Dealer Station Catalog Image Enhancements This Weekend

Date: Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007

Dear Dealer Station and ecInteractive Customers,

As we announced previously, some wholesalers have released new item-specific image enhancements. These enhancements require server maintenance to supplement the standard quarterly catalog content update that ECi completed January 7. Please see these topics below:

A. Item-Specific Image Enhancement Schedule
B. Dealer Station Servers To Be Updated This Weekend
C. Scheduling Your Dealer Station Site to be Offline
D. No Effect on DDMS Inventory

A. Item-Specific Image Enhancement Schedule

In your current catalogs, the images for many SKUs are based on a product line, and may show an example or a set to represent the product line. For example, if you look up a yellow Post-It® Note, the image might display a rainbow of available colors.

Both United Stationers and S.P. Richards have enhanced their eContent with item-specific images. For instance, the item-specific image for the yellow Post-It® Note will show the yellow color, instead of a rainbow set.

Some code and infrastructure changes are being released in both Dealer Station® and ecInteractive® in order to implement item-specific image enhancements. ECi has devoted some development and quality assurance resources to that end. We anticipate releasing this enhancement for the United and S.P. eContent according to the following schedule:

* Dealer Station item-specific image enhancements (QC# 3254s) will be loaded this weekend, February 9-11, 2007.
* ecInteractive item-specific image enhancements (QC#4497 and #4498) are tentatively scheduled to be loaded the weekend of March 9, 2007. We will notify you via email when this release is near.

Note: Site-specific catalogs will not be altered during this process.

B. Dealer Station Servers To Be Updated This Weekend

Pending final testing this Friday, ECi will update your Web storefront servers with the new item-specific image enhancements beginning Friday, Feb. 9, 2007, and continuing through Sunday, Feb. 11, 2007. These updates will be performed during evening hours between 10 PM and 6 AM Eastern Time.

C. Scheduling Your Dealer Station Site to be Offline

Your Dealer Station will be unavailable during these maintenance periods.

You can schedule your Dealer Station site to be Offline for Maintenance by following these simple steps:

  1. Log into your site’s Administrative Control Panel, and click Automatic.
  2. In the Automatically Shut Site Off for Maintenance box, enter the time to go offline, using a 24-hour clock.

    3. Note: All server times are Eastern. For example, if you wish to turn off the site at 9:30 PM Eastern, add 12 hours for PM and type 21:30.

  3. In the Automatically Turn Site Back On, enter the time to go back online.
  4. Click Update Site Status.
  5. Under Site Text, you can customize the Down for Maintenance message that will display at the top of the window and that your customers see if they login during the maintenance period.

For more detailed instructions, see your Dealer Station Admin Manual.

D. No Effect on DDMS Inventory

Rest assured that this Web Storefront catalog update schedule should not affect your DDMS inventory database.

Your Web Storefront is integrated with your DDMS server so that it accesses customer and item information, displaying up-to-the-minute pricing from your DDMS and DDMS(tm) contracts and inventory databases.

The Web Storefront catalog content update is primarily concerned with item images and descriptions.

If you have any questions, please contact ECi Technical Support at 877.956.4672 or .

Sincerely,

ECi Technical Support