Welcome to the Cybershop case study

Much of the information that will be shared with the anonymous visitor to your site usually pertains to the products and services your company offers. This is why the product catalog is part of a company's public web site.

On the public web site (http://servername/PublicWeb ), click on the hyperlink ‘Products’ in the left side bar. If you don’t have a public web site up and running yet, have a look at the Getting Started document of this case study. At the right side of the public product catalog, you will find the different assortments for which items can be viewed in the catalog. At the top of the public product catalog, you will find the different properties for which items can be viewed in the catalog (for example, the suppliers). Properties are used in e-Logistics to be able to search for items via characteristics. Properties are linked in the item card. Click on the assortment "Hardware" and view the available assortment. Notice that the list of available properties is reduced. By clicking on an assortment and/or properties, the number of items that will be included in the result list will decrease. Click on the property “Compaq”. Now only items that have the property ‘Compaq’ and belong to the assortment ‘Hardware’ will be shown. Click on the item ‘Compaq Deskpro EN Model SFF 6’. This will bring you to the item card for the selected item with the appropriate price for the selected country (for example the Netherlands). By creating country specific items, it is possible to use different prices for different countries. By selecting a specific country in the catalog, you will only see items that are available in that specific country. The catalog in e-Synergy has been designed with a layered structure because a long list of items is not only unattractive for a site visitor, but also impractical. The catalog should guide the user in the selection process. You can determine the layout and the layered structure of your catalog yourself. By pressing the hyperlink “detail” in the item card, a list with documentation about this item will be shown (depending on the security level of the documents and the security level of the catalog).

Now look for another item in the public product catalog for which you want to change the price. Take a close look at the current price on the web site (discuss with colleagues that work in the same database regarding who is going to change the price of which item(s)). Then go to the "employee portal", use the "quick search" menu to find the item in question, and open the item card. The internal item card is much more detailed than the one visible on the public web site, but the data on both is identical. Scroll down to the countries section where you will see in which countries the item is available and at what price. Click on one of the countries to view the country specific data of the item. Scroll down again to the countries section and click on the ‘history’ hyperlink of the country for which you want to change the price. You will see the prices that have been set for the item in the specific country. Use the hyperlink ‘add date’ to enter a price for a new date (also prices for future dates can be entered). Besides prices for different dates, it is also possible to enter a price for an existing date but for a different quantity (use the ‘new’ hyperlink to do this for a specific date). It is also possible to adjust an already existing price by clicking on that price. After saving the new information you can return to the public product catalog to view the adjusted price. Be sure to choose the country for which you have changed the price.

Product catalog

To view the (internal) product catalog in the employee portal, go to “Logistics”. You will notice that this catalog is different than the public product catalog that was viewed on the public web site. The way a catalog is shown depends on the definition of that catalog. In the sidebar of the product catalog, you will find the different assortments for which items can be viewed in the catalog. At the top of the screen you will find the different properties for which items can be viewed in the catalog (for example, the suppliers). Click on the assortment "Internal items" and view the available assortment. Notice that the list of available properties is reduced again. Click on the item ‘Alfa Romeo 147’. This will bring you to the item card for the selected item. By pressing the hyperlink ‘Serial numbers’ you will get a list of available serial numbers (for this item, the license plates of the cars) and see if a resource is linked to that serial number. If the hyperlink of the resource is pressed, you will see the resource dossier and all related information of that resource. Go back to the product catalog by going to the "Search" tab in "Logistics". By pressing the hyperlink “Definition” in the product catalog, you can view the way the catalog is defined. Change the location of the sidebar to the top and save the new definition of the catalog. In the product catalog, you will see the changes in the catalog layout. It is possible to enable a shopping functionality in the product catalog. This is partly defined in the definition of the catalog and partly defined in the maintenance of an item. In the product catalog, choose the assortment 'Services' (for the country 'Netherlands'). There are 2 items that are listed for this assortment. Now go to the definition of the catalog, scroll down to the shopping section and enable the shopping. After pressing 'Save', you will return to the product catalog an extra column 'Buy' with a shopping cart for item 'SP2000'. By pressing on the shopping cart, the selected item will be placed in your cart. By using the 'Cart' hyperlink, you can proceed with ordering the specific item. The process of the order lies beyond the scope of this case study and will not be discussed here.

Use the quick search again to find the item ‘Compaq Deskpro EN Model SFF 6’. In the monitor section of the item card, you see hyperlinks to related accounts, projects, requests, transactions and documents. Follow the ‘documents’ link and you will see that you end up in "Documents". This makes it possible to link a variety of documents to items, from item specifications to technical notes and marketing material. For the public product catalog on the public web site, this has all been brought together for the site visitor by links to the item, provided the security level of the documents allows access.