EOrders

Contents:

Contacts

Introduction

What is EOrders? EOrders is a method of delivering your orders to Optimus via electronic transfers. It has been created to allow you to implement your delivery mechanism with minimum effort and expense, servicing multiple transfer protocols and multiple order formats. Using EOrders, you can deliver your orders immediately without the need to FAX or call in orders, as well as receive quicker responses as to any problems (incorrect price, bad city/state/zip combination, etc.) contained in those orders. Receiving a quicker response, you are able to correct the problems and satisfy your inventory and customer needs in a more timely manner. To Optimus, EOrders represents an investment in Optimus customers and their needs; it is meant to service your needs and the needs of your customers on an ongoing basis. As a result of this investment, Optimus will release future enhancements to EOrders. These enhancements will not require your changing your method of utilization and will represent an optional upgrade on your part.

Benefits

Now that you know what EOrders is, you might be asking yourself why you should utilize EOrders. Several reasons exist that justify utilization of EOrders. The first reason, obviously, is that it saves you money in the long run; by reducing the number of manual operations required by your staff, you can get more orders processed by Optimus with fewer staff work hours, perhaps even with reduced staff headcount. The second reason, hinted at in the introduction, is that quicker processing of orders means faster problem solving and greater satisfaction for your customers. The third reason, while very important to many of you, is least obvious. EOrders is an interception program that does its processing before InTouch, the current program that many of you have used in the past. As many of you have painfully learned over the past, once you submit an order to InTouch, the PO for that order is used and cannot be reused again, EVEN if there are easily fixable errors in the order. This failing has forced many of you to have to create a new PO for an order when the order has a problem like a bad item price or bad city/state/zip combination or some other error that could have been corrected and resubmitted using the same PO for that order. This is, of course, a nightmare for those of you that have internal order management programs. EOrders solves this problem by discovering and reporting these problems to you. This allows you to correct the problem and resubmit to EOrders before the corrected order is submitted by EOrders to InTouch. Finally, not mentioned yet, EOrders allows you to easily maintain an archive of your orders submitted to Optimus; this allows you to quickly lookup the result of a pass order submittal.

Technical Implementation

Overview

EOrders was created using MS .NET C# and MS SQL Server 2000. It processes your orders asynchronously upon delivery to Optimus. Orders can be submitted via the Internet, specifically FTP. Your orders can be in flat file or XML format. Reports are delivered to you via an email message and additionally available upon request via a webpage with secure login.

Prerequisites for Optimus and you, those using EOrders

Optimus will need to collect & share some information with you before you can use EOrders. These items will affect how EOrders works for you, as well as how your system will interact with EOrders.

  1. Optimus needs to know if you, or your internal order management program, consider a duplicate PO as an Error/Exception.
  2. Optimus needs you to know that you will be submitting Optimus item numbers.
  3. Optimus needs you to know all prices will be rounded off to 2 decimals.
  4. Optimus needs you to know that all EOrder reports will e-mail to the address you provide in the header of the order. We highly recommend that you use the e-mail address of the person who actually created the order. However, you may choose to utilize a public folder & have all EOrder reports sent to the e-mail address for the folder.
  5. Optimus needs to know if you want to receive all reports (success and failures) or just failure reports.
  6. Optimus needs to know if you wish to allow Optimus to auto drop ship any shorts. Drop shipping means that Optimus might, if item quantity is unavailable at one warehouse, ship your request(s) from multiple warehouses.
  7. Optimus needs to know if you want your orders Auto-Authorized. This will be discussed during the initial phases of testing.

The information you will need is listed below:

  1. An Optimus assigned username and password. You can request this from the I.T contact listed in the contacts section above.
  2. An FTP location to submit your orders.
  3. The flat file specification or the XML schema. Both are available in the specification section below.

Troubleshooting Procedures

Should you have problems implementing or need help understanding your needs to utilize EOrders, please contact the I.T. person listed the contacts section above with the following information and/or documents attached:

  1. Flat file or XML submitted.
  2. Date and Time of submission.
  3. Any other documents you have access to; for instance, if you are seeing a error in the report, please forward the email report that you received along with the information listed above.

Specifications