Order Importer - Overview

To help you get the most out of the application this section will provide you with a simple overview explaining how the application works.

 

Jobs

 

Order Importer uses defined jobs to operate, you use the job wizard to create or edit jobs. Once a job is defined it holds all the information Order Importer needs to retrieve new orders and post them to Sage such as where to retrieve new orders from and settings required to connect to Sage.

 

Data Retrieval

 

In a typical scenario the application is used to retrieve order data from an HTTP server or Database, the entire procedure runs as follows:

 

1.Order Importer connects to the remote data source

 

2.Depending on the type of data source Order Importer will choose the appropriate data to retrieve or will be given the appropriate data. HTTP Servers will simply serve XML data and take responsibility for knowing which orders have not been served previously. In the case of direct database connections Order Importer will decide which orders are new itself.

 

3.Order Importer then merges new orders with any existing unsaved orders it currently has.

 

4.Order Importer then saves these new orders to its own database before attempting to do anything else with them.

 

5.Once the new orders have been saved to Order Importer's database Order Importer then notifies the data source it has successfully retrieved those orders, for HTTP servers a specific page is posted the order id numbers and the server will update its own database marking those orders as downloaded, for direct database connections Order Importer will update a pre-defined field marking those orders as fetched.

 

6.        Depending on your job settings this will be the end of the procedure or new orders will be posted to sage.

 

Data Storage

 

Order Importer Stores order data in its own intermediate database prior to posting the data to Sage; this avoids orders getting lost when they fail to save to Sage for some reason. For example: within Sage Line 50 all address fields are limited to 60 characters, if any fetched order break this rule or any other Sage specific constraint the order will be marked as failed within Order Importer and moved to the failed list, giving you the opportunity to rectify the problem using Order Importer's order editor. You can even close Order Importer without losing order data, it will still be there next time Order Importer is started.

 

Order Importer Stores order data in a specific format which is a typical format for this kind of data. This format splits the data into three logical areas which are customer data, order data and order Items data. This format is used by most e-commerce web sites, shopping cart systems and database designs, this will make your web developer's job pretty straight forward when it comes to readying your web site for using Order Importer.