Searching for inventory items

In the following example, we use the Corefile demo store “coredemo”, to search for items in the inventory. For an overview of adding inventory items, see: Adding an item to the inventory directory.

Searching Inventory
Items stored inside the Corefile inventory database may be found using word text searches. Searching is done on all text elements of an item. (Name, Description, Long Description, etc.) Corefile search allows in-field matches so that "ford" will match "Henry Ford" as well as "Battleford". This powerful features allows all items related to a topic to be found instantly.

Using search tags
Tags are key words that you would like to associate with an item. For example, you may wish to put a tag on inventory items that describe the item's origin, "SourceCountry:Ireland" or when an item is typically sold, "SellingSeason:Spring". Placing these search tags into the "Internal Notes" field of an item allows you to performing searches for all items with that tag. For example, the search text "SourceCountry: Austria" will show a list of all items with that tag.

Creating tag names
The number and types of tags is limited only by your creativity. The more descriptive and unique your tag names are, the better the search results will be. It is best to concatenate tag name words, starting each word with a capital. A common approach is to prefix the tag name with the word "Tag", so that the above tag name would become: ""TagSourceCountry:Ireland"

Adding images to an item

In the following example, we use the Corefile demo store “coredemo”, to add images to an inventory item. For an overview of adding inventory items, see: Adding an item to the inventory directory.

Up-loading images to Corefile
Select the "Images" tab for the item you wish to add images to. This tab will show the available images for the item. To add an image, press the "Add" button on the bottom of the item window. This will pop-up the navigation window used to locate images on your computer. Select the image file, and upload the image to Corefile. Only JPEG files are supported. No quality gain is acheived in Corefile for images greater than 2M pixels. All large images should first be reduced on your computer before uploading. Doing so will speed the up load operation. Adjusting your camera's image quality setting to a value less than or equal to 2048x1536 is the simplest, and best approach to ensure smooth image loading.


Managing item images
Once you have loaded images for an item, you can change the order in which they appear. This is done by selecting an image, and then pressing the up or down arrow-button on the left side of the image. To delete an image, simply select it, and press the "Del" button on the bottom of the items window.


Managing image properties
Select the thumbnail for the image you would like to manage. Then press the "Properties" button on the upper-right side of the Images tab. This will cause the other thumbnail images to disapear from view, and the properties window pane to slide out. The properties pane has two tabs. "Image" and "HotSpots".

Image thumbnails
From the "Image" tab, you can control if the selected image should be used for the item's "Default" thumbnail. The "Default" thumbnail is the thumbnail image that will be displayed for the item in the web store. If you selected "Animate item thumbnails" under Settings-->Store-->Preferences, the "Default" thumbnail will be the first thumbnail to be shown in the sequence of changing thumbnails.

Hidden images
You can also select if the image should appear in the detailed view. If you choose not to show an image in the detailed view, the image is not displayed on the web store as a thumbnail or when a customer selects "more info". This allows you to keep extra images that you don't want the public to see. To alert you that these images will not be displayed in the web store, these "hidden" images are tagged with a red circle-cross.

Rotate image & watermarks
These features are not currently active.

Creating image annotations or "HotSpots"
Selecting the "HotSpots" tab allows you to add annotations to your image. To add a HotSpot, press the "NewHotSpot" button. Moving the mouse cursor over the image allows you to create a rectangle anywhere on the image. After the rectangle is drawn, you can enter the test that will be displayed in the web store when a customer's mouse moves over the rectangle.

Adding an item to the inventory directory

In the following example, we use the Corefile demo store “coredemo”, to create an inventory item inside a web store category. For an overview of adding a category, see: Adding a category to the inventory directory.


Adding an item
First select the category to which you would like to add the item. Note that items can only be added to categories that do not contain another category. This rule enforces that categories only contain other categories, or items, but not a mix of the two. (Allowing such a mixture would create poor inventory structure, and confusing gallery displays.) After selecting a category that is either empty, or only contains other items, press the menu button on the lower left corner of the inventory directory window. Choosing "New Item" from the menu will cause an item to be created in the selected category.

Enter item information
Choose a SKU and name for the item. Also select the "type" of the item from the available list. If there is no type that matches the item, leave the type as "basic". Choosing a matching type for an item (example: "book"), alters the item fields, and adds an additional "Book Information" pane to the item. This allows book-specific information to be entered such as: Title, Author, Edition, Pages, ISBN, etc. Choosing the type that most correctly matches your item allows Corefile to better present your products in the galle>ry. It also helps Corefile perform more advanced searches for your items.

Item Description
Text entered in the "Item Description" field is presented with the item thumnail image on web store product pages. When "more info" is requested for the web store item, the "Item Description" is displayed in the right-hand column beside the item image. If the "Item Description" is quite large, it will continue under the item image. Sometimes you may just want to display a short "catchy" text phrase with the thumbnail. To do this would require that you write the "catchy" phrase at the start of your "Item Description". If there was additional information that you wanted to display when the user presses "more info" you would add that text after the "catchy" phrase. - But what if you did not want this additional info to be shown with the thumbnail image? You would have to put a few empty lines between the "catchy" phrase and the additional text. This would be a bit of a pain, because if you did not put in enough blank lines the extra information would "peek" into the thumnail view. On the other hand, if you used too many blank lines, your additional information would not start at a consistent location in the "more info" view. To help the style-concious, there is a "Long Description" text field located under the "Additional Item Information" pane. (see: "Additional item information" bellow)

Internal Notes
Text entered in the "Internal Notes" field is never displayed in the web store. It is a scratch pad for you to make private notes about the item.

Web store presentation
If "This item is sold in the store" is selected, the item will be displayed in the on-line galle>ry under the category to which it belongs.

Featured Item
If "This is a featured store item" is selected, the item will be displayed in the on-line galle>ry under the category to which it belongs, and the item will also appear as a featured store item. Featured store items are presented in the store window when customers first arrive at the store.


Additional item information
Item information is placed into more than one information pane. Pressing the pane labeled "Additional Item Information" displays a number of additional information fields for an item. These fields tend to be less used than those present on the "Item Information" pane. If you selected a specific item type for your item (example: "book"), you may have an extra information pane, specifically for this item type.

Long Description
The "Long Description" text is only displayed under the item image when "more info" is selected from the web store. By using "Long Description", "Item Description" can be used as a shorter "catchy" item text phrase shown with the thumbnail and on the right of the "more info" image.

Adding a category to the inventory directory

In the following example, we use the Corefile demo store “coredemo”, to create web store categories, and add an item. For an overview of the login process, see: Logging in to the Corefile control console.

Inventory activity button
Click “Inventory” from the top row of activity buttons. This will display your “directory” of inventory categories and items. Currently this will be empty except for the common top-level category called “Inventory Items”. All new categories and items are placed under the "Inventory Items" folder. Just like the directory on a computer disc drive, you can create inventory categories (folders) and inventory items (files) inside your Corefile inventory directory.

Categories store other categories or a list of items
There is one difference between how folders and files are organized on a computer directory and how categories and items are organized in Corefile. Under a Corefile category, you can not mix together categories and items. In other words a category must contain either all categories, or all files. This enforces better organization of your inventory. It is also necessary for maintaining a clean website display for your customers. If you decide that you need to create a new category under a category that already stores items: 1) create the new category/categories in another part of the inventory tree. 2) Drag (all) the items from the original category to the new category/categories. 3) Drag the new category/categories under the original category.

Creating a new category
First select the category in which you want to create your new category. If this is the first category that you are creating, select the top level category: "Inventory Items". Once you have selected a "parent" category, press the menu button on the bottom left corner of the inventory directory, and choose: "New Category". You will then be prompted to enter a category name for the new category that you are about to make. Later, if you wish to change the category name, or properties of the category, select the category, and choose "View/Edit" from the same menu.

Category "Shipping Class", "Local Sales Tax", and "Show in web Store" properties
You may also select a default "Shipping Class". This will becone the default Shipping Class for all other categories and items under this category. Categories or items under this category can change their own default Shipping Class if they need to. This "cascading" approach lets you set a reasonable default shipping class at a high level, so you don't have to set it for each individual item, unless you want to. For example; assume that you have a category called "Books" with sub-categories: "Cook Books" and "Kids Books". If you change the Shipping Class of the "Books" category, you will automatically change the default Shipping Class of all the books in "Cook Books" and "Kids Books". Of course if either "Cook Books" or "Kids Books" used a Shipping Class other than "default", the change would not affect the books in that category. Similarly, you are able to set a Shipping Class for individual inventory items. If the Shipping Class of the item is set to "default", it will use the Shipping Class of the category that it is in. - Otherwise it will use the Shipping Class that was specifically set for it. Therefore, an item uses the Shipping Class that has been set for it. If none is set ("default"), it will check the category that it is in, and use the category's "Shipping Class". If the category's ShippingClass is set to "default" the category will check the category that it is in, and so on, until a Shipping Class is found. The same "cascading" approach is used to determine the local sales tax for an item, and if an item is to appear in the web-store. This last property is a convenient method for blocking the display of a category and all it's items from your web store. For example, if you are a California sports store, you may not want to display the category "Snowboards" in the summer time. This let's you do just that, but not actually remove "Snowboards" from your inventory.

Corefile credit sales with Moneris

Moneris is the joint e-commerce payment gateway of the Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank. Accepting VISA, MasterCard, AMEX, etc. payments from your Corefile store is easy:

1) Get a Moneris account at any BMO or RBC bank branch.
2) Enter your "Store ID" and "Key" into the Corefile console.

You're Corefile store is now live, and ready to accept credit cards.

Adding Moneris Store ID and Key
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Order View / Search
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Integrating your web site into the Corefile store

Your Corefile web store is an independent “stand-alone” web site that can optionally be made to display other web sites inside the Corefile “home” window. If you don’t have an existing web site and want the Corefile store to be your site, you only need to read the next two paragraphs...

Registering your Internet domain name
If you have not yet purchased a domain name for your company, you can do so from one of the thousands of “domain name registrars” like godaddy.com or domainsatcost.ca. Prices vary wildly, so shop around. All registrars submit your selected name to the same Internet governing body (INTERNIC), so there is no “quality” difference between names registered by different registrars. The domain name registrar company that you use to register an Internet name is also known as a “name host provider”. This means that for a certain amount of money per month (or year), they will “host” or “reserve” your Internet domain name. A domain name is not a web site. It’s just a registered name that you can (if you want) point to a web site. The act of pointing your name to a web site is called “forwarding”. You can in fact, point your personal Internet domain name to any web site that you want.

Making the Corefile store your web site
When you have registered your Internet domain name like: mywebsite.com, you can point or “forward” this name to any Internet site you want. - Like ibm.com, or ebay.com, or amazon.com …or to your very own independent stand-alone Corefile web store. Your Corefile web store is a special web site located on the Corefile server. It has a unique “fully qualified” address like: www.corefile.net/stores/mywebsite_com/StoreFront.cfm - When you forward your Internet domain name (mywebsite.com) to your unique Corefile web store address, anyone typing mywebsite.com into their browser, will be forwarded to your Corefile web store. If you want your web site to only show the Corefile web store, you’re done and ready to accept on-line orders. If you have an existing web site, or want to add custom web pages to your Corefile web store, read on…

Note: Instead of registering your own Internet domain name, you could also tell people to enter the “fully qualified” address: www.corefile.net/stores/mywebsite_com/StoreFront.cfm into their web browser, to directly access your Corefile web store. However, you will want them to use your own personal registered Internet domain name instead because: 1) the Corefile address is a bit of a mouthful, and 2) you want to have complete control of Internet traffic for your own personal domain name. In other words, if you ever want to leave Corefile, and send your customers to another store, you can. – Of course that’s just crazy-talk, because we work hard to make sure that you will never, ever, want to leave. Nevertheless, our company mission is to provide you the ability to have a powerful and independent web store. – So you can break-free from those slow, ugly, old, impersonal, life and money sucking, monolithic web and auction malls. – Not to mention any names.

A name is just a name
Your personal Internet domain name is just a unique line in the master “Internet phone book”. Web browsers look at this “phone book” to find out which computer stores your website. The address for this computer is returned as either a “fully qualified host address” like www.myhost.com/mywebsite, where “myhost.com” is your network service provider who stores your web site, and “mywebsite” is a sub-directory under your host provider’s name where your web site files are stored. Sometimes companies that are both your Internet name service provider, and Internet network service provider, will use a program to map your Internet domain name to the (IP) address of one of their internal computers. The latter approach requires additional configuration of the Corefile web server, and needs to be coordinated with a Corefile support person. Email info@Corefile for more details. In either case, name and network hosting are managed and charged separately. Your Internet domain name is your personal property, and all name registrars must legally allow you to forward your name wherever you want. In fact, you can even transfer your domain name to another registrar if you want. (In case you are wondering why people keep using registrars that charge more for a domain name, the answer is simply that they are just too lazy to move the name. - I’m one of those people.)

Linking your original web site into the Corefile store
Your Corefile web store is an entirely separate web site that is hosted on Corefile's server. After forwarding your Internet domain name to your personal Corefile web store, your existing web site continues to live and breathe on the same network service provider that it always did. Making updates to the original web site also stays the same. However, since mywebsite.com now points to your Corefile store, you must access the original web site by using your network service provider’s “fully qualified” address. To show both the Corefile store and your original web site in the browser at the same time, you must tell Corefile the fully qualified path of your original web site. This is done in the Corefile console under “SettingsàStoreàPreferences”. From here you can tell the Corefile web store to integrate an existing home page. (Note that you can have Corefile integrate any web site that you want into your web store) Enter the fully qualified path of your original web site into the URL text field. You also have the option to show visitors to your web site the original web store first. If this option is unchecked, the Corefile web store is displayed first. The Corefile store and the original web site are two separate web sites craftily united inside the browser by the Corefile application. That they look like the same site is purely an optical illusion.

Notes:
Since Corefile does not host your "home" web site, you remain free to edit and change the site any way you please. This approach allows your branding and creativity to remain unrestricted by Corefile. If you don’t know the fully qualified address of your original web site, ask your network service provider to tell you. To forward your Internet domain name to the address of your Corefile store, ask the people from whom you bought or "registered" your dot-com name for instructions on name forwarding. This can usually be done from an administration page, sending an email, or by giving them a call. It usually

Background: How Internet naming works – IP addresses
The Internet is a bunch of connected computers that each have a unique numeric (IP) address like "305.122.345". This address is similar to a physical street address like "145 Maple Street". These networked computers hold the actual physical web pages. (Web pages are nothing more than files stored on a computer) The company that hosts your web site has a bunch of these Internet-connected computers, and your "web site" is just a directory of files stored on one of them. To make life easier for humans to find things, the Internet also has unique name (URL) addresses like "www.mywebsite.com") This is similar to referring to a physical address as "Bob Smith's place".

Background: How Internet naming works – routing tables
The Internet agency administers special "routing" tables, which assign unique (URL) name addresses to appropriate computer (IP) numeric addresses. Just like a phone directory let's us know that "Bob Smith's place" is at "145 Maple Street", these table let a browser know that the URL "www.mywebsite.com" is located on the computer with IP address "305.122.345". If Bob Smith moves, the telephone book will be updated to reflect Bob's new home. If the owner of a (URL) name address wants browsers on the Internet to be directed to a different computer web site, they simply update the Internet name address entry. This is done with the company that you used to buy or "register" your URL "dot-com" name. Note: This name hosting company may be separate from the network hosting company that has the physical computer, which holds your web site.

Background: How Internet naming works – different addresses, same place
More than one (URL) name address can point to the same physical machine. - Just like "145 Maple Street" can be "Bob Smith's place" as well as "Mary Smith's place", etc. This is an important concept because it means that “www.mywebsite.com” as well as the “fully qualified” address of your network service provider can both access your existing web site. When you forward www.mywebsite.com to your Corefile store, you will only be able to access the original site by its fully qualified address.

Loging into the Corefile control console

In the following example, we log onto the Corefile control console which is also called the “Selling Console”, or just console. The console is where you maintain your inventory, configure store preferences (colours, tax-codes, etc.) and also view and process orders.

The console, requires that your computer be using Flash player 9. If you do not have Flash 9 on your computer, you will be prompted to upgrade the player when you first access the console. Click “yes” and a new player will automatically install in seconds.

Corefile Login
Enter your Corefile user ID and password into the login dialog box.

Initial Corefile screen
After logging in, you will be presented with a top row of “activity” buttons, and a blank Corefile desktop. For ease of use. Corefile was specially designed to only allow one way to execute most operations. The intuitive interface lets even new and part-time employees use the application, so there is never a dependency on any single “expert user”.