Archive for December 2008
December 16, 2008 | 
Author With Mojave November CTP, we can able to create ecommerce application in MOSS. When I try to create a new site with commerce server MOSS template I am getting a wired error.
“Dependency feature ‘CommerceServer’ (id: 093798da-8617-4888-8db2-0f47a45b01c1) for feature ‘Catalog’ (id: 8aec8ac2-be1a-4ac6-9242-e166879018c8) is not activated at this scope”.
I didn’t find any information in the event log. After approaching Microsoft commerce support team, I got following resolution.
“Commerce Server Web Application scoped features may not have been activated, and these are a dependency for the Site Collection features.”
To activate commerce server features, do follow these steps.
- Open SharePoint Central Administration.
- Click on Application Management tab.
- Click on “Manage web application feature” link.
- Activate commerce server 2007 feature, commerce server 2007 web part resources and commerce server default site resources features.
After activating commerce server features, you can now create CS moss site without any errors.
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Mojave – the next version of commerce server is coming with lot of new features. These new features are developed on top of other technologies other than commerce server. If you are a commerce server developer and want to develop ecommerce applications on top of Mojave then make sure you got knowledge in following technologies.
- Windows Server 2003 with SP2 or Windows Server 2008.
- Internet Information Server (IIS) 6.0 or 7.0
- Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Visual Studio 2008 and the development of .NET solutions (preferably).
- Programming with the .NET Framework (2.0 and higher).
- ASP.NET (2.0).
- Web service/WCF use and development.
- Extensible Markup Language (XML).
- Extensible Style Sheet Language Transformations (XSLT).
- Dynamic HTML (DHTML).
- Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO.NET).
- HTML Components (HTC).
- XML Schema Definition Language (XSD).
- SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008
So, what are you waiting for? Let’s identify your weak areas and start improving your skills.
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Till now Microsoft has released two CTPs; one in October and another in November. There are lot of new changes from October CTP to November CTP. This week, Microsoft is planning to release December CTP. So, stay tuned to Microsoft connect site to get the new version. Microsoft is working hard to release it’s first Mojave RTM by Q1CY2009.
So, keep visiting this site to get December CTP new features .
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Commerce server has five sub-systems and they are catalog, Inventory, marketing, order and profile. Profile is sub-system that is used to capture user details like customer’s login information, address, credit card, etc. Commerce server provides flexibility to extend and create new entities.
Do you really require having profile system integrated to your ecommerce site?
The answer is No. CS provides flexibility to use profile system but it doesn’t force you to use it. So, you can start implementing anonymous checkouts in your ecommerce application. Before you think of anonymous, please consider what you are loosing
- You cannot associate orders to the users.
- Since you are not capturing user details, you can give site personalization features to the users.
- Since you are not capturing user preferences, you cannot target site content (like advertisements or discounts).
- Customer support after product sale will be a challenge.
- Your business doesn’t know how many user base it has.
I created a quick checkout module which will get required information from commerce server and performs a checkout without user details.
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Commerce server provides basic inventory system. Out of box, you can able to track a single warehouse inventory and track basic features like what is in hand stock, threshold limit etc and this inventory is tightly integrated with catalog system. In real time situations, the customer may returned items and the reason may be, he didn’t like the product or the product may be damaged during transport. For both use cases there is no predefined methodology defined for this in commerce server. I have few suggestions and these suggestions are applicable based on your business framework.
Option 1: When the customer returned goods due to damage: We can ask whether the customer needs replacement for damaged goods or his money back.
What if the customer needs his money back.
- Extend inventory system to capture “damaged goods” column. It is used to hold damaged goods.
- Whenever there is any value change in onhand quantity, commerce server records changes to inventory delta table. In the similar way if you want to track damaged goods with PO, better to have similar table to capture the returns.
- Update product damage goods quantity with the returned items (as well as delta table). Giving money back to customer can be handled in different process as many companies will bargain with the customer before money return (courier charges or partial amount is deducted, etc).
What if the customer wants replacement.
- Extend the order to capture parent order ID.
- Reorder the product with new order and keep the order status as “REORD” – to distinguish it with other ID. Don’t forgot to capture parent order.ID
- Follow above process to capture damaged goods.
or
- Clone the new line item (damaged items) with the status as “REORD” in to the same order and update the status to “REORD”.
- Follow above process to capture damaged goods.
Option 2: When the customer didn’t like the goods and he needs his money back.
- Extend inventory system to capture “returned goods” column. It is used to hold returns goods.
- Whenever there is any value change in onhand quantity, commerce server records changes to inventory delta table. In the similar way if you want to track returned goods with PO, better to have similar table to capture the returns.
- Update product return goods quantity with the returned items (as well as delta table). Giving money back to customer can be handled in different process as many companies will bargain with the customer before the return (courier charges or partial amount is deducted, etc).
or
- Directly update the onhand quantity and return customer money through different process.
Hope this article helps to to understand the process of handling inventory for returned goods in commerce server.
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