Package README (CVS ver. 1.1)

Introduction

  PloneCommerce is a Plone2 Product with B2B and B2C e-commerce
capabilities, currently focusing on managing the commercial data
of small businesses.
PloneCommerce is based on CMFCommerce, but most parts are rewritten
to make it play nicely with Archetypes and P2.



 !!! WARNING :: unreleased development version :: WARNING !!!

  This version is not supposed to have all the features
implemented and working ok.
Every piece of code is subject to change.
Do not use in production environment without major review.

 !!! WARNING :: unreleased development version :: WARNING !!!

Dependencies

  - Zope 2.6.4+

  - CMF 1.4.2

  - Plone 2

  - Archetypes 1.3.0a1

  - BTreeFolder2

Dependency on CMFCommerce was removed.


Features

  and differences from CMFCommerce:

  - We can manage SalesOrders and CustomerOrders with Plone.
    CustomerOrders are added by users ttw, SalesOrders are used to
    save and manage offline orders of the company with Plone.

  - ShippingInformation, PaymentInformation has been ported to
    Archetypes, this allows easy configuration of address types.
    Members can save addresses to prefill the cart's shipping form.
    End goal is a nice address book of customers, handling all possible
    relations of Companys, Locations, Persons, etc and all of these
    objects can prefill the cart's shipping/payment form.
    Now there is a difference in the schemas, if the end-user
    registers himself as a private or business customer (B2C or B2B).

  - ShippingMethods and PaymentMethods

    - Now we check for the 'Use commerce method' permission before
      using payment/shipping methods. This is needed to enable some
      and only some customers to pay with money transfer.

    - Changed validate to isValid in the interface, because it
      conflicts with BaseContent.validate() of Archetypes.
      For PaymentMethods this is a problem.

    - PaymentMethods with the new OrderProcessManager now support
      redirect in payment method. This is needed for various eu
      payment gateway providers.

  - ShoppingCart became a virtual term, it's implemented by using one
    CustomerOrder instance from the start, its initial workflow state
    is 'shoppingcart'

  - TaxManager changed to manage taxes based on type.
    This means more options in the cart skin, and changes in
    getPrice() & co. Actually the tax values should depend on
    the product's location, the shipping (or billing address?),
    AND type. More work needed. See TODO.

  - Added simple DiscountManager, we can assign discount percentages
    to members.

  - Inventory Manager should handle the possibly complex task of
    decreasing stock values of products. Called from
    OrderProcessManager.proceedToCheckout().

  - Commerce Order types:
      References the customerinfo object, contains a shipping_info, a
    payment_info instance besides the common list of OrderItems.
    The base order is subclassed to:

    - CustomerOrder
      Simple web based order, added by business or private customers ttw, fixed
      prices.

    - SalesOrder
      This order type is tailored to be added by the sales, when
      the order comes by phone, fax, personally or other means.
      Main difference is the configureable customer property and
      the workflow.

  - AccountManager

    - registers customer, creates CustomerInformation on join,
    based on join_form request or personal preferences.

    - actionprovider of personal commerce preferences

    - returns the default CustomerInformation object
      (either B2BCustomer or PrivateCustomer) for
      Order initialization.

      - is able to handle different CustomerInformations
        than the one of the current user (for sales ppl.)





  - & more, the source be with you.


Status

  It works in the sense, you can create purchasable product
instances, add them to a cart, and do the checkout process.
It is NOT PRODUCTION READY AND FEATURE COMPLETE.
Inventory is not implemented, CurrencyManager is not wired,
so on..
The point of this release is to get feedback from future
users about the features, functionality.

See docs/TODO


Licence

  Since it contains code from CMFCommerce, it should be released under
the same licence: GPL.


Author

  Marton "nuon" Schimcsig <nuon@freemail.hu>

Contains code from Sidnei da Silva, Alan Runyan and other developers of
CMFCommerce.


Feedback

  Definitely need feedback to turn this application into the first step
towards ERP with Plone. Please send comments to collective-commerce
mailing list or directly to the author. Thanks.