Contextual E-Commerce

Here you can find a step-by-step guide to set up the contextual e-commerce and start selling spare parts and consumables in the DPS.

The e-commerce allows the following products to be sold within the DPS:

• Spare Parts that can be replaced within a machine due to sudden breakage or because they are subject to wear and tear.

• Consumables used by machines during processing phases, and which require periodic refilling.

In the DPS we can identify two main actors: BUYERS (end-customer or partners purchasing products), PROVIDERS (OEM and Partners selling products).

The DPS entry points to the e-commerce are:

• general Catalog which allows back-office and service users to search for spare parts and consumables for their customers;

• contextual Catalog which allows customer users to search for spare parts and consumables compatible with their machines;

• Store page, which allows DPS users to manage their shopping cart, complete an order of spare parts or consumables, manage their orders.

Configuring the Contextual E-Commerce

1. Upload the catalog of Spare Parts.

2. Define Product Models to be assigned to the things registered in the DPS.

3. Define Spare Part References composing each Product Model.

4. Enter the Interfaces / Views page.

5. Open the Back-office view used by the Organization.

6. In the Pages section, click on Add Predefined Page and select the Store page.
   This will add the Store page into the Back-office view.
   The page is predefined, if needed you can configure certain aspects of the page, such as the label, icon and menu position.
   
   
   

7. Repeat the step 3 but for the Customer view.
   In this case, into the configuration page of the Store page you should deselect the Show Catalog option.

8. Go to the Interfaces / Views page, then Thing Definitions, and select the thing definition in which you want to enable the Catalog browsing.

9. Select the Customer view, and add a new tab named Catalog.

10. In the template of the newly created tab, place the Catalog widget.
    In this way, customer’s users will access the Catalog of spare parts and consumables directly from the machine view, without the need to select the right product model.  

11. (OPTIONAL) Enter the Properties / Location page, and verify that the following custom properties are defined: city, zipCode, address, streetNumber, phoneNumber.  In the DPS, when an order is created, the location detail automatically includes, other than the location name and country, also all the above custom properties if defined.

12. For each User Type, that will have access to the Store page, you must also configure User Permissions to enable the right functionalities according to what do you want to sell and who can buy products.

13. Navigate the DPS by using the back-office view, you will find the Store page in the menu as a first level page.

14. Navigate the DPS by using the customer view, you will find the Store page in the menu as a first level page, and the Catalog tab when entering the thing details view.

User Permissions

Each user accessing the DPS are associated with a User Type (e.g. Back-office Admin) which has a set of permissions defining what the user can see and do in the DPS. To improve the security (principle of least privilege), also the Store is subject to permissions, and by entering the User Types page, you will find a group of permissions named Store you can configure on each User Type.
Note that, some permissions could be available only to certain user type categories (e.g. only Organizations and Partners can modify an order).

Here are the permissions involved in the e-commerce and their effect in DPS data access and UI.