it on order approvals! In Order Management, transfer an approval order to a higher-level approval user in the current chain. Unlock orders and view logs, too!

The Order Management List shows various icons.

If the blue person icon appears, you can transfer the order awaiting approval to another user, and they will be notified as soon as they log in to the site that an order awaits their approval.

If the golden lock icon appears, the approval user has viewed the order without taking action on it and moved on to another page. You can unlock the order, and its status will return to Awaiting Approval.

For detailed instructions on transferring orders from the Admin Control Panel, see the Order Manangement topic in Administrative Site: Order Approval Forwarding (pdf) and online help in the control panel.

How Do Shoppers Know If an Order Exceeds Budget/Order Limits and Requires Approval?

The checkout page indicates to what extent the order meets or exceeds budgetary and approval limits. Shoppers can change their order as needed!

Checkout warns the shopper if the order exceeds their budget or approval limits.

How Do I View and Print Approval Chains?

In the Approval Chain page of your Admin Control Panel in ECinteractive® and is.D-Force® 2, you can easily review approval group detail information.

The drill-down view using the [-] and [+] buttons, makes it easy to review approval group settings at all levels. You can still toggle between the original Quick View and the new Detail View released in Version 10.0, and still Expand/Collapse the current approval chains as needed. You can even Print a report for customers, as shown below.

You can get there from Customer Settings (left menu) or Consumer Admin (top menu), and then select Approval Management > Approval Chain.

For detailed instructions, see Print Approval Chain (pdf).

How Do I Augment United Smart Search Catalog Details?

You now have more power to promote items from United Smart Search, without creating a custom catalog entry.

From the top Product Management menu or the left Site Customizing menu, you can select the new Augment United Smart Search Data. This page lets you insert — or even import — your own descriptions, keywords, and search rankings!

The system validates your entries against the item numbers residing in your back-end system. The Search Ranking uses the same logic as the Merchandising Products page, as well as United Stationers' existing logic for displaying search results.

For detailed instructions, see the ECinteractive/is.D-Force Admin Guide to Augmented Items (pdf).

How do shoppers view Order Detail like approval user changes?

You and your customers can see the entire history of an order, including reasons why it was held up (such as for approval), and details of changes (such as approvers and their changes to quantities or items)!

In the Order History and Approval History pages, the user can now click the blue "i" icon to display the detail page, shown below.

The order detail page

  1. Order Status: shows the current status of the order as well as its basic "header" information such as the Order Date, Account, Department and Attention. If "Awaiting Approval", an information icon appears whose tooltip lists the name of each member in the current approval group.
  2. Details: shows the remaining order "header" information including PO numbers and the Billing and Shipping addresses. The labels for Long PO and Short PO (shown as "PO #" and "Alt. PO #", respectively, in the image) use the customizable text assigned to the logged-in customer.
  3. Order History: lists any changes made to the "header" section of the order including PO number and approval changes. The "Condensed" view removes any "Locked for Approval Edit" log entry from the display.it is updated on the back-end and front-end Attention field as well.
  4. Order Items: lists individual items on the order.
  5. Order Item History: Similar to the Order History section, this section lists all changes made to the item under which it is displayed.

Also, the order and approval confirmation email message now links to the new Order Detail page rather than Order History.

For detailed instructions, see your shopping site's online help.

What are Preferred Items and Best Sellers?

When an end user does a keyword search in advanced or quick search it lists 5 “Best Sellers” on the right side of the Search Results, that is the Preferred Items list for what ever keyword they entered.

When using the Rank Items feature, the #1 Best Sellers item is now first (When originally released, the top ranking was #9999). This rank order is automatically adjusted for all dealers, so all merchandising ranks are consistent.

When an end user does a keyword search in advanced or quick search it lists 5 "Best Sellers" on the right side of the Search Results, that is the Preferred Items list for what ever keyword they entered.

Normally the dealer has access to two of the bestelisted. You can add an item in the Admin Control Panel by clicking Marketing Tools, then clicking Preferred Items. Then you can attach items to what ever keyword you chose and set a ranking. The higher the ranking the higher the item will display in the 5 "Best Sellers" list.

In Preferred Items Management, you'll use #1 as the highest rank.

The wholesaler merchandising settings have control over the other three items; however, if they are not using those three slots, then the dealer will be able to rank up to five items.

One of the biggest misconceptions we have seen is concerning the keyword. The keyword assigned by the dealer must either be the keyword or be in the item description for the item you are attaching.

In other words if I add FEL00001 to my preferred items list under the keyword “ File Folder”  and file folder is not part of FEL00001 keyword or description in econtent it will not display as a preferred item when an end user enters “File Folder” in a keyword search.

For detailed instructions on using these rankings, see your Admin Control Panel's online help.

How do I use the new Site Preferences Dashboard?

Find it fast, and tweak your site in a snap! In Version 10.0 and higher, the GlobalSettings > Site Preferences dashboard groups your settings.

It works just like the dashboards released for Custom Catalogs and Items, for Customer Records and for Approval Group Records. For detailed instructions on using Site Preferences, see your online help.

How do I Set My Local Time Zone to Display in Order Confirmation Emails?

In Version 10.0 and higher, your Web storefront will no longer use the ECinteractive/is.D-Force 2 server time. Instead, it will use your local time in order confirmation emails and related communications.

In GlobalSettings > Site Preferences, you can Edit your General Preferences to select your local time zone from a list of global time zones, as shown below.

If you adjust your Local Time Zone, please make sure you update your GlobalSettings > Site Maintenance settings as well.

For detailed instructions, see your online help.

How Do I Customize Error Messages on my Shopping Site?

"No Results Found?" "Unexpected Error?" Now you can get creative with your own custom message with our HTML-ready WYSIWYG Editor on the Site Customizing > Error Text page.

In Version 10, you can set up a custom error message when no items match a shopper's search terms. For instance, you can prompt them to call you directly for additional assistance.

Each error message may include up to 250 characters. (Spaces count as characters.)

For detailed instrucitons, see Customizing Site Text and Messages (pdf).

Can my site use the latest United Stationers SmartSearch technology?

United Stationers released its SmartSearch Web service in cooperation with leading industry technology providers, including eCommerce Industries, Inc. (ECi). If you are a United Stationers dealer with an ECinteractive Web storefront, your online customers will have access to enhanced content and search capabilities, side-by-side comparisons, richer product details, targeted machine & equipment accessory matching, and relevant alternative items.

With Version 10, you have more power to gain those compliance-minded national accounts: Smart Search now has a "Green" filter and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). You'll also upsell more with the enhanced Products to Consider!

Enhanced Search gives you better filtering as well as new views: quick, detail, summary, and comparison.

Action Required: Please contact your United Stationers Account Manager to request your SmartSearch Web Service Dealer ID and password.

For detailed instructions, see Setting Up United Stationers Enhanced Content (pdf).

How do I set up Customer Account Administrators to manage their own accounts?

You set up Customer Account Administrators using the Domain Management wizard, which is available in the side menu under CustomerAdmin, or in the top menu under Consumer Admin.

The Domain Administration search grid, emulate view, and wizard"Keys to Your Domain" analogy: A domain, which replaces Super Users from legacy Web storefronts, is like a set of keys that you might give to trusted visitors to unlock parts of your secure facilities.

You can grant customer user accounts limited rights to manage other user accounts, even multiple domain administrators.

Granular Domain Privileges. You can extend the privilege of administering shoppers, account news, admin favorites, and approvals to your customers. In turn, an Account Administrator can grant similar rights to users under their accounts.

Domain Management. The new grid makes it a breeze to set up, look up, add, edit, and copy these customer domain privileges.

Wizard Interface. Get as granular as you like with the privileges you grant to Account Administrators. It uses the same interface as the Customer Management and Approval Groups wizards. The Progress Bar guides you through Domain Name, Account, Admin, Preference, Contract, Global catalog, Custom catalog, Alt/Sub, Checkout, Communication, Feature, Marketing, and Price.

Account Administrator Dashboard. Like the Customer Account dashboard, you'll find a bird's eye view of the privileges assigned to to each administrator. This includes the Accounts, Customers & Preferences; User Group Settings, Contract/Laundry Lists, Global Catalog Groups, and status. By default, each Account Admin is inactive until you activate it.

Emulate Domain Admin. Emulate what your customer account administrator will see after they log in: limited forms of the revamped Admin Control Panel pages you use to perform the same tasks. This protects the security of your user's login password, and gives you a chance to make sure all their privileges are correct before you activate their access.

Copy Domain User. Re-use the settings from the selected Domain User to shortcut the process. Once you've entered contact and account information from a copied account, you can click Finish. Or you can customize further.

Multiple Accounts Per Domain. This feature is so flexible you can assign multiple accounts to a domain. You may find this useful for customers where you have set up multiple accounts on your back-end system to meet their requirements to bill different subsidiaries, locations, or regions separately.

Site Text for Account Admin News. You can create text that can be shown at the top of the end user's Account Administrator Dashboard. By default, the Account Admin Dashboard does not show a news box. To display news on their Dashboard, you must first set it up in the Text Editor and Site Text Assignment pages, under the side menu for Site Text or the top menu for Site Config. In the Account Administrative News tab, Edit the Account Admin News, click the down arrow in the Text Description box, select the text to display, and save your changes. For more details, see your Administrative online documentation.

For help in configuring domain privileges and account administrators, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 9.2.0 (pdf) and the Admin Control Panel's online help.

To help train customers on managing their accounts, the Account Administrator Guide to ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Front-End Site (pdf) is now available, along with your shopping site's online help.

See also Customizing Site Text and Messages in ECinteractive (pdf).

How do I Import Rich Content for United Non-Catalog Items in Smart Search?

United Stationers has developed a rich content library of over 9,000 items that can be used with their Smart Search offering. These items include:

Products United sells but do not appear in a current catalog or flyer.

Items sold only to authorized dealers (e.g. Green Mountain coffee)

Non-United products which many dealers want in their online offering but are purchased from other suppliers; for example soft drinks. (Note: Access to non-United product content is by subscription.)

You can now import a list of United Stationers' Uncatalog Rich Content Items, and validate against your back-end system and Enhanced Content.For any or all of the above product groups, you can now import a list of the desired SKUs to be validated against your back-end system and synchronized with United Smart Search.

Then, add the list using the Custom Catalog Group Management page, so that those items will be added to each shopper's individual Catalog Combination Index (CCI).

Imported items will be marked Uncatalog in the CCI Viewer and Custom Catalog Management lists; if they were previously marked Custom, this setting will be replaced.

Once indexing is finished, the United Rich Content or the relevant non-catalog products — including all the rich content attributes — will be displayed via Smart Search.

For details, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 9.2.0 (pdf) and the Admin Control Panel's online help.

To obtain item lists for these non-catalog products, contact marketingtechnology@ussco.com.

How do I Import Admin Favorites Lists?

Instead of adding items one at a time to an Admin Favorites List, you can manually mass add items, or you can import favorites items using a delimited file.

The Assign Favorites page has been updated to help you more easily assign favorites lists to your customer accounts as well as any departments within the account.

For details, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 9.2.0 (pdf) and the Admin Control Panel's online help.

How do I allow shoppers to Share Favorites Lists?

Manage MyFavorites has a new button to Share a list, and a new column to indicate whether a list is shared. Shoppers can share with their Account or selected departments (if they are allowed to shop for multiple departments).The Manage MyFavorites page now allows any user to Share their personal lists, including any comments about products, and select accounts or departments to grant access to their lists.

For example, they can share a list made up for a particular classroom, event, or supply closet location.

 

Details for Selected List has new button: Share.

New column under MyFavorites Lists indicates if a list is Shared.

Shoppers can share with their account or selected departments (if they are allowed to shop for multiple departments).

List item comments can flow to checkout, order notes, and delivery manifests.

To enable this feature for your shoppers, use the checkbox for Allow Sharing Favorites under Feature Settings. See also ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 9.2.0 (pdf) and your shopping site's online help.

How do I set up operators for Online Chat and Co-Browsing with ProvideSupport?

Another way to enhance your shoppers' experience is to let them chat with one of your friendly representatives, one-on-one in real time without picking up the phone.

Create an account with ProvideSupport, and set up your chat button code and display preferences on ECinteractive.

ProvideSupport.com, our new partner for live chat, gives your operator amazing interactive features:

Greet your customers when they visit your site.

Show products of interest based on browsing history or keywords.

Share promotions and discounts.

Answer questions in real time.

Look up a console of keywords, campaigns, and analytics about your visitors.

Co-browse to provide specific help on the Web pages your visitors are seeing.

Opt for email inquiries when offline during lunch, breaks, or after hours.

For details on how to set up your ProvideSupport chat, see ECinteractive & is.D-Force 2 Administrative Site: Software Version 9.2.0 (pdf) and the Admin Control Panel's online help, and the www.ProvideSupport.com site.

 

How do I use S.P. Richards special-order catalogs, ProductPro & FurnitureAdvantage?

New! Special Order with S.P. Richards ProductPro™ and FurnitureAdvantage™ Programs (pdf)

Traditionally, office products wholesalers have offered only in-stock items to meet the need of speedy delivery. But the market demands more custom items, even those with longer delivery timeframes. As we announced earlier, S.P. Richards dealers can offer customers a more extensive variety of products.

S.P. Richards has announced that updated ProductPro and FurnitureAdvantage program price files will be available for download via O/PUS PSNControl on the first Monday of the month — June 7, for example.

Update Your Software

Since these special-order items are not stocked, delivery may take longer. To accommodate a new Shipping Table with a 2-character shipping code and a 20-character description, such as "ships in 2-3 days," we've enhanced our software:

  • DDMS® 8.22 or higher
  • ECinteractive and is.D-Force® 2 Version 9.1 or higher
  • O/PUS® PSNControl 1.1.196 and UpdateSPR.exe Multiloader v00407a or higher

Most dealers will need to update DDMS and O/PUS software in order to sell ProductPro and FurnitureAdvantage. To get the new DDMSInstall and OPUSInstall software updates, log into the ECI Customer Support Portal.and click Software Downloads.

Online Shopping Enhanced for Special Orders

ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2 servers have already been enhanced. Your shoppers can easily identify how long special order merchandise will take to ship. Certain items will be flagged as non-returnable, whether they are stocked foodstuffs or special-order custom work.

Several pages now display the delivery text and non-returnable indicator, including Product Detail (as shown below), MyFavorites, and MyCart.

Product Detail shows estimated shipping or non-returnable

Get Detailed Steps

For step-by-step instructions on updating your inventory database and contracts and using the special order features in DDMS, see Special Order with S.P. Richards ProductPro™ and FurnitureAdvantage™ Programs (pdf).

Note on Missing Web Images:
Some FurnitureAdvantage™ items are missing photos. S.P. Richards assures us they have been working closely with the manufacturers to publish the Web images and catalog content for over 4,000 items so that it will be available in S.P. Richards Enhanced Content. S. P. Richards thanks you in advance for your patience and understanding as we roll out these exciting new programs.

How Do I Email Sales Promos With Integrated eMarketing and Flyer Maintenance?

What is the easiest way to stay in touch with your shoppers? Send them a colorful email advertising your news, sales, and discounts. With Integrated eMarketing, you can manage and schedule complete email campaigns from your Admin Control Panel:

  • The new Flyer Maintenance menu opens the Flyer Maintenance dashboard where you can monitor your flyers, campaigns, recipient lists, and results.
  • The Campaign Wizard helps you create and schedule email flyers to promote sale items to your customers.

The Flyer Maintenance Dashboard, and a sample message.

Dynamic Distribution Lists automatically update whenever new accounts sign up or change their email addresses. Target your distribution lists for a variety of marketing purposes. A few examples:

  • Import prospects and send a welcome coupon to guests (Registered = No).
  • Send exclusive pricing to loyal customers (based on Created Date range).
  • Send exclusive deals to top 10 high volume accounts (from Usage Reports).
  • Re-engage lost accounts (based on old Last Login Date and Order Date ranges).
  • Promote store overstocks (perhaps filtering to a specific location).

The HTML Email Template Editor is much like the Site Text and Messages page. New in Integrated eMarketing:

  • Insert variable mail-merge "snippets" such as your logo, your contact information, the customer name and email.
  • Add rows of Web catalog items, where you can tailor the product name, description, flyer price and unit of measure for each campaign. You can control whether the list price and savings amount appear. Your shoppers can easily add the items to their carts.

The automated opt-out complies with anti-spam law.

  • The unsubscribe link snippet is automatically added to the bottom of every message.
  • Shoppers may log in to update their preferences in the Edit Profile page.
  • This system honors their preferences even if the shopper or the dealer updates the email address associated with the account.

Getting Started. To get started with Integrated eMarketing, see Setting Up & Using Integrated eMarketing (pdf) or your online help.

However, here are some important notes on implementation:

  1. Anti-Spam. Integrated eMarketing sends your campaign messages from the SMTP server for the email provider you specify, and from the email address you specify. This ensures a personal touch, helps the system comply with anti-spam law, and protects your campaigns from being blacklisted in case another dealer abuses the system.
  2. Email Host Settings. Contact your IT network staff, email host provider, or Internet service provider to obtain the IP address and Port for your business’ outgoing SMTP email server. Your server may require use of an SSL Encrypted Connection and an incoming POP email server IP address and Port. Tip: Ask what limits your host sets on bulk mailings (such as messages per day) that may affect your campaign distribution.
  3. Email Address. You must also specify an email address for your campaign messages to use as the From and Reply-To address. Consider specifying a contact name of someone at your business that your customers will recognize. It does not have to be that person’s actual contact email, but consider operational needs when it comes to handling responses.

 

How do I Control Whether Shoppers See Register Me Link?

Not all dealers want to give their customers the ability to self-register. Now you can disable the Register Me link that is usually shown in the My Account section of your Web Storefront.

In the Admin Control Panel's Global Settings menu, click Site Preferences, and then click Edit. Under Allow Customer Registration, you have a new option: Do Not Display Registration Option.

Do Not Display Registration Option under Site Preferences

.

How Do I Set up Secure Automatic Login from Your Business Site?

Your ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 web storefront provides fast, convenient shopping — in a self-contained, secure environment.

However, some dealers have an existing Web site, hosted by their own Internet Service Provider or IT facilities.

Our login page has been enhanced to allow secure and efficient methods to accept customer credentials from an external site on a consistent basis. All you have to do is create the Web form to pass the name and password securely, and place it anywhere on your own site.

Automating external login can:

  • Save your customers time by minimizing the number of clicks and page loads, letting your customers shop faster and more efficiently.
  • Integrate your ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 site more seamlessly with the rest of their business Web presence.
  • Draw greater attention to your online shopping and account services from any page of your site.

To learn how to build and house your own login page or form on your own site to log directly into your ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 site, see Setting up Automatic Login from Your Site to ECinteractive (pdf). We've even included steps for giving your customers the options to recover a forgotten password or just shop as a guest instead.

How Do I Restrict Line Items to Backend Minimum Order Quantities?

Dealers using backoffice business systems like DDMS have set up minimum order quantities for some items. In many cases this rule is to meet the minimum sell quantities set by the wholesaler, buying group, or manufacturer. The DDMS GOA Gateway packets 15 and 295 already send this Multiple Quantity value, since before ECinteractive was first launched. Rest assured, this feature does not require a DDMS software update.

ECinteractive has been enhanced to obey this rule when shoppers view standard and enhanced content, when they add items to their cart, and when they adjust quantities. (7956)

Select from Multiple Quantities AllowedOn several pages, wherever the shopper is able to adjust the quantity they order, the item quantity field is enhanced to behave as follows:

  • If the minimum order quantity is greater than 1, then the Quantity field will display a drop-down of up to 25 available order quantities, as specified by the minimum order quantity for the item. By default, the pre-selected value will be the minimum order quantity itself. However, the field also follows the site-specific preference of maximum order quantity. For example, let's say the minimum order quantity of a box of envelopes is 6, and the site maximum order quantity is 50. The quantity box would display a drop-down menu that includes multiples of 6, including 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, and so on. Normally, it would include all multiples until the 25th multiple is reached: 150. However, the site's maximum order quantity is reached after 48, so that becomes the last option available.
  • Enter any quantity where minimum is 1.If the minimum order quantity is 1, then the quantity field will display a textbox (as displayed today) that allows the user to enter any quantity for the item.
  • In cases where a quantity has already been applied to an item (for example, in Favorites or saved orders), the drop-down will default to that value if it is available; if not, then it will default to the next higher available quantity.
  • In cases where an item's minimum quantity exceeds the site's maximum quantity per line, the item is un-orderable, and it cannot be added to the Cart. We strongly recommend considering this rule and your vendor minimums when setting your maximum quantity per line.

This change affects the shopper's Cart, QuickOrder, MyFavorites Shop, Advanced Search, Search results, Web Specials, and Product Detail for both standard and enhanced content.

For detailed instructions, see your online help.

How do I display RouteTrak™ signatures on my Web storefront's Order History?

If your delivery drivers use RouteTrak mobile units to capture proof of delivery, you can allow your shoppers to look up that information in Order History. This feature provides a link to open a new window that shows the signature for the order and the date when it was signed and the individual who signed it.(3085)

Implementation involves adding your Web storefront URL to the RouteTrak SyncBox setup window for proper synchronization of delivery timestamps and signature images.. For detailed instructions, see Setting Up RouteTrak To Show Delivery Signatures on Your Web Storefront (pdf) and Setting Up & Using RouteTrak™ Proof of Delivery for DDMS (pdf).

To find out how quickly RouteTrak can improve your bottom line in delivery efficiency, see our RouteTrak product information and ROI page.

How do I display separate GST and PST taxes for Canadian customers?

You can have separate tax lines display on the end user's Checkout page. This information appears in the Order Summary section of the page and prints on Confirmation emails. This feature is useful for Canadian customers who use GST and PST taxation.

To enable this feature, click the Use and Display Multiple Tax Fields check box in Site Preferences. Two additional boxes: Tax Label 1 and Tax Label 2 let you define the text for the two tax fields.

For detailed instructions, see your online help.

How do I set up HP PurchasEdge Rewards for my ECinteractive customers?

If you are using the DDMS back-end system, you can integrate your Web storefront with PurchasEdge to help build stronger end-user relationships and drive supply sales by rewarding your end-users with free Hewlett-Packard products. For detailed setup instructions, see PurchasEdge_Integration (pdf), particularly around page 12.

See also the sign-up form on ECiSolutions.com, Register as an HP PurchasEdge Reseller.

Exporting HP Data (pdf) HP PurchasEdge participating dealers can use the HPUSAGE program in DDMS to track HP product information. This DDMS program creates an output file that contains customer contact information as well as total sales dollars for HP products. By exporting the data to a file, you can target those customers who purchase less than a specified sales amount. After the data is exported, you can forward the file to HP, who in turn, can assist you with marketing campaigns targeted to increase HP product sales to the customer.

Can I offer coupons or promotions like "Buy THIS and Get THAT Free"?

"Buy THIS and Get THAT Free" is among many options for Coupons and Promotions enhancements, set for release in ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2 Version 9.0.5 late June 2009. In Dealer Station's discount-centric Coupons feature "Buy A and Get B Free" was not available. However, both DDMS and ECinteractive families of products have undergone significant enhancements to integrate a back-end Promotions maintenance interface with the front-end Promo Code handling.

If you are using DDMS as your back-end business system, you must upgrade your software to DDMS 8.19 or higher. This will allow you to take advantage of integration between back-end Promotions & Coupons administration application, additional GOA gateway software changes, and the ECinteractive and is.D-Force enhancements that handle promo codes.

Examples. Here are just a few promotion combinations you could offer:

  • $10 Off First Web Order Total, with minimum $75 order (Use promo code 10off1st75), or $20 Off First Web Order Total with minimum $150 order (Use promo code 20off1w150). Newly registered accounts only. Not valid with any other offer.
  • Buy three boxes of these whiteboard markers, get one box free (Shoppers may reuse this promotion code as often as they like across their entire account).
  • Buy this printer, get this ink 25% off (any quantity, one use per department).
  • Buy this combination of back-to-school-spirit items portfolio A, backpack B, and pencils C, and get 10% off the highest unit-priced item in the cart (any quantity, one use per shopper).
  • Order $250 now (pre-tax, pre-volume discounts, but after your account's standard discounts), get $25 off your current order total.
  • Order three reams of this paper now, get 15% off your next order.
  • For every order over $150, pick from three free gifts (and reuse as often as you like before expiration date).

DDMS Promotion Setup. You'll find many thoughtful options for setting up your own coupon promotions in DDMS, as you can see in the figure below:

Promotions Setup window in DDMS 8.18+
  • Specify any 10-character promo code (alphanumeric), and any 50-character Description.
  • Set up a series of promos in advance using different start and expiration dates.
  • Web Orders Only.
  • Limit to use a certain number of times per account, department, or user.
  • Toggle to allow use with other promotions.
  • Require up to 50 specific item(s), spend over specific order total (compared to the order total minus any standard discounts, prior to taxing, and prior to any volume discount), or no minimum.
  • Apply one of four Discount Types: Discount Current Order Total, Discount First Web Order Total, Discount Next Order Total, or Discount Highest Unit Priced Item on Order.
  • Alternatively, you may apply one of two Item Bonus Types: Choice of Additional Item(s) or Discount Matching required Buy Item(s).
  • Track Promotion and Promotion Item usage in new SQL Preview Reports, as well as current text-based usage reports.
  • Customize messages displayed at Web Checkout to explain why a code is invalid.

Enable Promo Code Entry At Web Checkout. After setting up promotions on your backend system, you'll need to:

  1. Enable Promotions and Coupons in your customers' Marketing Settings, as shown below.
  2. Communicate your promos to your customers. You might use Site Text, Custom HTML confirmation messages, and/or other marketing tools and campaigns.

You can enable Coupons and Promotions in the Admin Control Panel's Marketing Settings.

Shoppers may enter promo codes at Checkout, and select the department to apply it.To take advantage of your promotions, shoppers must enter the promo code at Checkout (as shown here) or on Approval.

Your ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2 site will prompt for department if required, will check the code's validity, and if needed, prompt the shopper to select free item(s) from a list based on the promotional benefit you set up.

System Requirements. The Coupons & Promotions feature integrates both the back-end and front-end software. As a result, you may require a software update.

  • If you use DDMS as your back-end server, you must load DDMS version 8.19 or higher in order to take advantage of Web-Only Promotions features. .

    If you are running DDMS 8.17.x or lower, do not enable Coupons and Promotions in ECinteractive or is.D-Force 2. In testing with DDMS servers running 8.17.x or earlier versions, enabling Coupons and Promotions in the ECinteractive and is.D-Force 2 Admin Control Panel will result in Unexpected Errors for shoppers.

    In addition, an issue with orders of 60 or more items and two or more promo codes was discovered with DDMS 8.18.x, but has been corrected in DDMS 8.19 and higher.

    When you are ready to download DDMS 8.19 or higher, log in to the ECi Support Portal and click Software Downloads. For detailed instructions on this DDMS Promotions feature, see the Updated! Using Promotions and Coupon Codes in DDMS (pdf).

  • ECi COPAS dealers will be able to use their current Promotions features. See your system's help. No software update is required.

Continuing Development. A future enhancement to enter promo codes in DDMS Order Entry is currently in queue for prioritization. However, Web coupons are available with the system requirements above.

For detailed instructions on enabling the Promotions and Coupons feature in ECinteractive, what shoppers see when using promo codes, and viewing Promotion/Coupon detail in Order Management, see Letting Shoppers Use Coupons and Promo Codes in ECinteractive (pdf).

Can I look up what catalogs include a certain item number by its SKU?

The Find Catalogs by SKU page lets you look up item numbers and return a list of catalogs on your site where that item appears.In your Admin Control Panel, you'll find that the SiteInfo menu has a new option: Find Catalogs By SKU.

This page helps you determine what catalogs a product exists in. You can enter the Item Company and Item Number. (If you have multiple ECinteractive or is.D-Force sites, you also select a site.)

By default, the resulting list of catalogs are displayed in the order based on the your site's Provider priority. You may also sort the list by clicking the Catalog Name and Provider column headings.

How do I set up my Category Trees for Custom Products?

Image: If a category is 25+ items, it shows your subcategory links. If less than 25 items, it shows the items.For items that are exclusive to your site, ECinteractive's Custom Product Management feature gives you great flexibility. You can add custom product categories, even entire category trees, while making your products easy for your customers to find.

What you may not know is how categories work. Here are some rules to remember:

  • Clicks Are Minimized. If a category contains 25 or more items, your site shows the subcategory links you have defined. If it's less than 25 items, it shows the list of items. This threshold minimizes the number of clicks required to get to desired items. It also minimizes the amount of granularity required for you to map your category tree
  • Cross-Pollenization is Easy. If a custom item logically belongs to two or more categories within the same catalog, no problem. Any item can be mapped to multiple categories or subcategories.
  • Standard Categorization is Worth It. If you don’t categorize your custom items in the standard catalog, your customers will not be able to find those items through the Standard Browse Catalog categories, Favorites categories, or related pages. Instead, they will be displayed in the Miscellaneous category.
  • ECP Category Mapping is Worth It. If you use United SmartSearch or S.P. Richard's Enhanced Content Provider (ECP) catalog, items that you have not mapped to ECP categories will be displayed according to your Standard category tree, if you have mapped them there. Any remaining uncategorized items fall into Miscellaneous. Uncategorized items in your custom ECP catalog will not display among Similar Products in Product Detail or Cart pages, because those lists are generated in part by category name.
  • Plan Your Categories and Check your Spelling. If your custom category trees differ from the standard or ECP tree or contain spelling mistakes, it will result in duplicate categories. Browse your own site for ideas before you set up your category trees.
  • Browse For Your Custom Items Periodically. Wholesalers are subject to update their category trees at quarter-end or with the release of a new general line catalog, If you previously created an ECP category structure, it's a good idea to Browse your site periodically, make sure all your custom categories still exist, and re-map as needed.

For details, see pages 17-20 of Setting Up Custom Items & Catalogs (pdf).

Can Guest visitors checkout and view orders without having to register?

A few casual visitors to your site are hesitant to commit to establishing an account with you, for one reason or another. With the release of Version 9.0.0, your visitors can simply provide their email address and a credit card to checkout— without having to register an account.

Guest Checkout credit card entry and CAPTCHA verificationGuest Checkout differs slightly from the login-authenticated version of the Checkout page:

  • It requires an email address for subsequent order verification.
  • Guest Checkout will only allow credit cards as the method of payment.
  • Guest checkout requires a CAPTCHA response to verify the visitor is human (not a spambot) for security purposes.
  • As you might expect, Guest Checkout also prompts for shipping and billing addresses, and provides space to specify attention, short purchase order (P/O) number, and long P/O.

The Order Management page of your Admin Control Panel shows a new sortable, filterable column of email addresses to indicate who ordered through Guest Checkout.

Guest Users may view their orders online — without being able to view other guests' order information. Order History prompts guests for their email address, order number, and bill-to zip code so that these fields can be verified against the backend system. The order record will display the same information as the Guest Checkout confirmation page, and the guest can print, select items to view, or add to the cart.

Note: The Account field and the Department field are two mandatory fields in the Customer Management > Edit Guest Customer. These fields are critical to communications between your shopping site and your back-end system. They affect whether your guests can view product details and complete an order. If both fields are not set, your guests will encounter errors when viewing your Product Detail pages.

Standard practice is to have a GUEST account in your back-end system, set up to accept credit card orders from your unregistered Web site visitors. For instructions on setting up this back-end account, please see your system’s documentation. In the Account field of the Edit Guest Customer page, select this GUEST account from the drop-down list

Note: If you are a DDMS system dealer, you should not use your DEMO account for guest orders. By design in the DDMS back-end system, DEMO orders do not flow through to Order Entry. DDMS' DEMO account is meant to demonstrate your system to prospective clients without having to manually remove tickets or incur transaction fees.

In addition to the Account field, the Department field is also mandatory for Guest users in ECinteractive and is.D-force. In the Department field of the Edit Guest Customer page, you should select - Blank Department, unless your back-end GUEST account record has a more specific department to select.

For details on how to set up Guest Checkout, see your online help or Guest User Checkout and Order History (pdf)

How do I set up User Types for customers to Self-Register?

Site preferences for user account registrationIn tandem with the enhanced Guest User Checkout feature, Site Preferences gives you options to control how new customers open accounts with your business:

  • Let users create an online account (it prompts for an existing account number to add a new user).
  • Let users open both a backend and online user account (assuming the new user does not belong to a company with an existing account, this prompts for the information necessary to create a backend account, and an email will notify the dealer that new accounts have been added).
  • Allow both methods (it prompts the user which method they wish to use) — Recommended!
  • (Default) No automatic account creation (it directs the user to fill out the form, which generates an email containing all the information entered to both the prospect and the dealer, who is then responsible for adding this user to both the front-end and backend system.

In addition, you can allow the user to select a user type when they self-register, or simply use a default user type. The new User Types page in the Admin Control Panel allows the dealer to create templates to apply to new users, including (where applicable) location, G/L location, inventory location, printer ID, contracts/laundry lists, lock customer to selected catalogs, route, remarks, dropship, salesman ID, taxable district, discount type/percentage, up to 4 contract IDs, other customer settings, and a 50-character User Type description.

You can also customize certain headers and text fields associated with New User Registration in the Site Text admin page.

When a user who has not logged in attempts to visit the secure Checkout page on your site, the Login page prompts them as usual to enter their credentials before proceeding. Now, this page also gives them the new options to create an account that you have specified. The account registration page prompts them for user name, password, email, security question, and (if multiple are available) user type. Alternatively, your guests can choose "I do not wish to create an account today. Please take me to Guest Checkout."

For details on how to set up user types and Register Me options, and a walkthrough of your customers' experience, see your online help or User Types and Self-Registration (pdf)

Can shoppers use JumpCart to scan barcodes and upload to my site?

With the release of Version 9.0.0, we have completed our first project to extend ECinteractive with punchout capabilities. This implementation handles punchout orders with JumpTech:

  • Dealers who subscribe to Jump Technologies, Inc. (www.jumptech.com/partners.html) can provide their customers with barcode-enhanced catalogs (full-line or contract) or barcode labels for shelves or print & copy consummables. JumpTech maintains more than 100,000 office products from major wholesalers and buying groups, and lets dealers upload custom item images and details.
  • Using a JumpCart™ barcode reader keyfob, customers can scan the barcodes for the items they want.
  • Customers install JumpTech client software and configure it once to point to your site URL.
  • Your customers simply plug the JumpCart into the USB port of the PC where JumpTech client software is installed.
  • The JumpCart software client will prompt to save their username, password, and department number to log in to your site (using special encryption technology). On login, it automatically uploads scanned items into their shopping cart for review and checkout.
  • The simplicity of the scan-dock-checkout process reduces order errors. It appeals especially to prospective customers who are decentralizing their procurement process, or who do not yet order online with you due to the number of clicks to place an order.
  • From the AdminSite menu, you can open a new Punchout Log. This grid shows item and posting detail for XML ordering and procurement systems including JumpTech. You can limit to one or more of your ECinteractive/is.D-Force2 sites, punchout partners, customer users, process statuses, item departments, and dates. You can drill down to additional transaction step details and XML text. You can also see items currently being stored in a temporary cart that have not posted to your backend system. For details on the Punchout Log, see your Admin Control Panel's online help.

Note: Contact JumpTech by email sales@jumptech.com or phone 1-888-373-SCAN (7226) for Distribution Partner information (with direct link into ECinteractive/D-Force 2 site), Catalog-On-Demand, and/or a Sales Demo Kit. For technical support of JumpTech scanners and software, email support@jumptech.com or call 651.287.6000.

Next Steps. If you subscribe to Jump Technologies, Inc., the barcode scanning software needs to be set up with our cart processing handler application's Web address.

This cart handler Web address is necessary to transfer the orders into your system. At least three people need it:

  • Your JumpTech representative needs it to set up your account in their system.
  • You need it to set up JumpCart™ client software at your site for testing and/or retail purposes.
  • Your customers need it to set up JumpCart client software at their locations.

The cart handler Web address looks like your main Web storefront site address — followed by the filename ExternalPartnerHandler.ashx. In the following examples, the blank represents your account name or number:

https://www.ecinteractive.com/____/ExternalPartnerHandler.ashx
https://www.dforce2.com/____/ExternalPartnerHandler.ashx

We communicated this cart handler Web address to JumpTech personnel, but inadvertently omitted it from our original announcement.

For detailed instructions on JumpTech setup and troubleshooting, see Setting Up the JumpCart Barcode Scanner Punchout (pdf).

For troubleshooting purposes, your Admin Control Panel's AdminSite menu includes a Punchout Log. On this page, you can look up the chain of actions involved in a single transaction. You can also look up any items currently being stored in a temporary cart that have not posted to your backend system. For detailed instructions, see Troubleshooting Punchout and Microsite Orders in the External Partner Log (pdf).

Because JumpTech uses a simplified form of the standardized cXML format, this project provides a template taking us one big step closer to handling other punchout systems for xml ordering and procurement (such as Ariba).

How do I take advantage of the Catalog Combination Index (CCI) feature?

You want your site to display any set of items you want to sell, as many sets as you want, while making it as easy and snappy as possible for your customers.

Your ECinteractive Product Management team wants the same thing. But historically, catalog content in the office supply industry has its share of complexities. From the multitudes of manufacturers, to the use of multiple wholesaler catalogs, to individual dealers selling unique items in their own catalogs, to individual customers searching according to their own contracts and laundry lists, it is a challenge to filter out duplicate search results. The system has had to process individual parameters and limits on what catalog a user is allowed to shop, for each user, every time they visit.The dynamic nature of serving item information to hundreds of sites and thousands of users can take its toll on performance.

That's the beauty of ECinteractive's new Catalog Combination Indexing function (CCI).

The CCI automatically generates a list of items with unique SKUs for each distinct combination of Global Catalog Group and Custom Catalog Group. When displaying items to your customers, ECinteractive directly accesses this pre-generated CCI list.

The results:

  • Since the search engine only has to work with a smaller subset of the catalog specific to the dealer or customer user, it speeds up search results.
  • In Search Results, there are no more duplicate items displayed, even when the same item occurs in different wholesaler catalogs that your site uses.
  • Since we've fully implemented CCI, no search timeouts have occurred.
  • The system is faster at displaying personalized content and product detail.
  • It sets the stage for ECinteractive to let you limit shoppers to their contracts and laundry lists. (Coming in Version 8.0.0)
  • Vendors offering Enhanced Content will use CCIs to synchronize subsets of dealer-specific Enhanced content, so their Enhanced search results will also limit to dealer-specific catalogs and shopper-specific contracts or laundry lists. (Coming in Version 8.0.0)
  • When the same item occurs in multiple catalogs, you control which images and details to display in search results and product detail pages. In your Admin Control Panel under the Site Customization menu, the Provider Priority Management page lets you prioritize your site's catalog providers.

How does it work? The CCI works behind the scenes to give you granular control over what your customer can shop and buy. It dynamically displays the right catalog content for every customer who hits your Web site.

By default, this drives which content is displayed in Browse categories, Search results, or product detail, MyFavorites, Contracts, Laundry Lists, Web Specials, and Preferred Items.

Every night outside normal business hours, the system checks to see if any pending catalog combination subset exists in the index, and generates new CCIs as needed for all sites according to the following triggers:

  • When you add or remove items from a custom catalog in the Catalog Management page.
  • When you add or remove catalogs in a catalog group from the Global Catalog Group Management page or the Custom Catalog Group Management page.
  • When you specify a Global Catalog Group and Custom Catalog Group while adding/editing a customer in the Customer Management page.
  • When you specify a selected customers' or customer group's Global Catalog Group and Custom Catalog Group in the Parameter Maintenance page.
  • Whenever you adjust rankings on the Provider Priority Management page.

Let's say ABC1234 is in your custom catalog, as well as S.P. Richards and United Stationers catalogs, the three catalogs assigned to Customer A. In this example, your site name is ranked highest on the Provider Priority Management page, and you've ranked S.P. Richards higher than United. When Customer A logs in to your site, the system will check for that customer's CCI, and quickly display the appropriate subset of Browse categories, Web Specials, Preferred Items, and so on. When Customer A searches for ABC1234, the system looks first for the categories, product details, and image(s) you entered for that item to display. If you haven't entered content for that item, your site will look next to the S.P. Richards content to display, and then to the United content.

Exception: If your site uses a wholesaler's Enhanced Content/Search features, your ranking will not affect Browse categories, Search results, or product detail, since a third-party content repository provides that information. (See the 7.4.5 announcement
www.DDMS.com/support/release/whatsnew/ec745.htm)

How do I set up my site to use my back-end system contracts and laundry lists, and their categories?

The Contract/Laundry Lists tab of Customer Management allows you to restrict or lock a customer to selected contracts.On your backend system, you may have contracts and/or laundry lists set up for items a customer purchases regularly.

Now, you can limit shoppers to your backend contracts and/or laundry lists. Previously, the Contracts/Laundry Lists tab in your Customer Management page previously only allowed you to assign contracts or laundry lists to the selected customer. Now, this tab has been enhanced to include three new Select Item Limit options:

  • None lets the shopper view all catalogs and contracts and/or laundry list items assigned to his account.
  • Restrict lets the dealer restrict the shopper from using specific contracts and/or laundry lists. For example, this option lets the dealer set up a restricted contract and/or laundry list of items the shopper cannot view. This is a useful feature for dealers who need to restrict certain items, such as furniture products, from displaying on specific user Web pages.
  • Lock lets the dealer lock the shopper to Contracts Only (All items that are in the selected backend lists will override the customer’s Catalog Group settings. In effect, the assigned backend lists become the customer’s catalog groups.) and Include Contracts (All items that are in both the customer’s Catalog Groups and the selected backend Contracts/Laundry Lists are shown to the customer).

For details and exceptions, please see Lock Shoppers to Contracts/Laundry Lists (www.DDMS.com/Resources/Support/faq/ecommerce/ecLockContractLL.pdf).

New! Using Contracts and Laundry Lists in ECinteractive (pdf) This brief video demonstrates how to use contracts and laundry lists in your ECinteractive Web Storefront. Assigning contracts from your back-end system allows you to control the pricing that is seen online by those who log in under certain accounts. You can even use contracts to limit the selection of items your customers see, for example, when governmental organizations, contractors, or large business accounts are limited to purchasing items that meet specific sourcing requirements, such as AbilityOne. See also the documentation.

You can specify whether to use category headers from the back end business system or to use the original wholesaler categories. In the Contract/Laundry List Management page under Site Info, you can now switch between using the default Wholesaler Categories and using Backend Categories when you refresh or sync your lists.

Then, on the Site Preferences page of the Admin Control Panel, you can enable the Use Backend Categories in Contract/Laundry List checkbox, which is disabled by default.

How do I set up my site with Google Analytics?

Now you can use Google Analytics (google.com/analytics) to learn how visitors interact with your site. Google Analytics gives you free reports on your site visitors, including their referring sites, search engines, search keywords, time on each page, pages per visit, geographic location, browser versions, and much more.

This analysis can help you make informed decisions about your marketing campaigns, increase conversions from guest to loyal customer, and empower you to grow your business online. Google offers its Analytics free of charge. For more details and to sign up, see google.com/analytics.

To make Google Analytics easy to implement, your Admin Control Panel has a new Google Analytics ID box in your Site Preference page. After you enter your Google Analytics tracking code, the ECinteractive system automatically enters it onto every page of your front end Web site, so that Google Analytics can track your traffic.

For your Dealer Station and original is.D-Force sites, you can use Site Text to incorporate the Google Analytics script into HTML-capable pages.

For detailed instructions on setting up your Google Analytics ID in both the ECinteractive and Dealer Station families of Web storefronts, see Setting Up Google Analytics for Your Site (pdf).

How do I set or reset a customer's password?

Note that, for security reasons, ECinteractive does not display end user passwords in the Admin Control Panel.

When a user account is initially set up, either through migration from your old site or through self-registration, the system sends an message to the specified email address, with a randomly generated temporary password and instructions for logging in. The user can then log in, and the system will prompt again for the current (temporary) password, the new password, the confirmed new password, and the security question and answer to verify the user's identity.

When users forget their password, they can use the automated method of using the Forgot Password? link on the Login box or page. They will be prompted to specify their user name and answer a security question to verify their identity. Again, the system sends a temporary password, which they must change upon login.

When users forget both their password and the answer to their security question, they can't use the automated use the Admin Customer Management page to manually reset both. After you reset the password, the system again emails a temporary password to the email address on record. The user can then log in just like during initial setup, and the system will prompt again for the temporary password, the new password, the confirmed password, the security question and answer to verify the user's identity.

Of course, if the user forgets their username as well, you can look them up using other fields in Customer Management. We just don't advise simply changing the user's email address at the same time they request a password reset. The password reset message should be sent to the original email address so that the original owner can take action. In the rare case that somebody must change the email address to a new provider at the same time they've forgotten their login credentials, and they no longer have access to the old email account, we recommend verifying other account information. For example, you could ask them to verify their shipping address and describe what was on their last order, and check it against Order History.

How do I customize site messages and pages?

Home Page Display Order tab in Site Text control panelFirst impressions can make or break a relationship, whether it’s a job interview, a first date, a new restaurant, or a new Web site. When shoppers open your Home page, their first impression can lead them either to click the back button or to delve deeper. It should be a place where shoppers want to return again and again.

With this in mind, we've designed the interface to be friendly, easy-to-use, and as intuitive as possible. To help you achieve even better results, we give you more control of the information that's shown on the Home page.

Under Site Text, a new tab for Home Page Display Order lets you customize the arrangement of Default News, Home Page Text, Browse Category Display, and Account Specific News. Account-specific News is now displayed on the shopper's Home page by default, so important notifications can be displayed directly on the Home page without the necessity of clicking the menu to go to Account News. you can use the HTML-capable text editor to customize these elements, hide or resequence elements as you see fit, and preview what the results will look like on your home page.

The Site Preferences page allows you to specify how the Home and Browse pages displays subcategories. If you enable the new Expand Category Display on Home and Browse Catalog Pages checkbox, the complete list of level two categories will display, as long as there are not more than six top level categories. A new Edit Category Display Order button opens a page where you can select the catalogs from your Content Provider. The catalogs in turn drive the categories.

Note: For is.D-Force2 sites, United Stationers Enhanced Content features do not apply at this time, pending discussions between the parties of is.group and United Stationers.

Sample HTML Order Confirmation Message FormatOne more way you're going to be more visibly competitive is with ECinteractive's new HTML-formatted automated messages, such as order confirmations, approval emails, and payment confirmations.

Under Site Text, the Emails tab has been enhanced to allow you to specify Headers and Footers that you've designed in our HTML-capable Text Editor.

It is not mandatory to design your own custom headers and footers. You can simply go with our professionally designed default format.

However, it gives you an opportunity to show off your logo and add a personal touch or promotional message that brings loyal customers back for more.

You can also choose whether your customers receive HTML or plain text by default either for specific customers in Customer Management or in mass under Communication Settings.

To mass change a set of customers to receive either HTML or Text-only confirmation email format, use the Email Format Type parameter on the Customer Parameter Maintenance page of the Admin Control Panel.

Shoppers can set their own email format preference when registering as a new user by using the Register Me link and when updating their information.

For detailed instructions, see Customizing Site Text and Messages in ECinteractive (www.DDMS.com/Resources/Support/faq/ecommerce/ecSiteText.pdf)

How do I delete or transfer orders among a customer's users?

Sometimes, your customer may inform you that Bess Buyer has been promoted or Paul Procure has left the company and should no longer have purchasing responsibilities, but Sam Shopper takes their place. If an order has been added to the shopping cart and saved, you can transfer it to another user or delete it in Order Management. This will be especially helpful if a user leaves the company with pending orders or approvals. See Transferring and Deleting Orders in ECinteractive® (pdf).

How do I set up users to shop for other users or departments?

If a user account has rights to multiple accounts, departments, or attentions, they can select the desired scope not only at checkout, but at any time after login. To use this feature, the user’s Customer account database record must be set up with departments and/or attentions in the back-end system. Once set up in the back-end and your Checkout Settings, the shopper will be prompted after login to specify the scope or accept the default. They can also use the menu along the top of each page at any time during the shopping experience. Based on the new scope, the system automatically reprices items as needed, whether they are already in the ShoppingCart or added to it. Pricing may vary depending on how the Customer account, department, and attention is set up in the back-end system. The selected account, department, and attention affects the display of many pages on your shopping site, including Order History, Customer Budgets, Online A/R, and so on. Previously, the ability to change departments or attentions was limited to the checkout page. For setup instructions, see Letting A User Shop For Others in ECinteractive® (pdf).

How do I assign users to multiple General Ledger/Inventory locations and printer IDs?

To serve national and regional accounts with their own far-flung offices, your back-end system uses multiple General Ledger and Inventory locations and printers. Whether you want to add customers from your multiple locations, assign a specific shopper to one of those locations, or just have their invoices print at their sales representatives’ printers, you can now get really granular. Your Admin Control Panel's Account Management feature now has more flexibility in managing accounts across multiple locations. For setup instructions, see Setting up GL/Inv Location-Specific Users in ECinteractive® (pdf).

How do I set up users to pay A/R invoices online via credit card?

With the Online Accounts Retrievable Remittance feature, you can let selected customers access their outstanding A/R balances from the backend system.

The next phase of our Accounts Receivable feature set is here as of Version 7.4.0, released March 22, 2008. In addition to viewing invoice history and printing a remittance, end users can now pay them online via credit card using the Pay Invoice option of the My Account menu. See Letting Shoppers Pay A/R Invoices Online (pdf).

How do I set up user access to select credit cards at Checkout and the Credit Card Management page?

As of the release of version 7.3.3 Dec. 1, 2007, Your Web storefront now makes it easier than ever for both users and dealers to manage credit card information online (QC# 4940). This expands payment options at checkout, and allows users more flexibility when purchasing for multiple accounts and departments.

To minimize security issues on the end user's storefront, all credit card information is maintained on your back office system. All credit card management capabilities provided on the end user's web storefront is shown in a single Credit Card Management page, called Credit Card Editor. Access to functionality on this page is granted by specific settings on the Admin Control Panel.

As a dealer, you can use new Admin Control Panel features to:

  • Grant or restrict customer access to credit card management through a Feature group.
  • Authorize each user’s payment options available at checkout:
    • (default) Restrict the user to the original options (receive invoice, use account’s default card, or enter a personal card).
    • Authorize access to the full list of credit cards associated with the user’s account and department on your back-end system.
    • Select a more restricted subset of the list.
  • Customize the text links to the user’s Credit Card Editor.

With access to the Credit Card Editor, end users can:

  • Add multiple credit cards be used during order Checkout.
  • Edit information on credit cards for which they are authorized.
  • Request deletion as needed, which sends you a notification so that you may take appropriate action on your back-end system.

For detailed instructions, see Setting Up & Using Credit Card Management (pdf).

Note: During development, changes were also made to the back-end Gateway program. Therefore, DDMS® Version 8.12.50 or higher is required to implement the enhanced Credit Card Management features. To request your software update, please e-mail ddmssupport@ecisolutions.com.

How do I rank items higher in search results?

ECinteractive provides list views of products on various end-user pages, including Advanced Search, Contracts, Laundry Lists and Web Specials. If you wish to control the order of the products in these lists to promote sales of selected products, you can use “Ranking” Icons.

By default, the system sorts any items in a Ranking Icon Group by its item number/SKU. Effective Feb. 2, 2008, you can also assign individual rankings to items within a Ranking Icon group. Items with a numerical rank value (integers greater than Ø such as 1, 2, 3, 100, 200, 300) display in the numerical order of their rank, and Items with a blank rank value are displayed alphabetically by SKU immediately after all numerically ranked products. For detailed instructions, see Customizing Item Ranking and Sorting.

You can also manage your custom products' ranking in ECinteractive's standard search results. Now you can manage the ranking within Enhanced search results. You can promote any product through Preferred Items and Web Specials. For detailed instructions, see Setting Up Custom Items & Catalogs (www.DDMS.com/Resources/Support/faq/ecommerce/ecCatalogs.pdf).

Note: Your work in the Custom Product Management Dashboard will take effect the following day, after the ECinteractive system generates your site-specific and customer-specific Catalog Combination Indexes (CCIs) during its nightly scheduled processes. This also gives your Enhanced Content Provider’s system time to run your custom catalog content data through its Pipeline process. If you’re planning a customer launch or prospect demonstration, we recommend leaving yourself a few days in advance to prepare, index and test the items your audience should expect to see.

How do I set up my "Offline For Maintenance" Page — and avoid unwanted email notifications?

You want customers and prospects to visit your Web storefront site at their convenience. But sometimes your back-office server is offline for period-end and maintenance procedures. A Scheduled Maintenance message for your Web storefront can help you protect your business' reputation.

During your maintenance procedures on your back-end business system, the Web server is unable to connect to the customer and item backend databases. However, the Web server will still be able to notify you via email that users are trying to access your site, or show a Scheduled Maintenance message.

The ECinteractive/D-Force 2 system will notify you whenever an end-user tries to access your Web storefront at the same time your backend server and utilities (such as TBLUtilities) are shut down or otherwise inaccessible for:

  • Backup
  • Day-end
  • Month-end
  • Quarter-end
  • Year-end
  • Business system software updates
  • Other maintenance while utilities are shut down
  • Other connection issues (that require you to contact your Internet Service Provider to resolve)
  • Other back-end server issues (that require you to contact your ECI Support team to resolve)

As of ECinteractive 7.3.1.1215 (QC 6411), the system is designed to display the following message in case it cannot connect to your back-end server gateway: "An error has occurred while communicating with the dealer host system. Please try refreshing your browser in a few seconds. If the problem continues, please contact customer support. We apologize for this inconvenience. Thank you."

Also, when gateway GOA exceptions occur, the system will will notify not only server administrators, but also the dealer and ECi support personnel. The email notification reports: "ECinteractive Exception: An error occurred when accessing the socket: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it."

If you do not wish to receive this email notification during your back-end server maintenance procedures, please set up your ECinteractive Site Maintenance schedule by following these steps:

  1. Log into your ECinteractive site’s Administrative Control Panel.
  2. (Optional) Click Site News, and then click Page Editor. Create or edit a Scheduled Maintenance page to include some text that will encourage your customers to log off before your scheduled maintenance period begins, so their work will be cached properly.
  3. Click Global Settings, and then click Site Maintenance.
  4. In the General Settings box, check your Time Zone and Daylight Savings settings.
  5. In the GlobalSettings > Site Maintenance box, enter the appropriate times in the Time Off and Time On boxes, in the format HH:MM AM or PM. (Note: If you schedule maintenance for the weekend, fill the Saturday and/or Sunday time fields. If maintenance is scheduled for a Friday or other weekday, fill the Weekday time fields.)
  6. (Optional) Select your Scheduled Maintenance page. (Note: If maintenance is scheduled for Saturday or Sunday, fill the Weekend page field. If maintenance is scheduled for a Friday or other weekday, fill the Weekday page field.)
  7. Click the Auto Maintenance Mode On button. At the Are You Sure message, check your time settings. If they are correct, click OK.
  8. Click the Update button. The changes are implemented within one minute.

After periodic maintenance is complete (for example, after completing quarter-end, year-end, or software update), you may wish to return to these settings, and simply adjust the time off and on settings.

See also your online help (http://images.eci2.com/ECinteractive_adminhelp/Site_Maintenance.htm).

NOTE: For your Quarterly Electronic Catalog Maintenance (usually in January, April, July, and October), please use the same steps, but set up both Weekday and Weekend times and pages.

Note: The process is slightly different during Web software updates. When ECI2 updates Web server software or catalog content, your site will be offline and unable to process queries or pages.

How do I control whether user-entered item number punctuation is cleaned up or used to find matching items?

Version 7.3.1.1215 added an “Allow Punctuation in Item Numbers” setting to Admin Site Preferences (QC 6405). It lets you determine whether or not punctuation will be removed from the Item Number before processing in QuickOrder, Favorites, and Order History.

If you leave the new setting enabled as by default, the Item Number field accepts all letters, numbers, special characters and punctuation that the user enters, and uses them to find matching item records. This is how it has always worked before.

But if you disable the Allow Punctuation in Item Numbers setting, any invalid special characters and punctuation will be stripped from the entered Item Number before the lookup. This will include these characters: ~`!@#$%^&*()-=_+[]\{}|;’:”,./<>? and space. The field will then be updated on the page to reflect an Item Number with acceptable letters and numbers. For example, if the user enters !Lag &%40*(&@5 0>1, the system will display and search for LAG40501.

EXCEPTIONS:

  1. This new setting does NOT affect any Item Number fields in the Admin Control Panel.
  2. This new setting does NOT affect the Advanced Search Item Number field.
  3. The tilde (~) and caret (^) characters will ALWAYS be removed from Item Numbers regardless of the new Site Preference setting. These characters are reserved for backend communication and cannot be used elsewhere.

 

How can users fix issues with logging into my framed site in Internet Explorer 7?

ECinteractive 7.3 includes an enhancement that lets the dealer select a site layout for the end user's web page. The dealer can choose between "framed" sites that show headers and sites that do not. When using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, some users are unable to log in when your framed site is activated, due to security settings for third party cookies. We can advise the following steps for any users who are having this problem:

  1. On the Internet Explorer 7 menu bar, click on Tools, and select Internet Options.

  2. Click on the Privacy tab.

  3. Click on the Sites button.

  4. Add www.ecinteractive.com and click Allow.

  5. Click on OK to close the Sites dialog box.

  6. Click on OK to close the Internet Options dialog box.

 

How do I set up S.P. Richards Enhanced Content?

If you have customer accounts who purchase items that are in the S.P. Richards catalogs, you can set up your feature groups and customer groups to use enhanced search filters, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, additional item images, and (in Version 7.3 and higher) product comparison and rich media content.

After is.group reached an agreement with S.P. Richards to serve its content to members, is.D-Force dealers have access to Enhanced Content features as of Version 7.4.6.

For detailed instructions and an important clarification on the exclusion of items from custom dealer catalogs and other vendor catalogs, please see Setting Up SPR Enhanced Content in ECinteractive (pdf).

How do I create Point Reward incentive programs in ECinteractive®?

Using Point Rewards in ECinteractive (pdf) Create multiple incentive programs to reward your customers with points for each dollar they spend. Customers can use accumulated points to purchase additional products, based on the point value you assign to the reward items. Unique to ECinteractive is the ability to award points to individual users, even if they are not the final approver of the order, and the option to apply all of a customer's reward points to a single reward account.

Does ECinteractive let customers enter their favorite organizational categories for items like "add rolls", "fasteners", "inkjet cartridges" and so on?

Definitely. In addition to Favorites lists assigned and maintained by dealer administrators, users can maintain their own multiple Favorites lists. Users can name or rename them to their satisfaction, and even copy items from one Favorites list to another as needed, specify quantities, and delete items or lists as needed.

Does ECinteractive let a customer select items from their favorite organizational categories, and add them all to the cart at once?

Of course! When shopping from a Favorites list, the customer can select all, deselect some or all, specify different quantities as needed, and add all selected items to their cart at once.

Can I set a user's payment method strictly to Charge Account?

Yes. You can set up a Customer Settings Group with Checkout settings where Accept Credit Cards and Require Credit Cards are unchecked, but Allow Invoicing is checked. Then assign the account to that Setting group.

How do I add unique items and display their images, when they are not in the wholesaler's catalog?

Use Item Management in the Admin Control Panel to set up unique items and load their images. Then, use Catalog Management to determine what catalogs are displayed globally. You can also use Customer Groups Settings to control what catalogs are visible to certain accounts. See Setting Up Catalogs in ECinteractive (pdf).

Can I offer Point Rewards and Volume Discounts for customer loyalty?

Indeed! ECinteractive offers Point Rewards and Integrated Volume Discounts:

With Point Rewards, you can set up a reward program where a customer earns points for their purchases, based on a dollar ratio, and redeem them for items you specify. Unique to ECinteractive is the ability to award points to individual users, even if they are not the final approver of the order, and the option to apply all of a customer's reward points to a single reward account. For detailed instructions see Using Point Rewards in ECinteractive (pdf).

Integrated Volume Discounts uses the Additional Volume Discounts feature in DDMS Order Entry. It lets you offer discounts and item gift rewards to customers that place orders within a certain dollar amount. When ordering online, the customer can view how close their order total is to earning a volume discount or gift. The additional volume discount feature is not included in all software packages and may require authorization. For more information, contact ECi sales. For detailed instructions, see About Additional Volume Discounts.

What other specials or promotional features are in ECinteractive?

Dealers can add items to Web Specials and Preferred Items. Web Specials let you offer special pricing for certain items when purchased online. Preferred Items show up in Search Results.

Wholesalers and manufacturers provide the content for the Product Showcase and Learning Center features. The Product Showcase provides more information about a product, such as a case study or special brochure. The Learning Center provides instructions to help customers make effective use of certain products.

You can control whether your the Product Showcase and Learning Center are displayed to your customer groups by adjusting their Marketing feature settings.

Can ECinteractive calculate shipping charges based on weight and ZIP or postal code?

Not at this time. Currently, shipping is based on a percentage of an order or a flat rate that you specify.

Can the customer alter/edit/delete items in the final Checkout screen before submitting the order?

When reviewing the order at Checkout, the user has the option to go to the View Cart page to make item changes.

Have any Accounts Receivable, invoice, or online balance payment functions been added to ECinteractive®?

Yes, currently your customers can view and print outstanding A/R, and pay invoices on line via credit card. With the Online Accounts Retrievable Remittance feature, you can let selected customers access their outstanding A/R balances from your backend system. Customers can print a remittance form to mail with payment, or use a credit card to pay online. See Letting Shoppers Pay A/R Invoices Online (pdf) and Setting Up & Using Credit Card Management (pdf).

How Do I Link Account News to SPR Online Flyers?

As part of our ongoing work with vendors to implement advancements they make in content, we would like to offer this tip. S.P. Richards now publishes flyers with dealer-specific quarterly pricing, as part of its Signature Series of online flyers.

You can publish links to these online flyers on your Web storefront’s Home page or Account-specific news. For detailed instructions on displaying Signature Series flyers in your Home or Account News pages for the Dealer Station or ECinteractive families of products, see Displaying SPR Flyer Links in Account News (pdf).

Can I customize the color scheme in addition to the eight theme choices?

An example of the colors you can customize.Yes, for an additional fee you can request colors that more closely harmonize with your branding. For more details, please use the Custom Color Theme Request Form (pdf).

For this and any other custom development request, contact ECi Sales by phone (800-366-3367), fax (682-831-9929), or email (info@ecisolutions.com).