Commerce Server Blog

Don’t limit your payment gateway testing to VISA or Master card. Here are the list of test credit card numbers. Use them to test your application.

VISA -  4444333322221111 ,  4111111111111111,  4929000000006
Master Card – 5555555555554444 ,  5105105105105100 , 5404000000000001
American Express – 378282246310005 , 371449635398431 , 374200000000004
Diners – 38520000023237
JCB – 3530111333300000
Switch – 6759400000000002 , 5641820000000005
Delta – 4658300000000001 , 4462000000000001
Visa Electron – 4917480000000008
Solo – 6334900000000005

After installing commerce server starter site and when I tried to open default.aspx file in browser, I got following error.

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.
Parser Error Message: Unrecognized configuration section ‘membership’

I found that the installation by default creates virtual directories and these virtual directories are using asp.net 1.1, I manually went to each directory and change the setting to use asp.net 2.0 (go to virtual directory properties, click on asp.net tab, select 2.0.xxxxx in asp.net version and click OK button). Do the same configuration changes to all virtual directories.

Whenever we create Commerce web site using visual studio Templates then the following folders/resources will be created:

• Virtual Directories in IIS: Five Virtual directories will be created. i.e., one virtual directory (in total four) for each sub system and one virtual directory for the Site.
• Physical Folders in File system: Five folders will be created in the file system (by default they are created in “C:Inetpubwwwroot”).
• Database Server: Six databases are created on the Database Server. By default .MDF files will be stored in file system at this path “C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQLData”
• Global Resources & Site Resources in Commerce Server Manager: In Commerce Server Manager console there will be two nodes.
  • Global Resources &
  • Commerce Sites (In turn will contain Site Resources & Applications folders under each site).

Deleting a site is not a small task. If you would like to delete site manually then you have to manually go to Commerce Server Manager, Database Server, IIS & File system and manually delete each and every resource/folder of that site. This process is tedious & can lead to mistakes.  If the user wants to create Commerce web site with deleted site name and the site deletion doesn’t happen properly then he will face errors.

Through marketing manager, business users can create promotion codes. These promotion codes are stored in a tabled named – “mktg_promocode” in SQL Server. Sometimes we might want to know what are the promotion codes available and how many times the user has used this promotion code. Either you can search for the coupon code using marketing manager advance search or use following query to get details of all coupon codes.

use [StarterSite_marketing]
Go

Select
pc.u_pc_code as ‘Promotion Code’,
pc.u_pc_target_user as ‘Target User’,
pct.i_pctrans_used_count as ‘No. of Times Promo Used’,
i_pctrans_reserved_count as ‘No. of users reserved this promo’
From [mktg_promocode] pc , [mktg_promocode_transactions] pct
where pc.i_pc_id = pct.i_pc_id

For more information about Marketing tables related to coupons, visit following link.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb520796.aspx

Microsoft Commerce Server Marketing system allows business users to create different type of visual Advertisements. You can set the type using display type property as shown below.

Out of box commerce server provides a list of display types. These display types have unique identifier associated in SQL Server. You can refer to mktg_creative_type for more details.

Each display type has its own properties. For example, image display type will capture image URL and HTML display type will capture HTML. These property definitions are created in a table named mktg_creative_property. For example the template of image display type is as follows.

If you observe the above template, you can find many place holders (text within {%%}). At runtime, before applying the template, commerce server fills the place holder with actual property values and render the text to the client. The advertisement details are stored in mktg_creative table and advertisement properties are stored in mktg_creative_property_value table.

So far we have discussed what are display types and how they are stored in SQL server. Lets see how can we create a custom display type which will render flash advertisements in the browser.

 To create a new display template for Flash, you should know the formatted HTML tags to render flash objects. Identify the properties that needs input from the user. For example, the HTML tags required to render flash object is

If you observe the HTML, to make the template dynamic we should accept few properties from the user and replace these user provided values with tokens. In the above case, we can make width, height and flash URL as properties.

The next step is to create display template in to marketing system.You can find the code block on msdn to create or modify the DisplayTemplate and the URL is http://msdn.microsoft.com/hi-in/library/aa545356(en-us).aspx

Once you have executed the above code, you can see a new display type template was added to your site and when you create a new advertisement, you will find the template “Flash” is shown in display type and when you select it then the corresponding properties are shown in the next slide as shown below.

So, what are you waiting far. Start creating different display types and make your e-commerce site flashy with different types of advertisement.