Product Finder

On the product finder page it’s possible to filter the B2B catalogue by

• a combination of product attributes:
  • category
  • brand
  • pattern
  • size
• providing SKU number(s) directly

The results displayed in a sortable, searchable table that also shows inventory and pricing data for each product.

Note

As the pricing and inventory data is tied to the user’s CustomerNo value the product search functionality is only accessible for logged in users.

During search the B2B sites submits the provided attributes or item numbers alongside with the logged in user’s CustomerNo value to the Navision ERP via API. The ERP’s response is a list of matching items. This list is checked against the B2B site’s local product database. The items in the API response that are not present in the local database are discarded so the search result table displays only those products that are both in the API response and in the local database.

Note

The filtering of the API response is required because of technical reasons: users can only put products to the order request that are in the WordPress product database.

However because of the local product database are built from and kept synced with the product catalogue provided by the ERP the two datasets should be identical. This post filtering is just an additional measure to guarantee that only locally exists product items displayed in the table.

In line with The Carlstar Group’s requirements the inventory data displayed by set quantity bands to not reveal the exact quantities.

Also because of requirements adding a specific product to the order request is not possible at this stage. The customer has to choose a location first for the order request. After selecting the location the results table refreshes and displays only inventory and pricing information for the selected location. The add to cart buttons are also enabled.

For subsequent searches the location is automatically preselected, even if the user navigates away the product search page and comes back later. The location is remembered until the customer changes the location.

Because of the requirements when the customer reset and change the selected location the cart is empties. But only after the customer okayed the warning message about this.