Quotes

A quote is a document sent to a potential customer offering to sell goods or services at a certain price under specified conditions. 

In Dynamicweb, quotes (or more properly inquiries) are created and submitted by users from the frontend, then evaluated from the backend, before being converted to a quote sent back to the user. The user can then decide to take you up on the offer and create an order based on the quote – or reject it.

Working with quotes in Dynamicweb requires you to:

• Familiarize yourself with the backend quotes management interface.
• Implement quotes in frontend, using the Product Catalog app, the Shopping Cart app, and the Customer Center app.

Quotes lists are lists of quotes submitted to you by frontend users - it is from this list that you will process quote inquiries and return them to the customers.

To access quotes:

• Open the Ecommerce area
• Click on the Quotes node (Figure 2.1) to fold it out
• Click on a shop located under the Quotes node shows the quotes list for that shop

Figure 2.1 The quotes node

This opens the Quotes list view (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2 The Quotes list view

From the Quotes list you can see the following information for each quote:

• Quote ID
• Creation date and time
• Quote state
• Customer name
• Price
• Payment method
• Capture state

From the Quotes list view you can also filter and search the quotes list – or click a quote to access the quote details.

Quotes are red until they have been accepted by a customer and set to Completed - after completion they appear in black.

From the Quotes list toolbar (Figure 3.1) you can filter and search the Quotes list.

Figure 3.1 Filtering the Quotes list

With the filtering a search option, you can:

• Find quotes based on start and end date, or on a preset interval (like today or latest week)
• Filter on quote state (custom work-flow states), quote progress (system controlled) or capture state (depending on payment provider details)
• Isolate quotes which have been transferred to Dynamicweb Ecommerce from an outside system (via the integration framework)
• Search your orders

Once a set of filters and criteria have been selected, click the apply button to apply the filters – or the reset button to reset the selection (Figure 3.2).

From the quotes list view you can click an individual quote to access the quote details.

Figure 3.2 Applying or resetting filters

You can hide the filter settings to get a better overview of the orders by clicking the arrow under the filter settings area.

Your filter settings are automatically remembered by the system. This means that when opening the order list the next time, all filter settings will be pre-filled. If the filter area is hidden, then the area will blink shortly to indicate that special filter settings has been applied. To reset the filter settings, click Reset in the toolbar.

The quote details view (Figure 5.1) is almost identical to the order details view - which is hardly surprising, since it will hopefully be converted into an order on acceptance from the customer.

Figure 5.1 The basic quotes details view

The basic quotes details provide you with a view of:

• The OrderID, the quote completion date
• The list of order items and any discounts, order line fields, unit, and stock location associated with each item
• The payment and shipping methods selected - and any fees associated with them
• The order subtotal, total, and totals excluding VAT & Taxes
• The billing and shipping address details

In the upper right corner of the view you can access the edit quote button if permitted on your solution (you may need to collapse the navigation tree).

Below the basic quote details you have access to the collapsible quote detail boxes.

The Comments box (Figure 6.1) lets you view and edit both the order comments and any customer comments.

Figure 6.1 Order comments

The Additional information box (Figure 7.1) contains any custom order fields present on your solution. Order fields are simply fields can be filled by either frontend user or backend staff, or during integration, and are a flexible way of working with custom order data in Dynamicweb.

Figure 7.1 An addtional information box with order fields

You can read more about custom order fields in this article.

The order data box (Figure 8.1) provides you with access to various technical data about the order.

Figure 8.1 The order data box

You can view:

• The standard sales tax or VAT rate
• The shop the quote was created from
• The IP address of the computer usd to place the quote
• The last step in the order process (currently broken)
• The exported info (returns true if order has been exported)
• The order context of the order (if completed through an order context cart)

The currencies box (Figure 9.1) shows you the the details of the currency of the order.

Figure 9.1 The Currencies box

You can review:

• The name of the currency used for this order
• The factor (exchange rate) compared with the default currency
• The code for the currency

Read more about currencies in Dynamicweb here.

The transaction box (Figure 10.1) lets you review transaction details from the payment provider used for the order.

Figure 10.1 The transaction details box

Since this is a quote, the provider won't return any transaction information at all.

The Miscellaneous box (Figure 11.1) lets you review the price calculation date and the completion date. You can also access the user details of the (registered or unregistered) user who placed the quote by clicking Details.

Figure 11.1 The Miscellanous details box

Processing a quote in Dynamicweb means editing it and setting a new quote state, preferably one which alerts the customer that a quote is ready to be accepted or rejected.

Before you can edit quotes, order editing must be enabled on your solution in advanced configuration:

• Go to Settings > Ecommerce > Advanced configuration > General
• Check the Allow edit order for all users checkbox (read more about the settings here)

To edit a quote, click the quote in the Quote list. Then in the Quote details, click the Edit icon (Figure 12.1).

When editing a quote in Dynamicweb, you can:

• Edit the billing and shipping information about the user who created the quote – this is not usually of interest when it comes to quotes
• Edit the quantity and price of order items – or remove them altogether
• Add order discounts using the $-icon
• Add products (with or without a product discount) to an order using the box icon - you can also remove them again
• Edit order line fields, if available – read more about order line fields.

Figure 12.1 Editing a quote

Once edited to your satisfaction, click Save and return to the Quotes list. 

Figure 12.2 Save the quote

In the Quotes list, check your quote and change the quote state in the ribbon bar (Figure 12.3) to let the customer know that they have received a quote, which they can then accept (and create an order from) or reject.

Only one quote can be added to the cart at the time, and you cannot add regular products to a cart along with a quote.

The default quote states are:

• New – the default state when a new quote is created. Means the quote is ready to be processed.
• Submitted – once processed, this quote state lets the customer know that they can now take action on the quote they have been sent – reject or approve it
• Approved – this state means that the customer has approved the quote, and have (if allowed) created an order based on it
• Rejected – this state means that the customer has rejected the quote

You may need to customize the default quote flow to match your needs or to allow or disallow certain actions – read more about custom quote flows below.

Figure 12.3 Change the quote state

To enable your users to ask for quotes from the frontend, you must setup and configure your solution to support it.

Specifically, you must:

• Create an order context and a quotes cart for creating quotes
• Modify your product catalog templates to allow users to add products to the quotes cart
• Allow your users to interact with (and create orders from) their quote inquiries from the frontend, through the Customer Center app

To create a new order context for handling quotes:

• Go to Settings > Ecommerce > Orders > Order contexts
• Click New order context from the menu
• Name the order context and select a shop for it to work with
• Save the order context

You can read more about order contexts and context carts in the Shopping Cart documentation.

Once your order context has been created, you must create and configure your quotes cart – the Shopping Cart app – dedicated to handling quotes.

To create a quotes cart:

• Create a new paragraph on the page where you want your quotes cart and add the Shopping Cart app to it
• Click App to edit the app settings
• In the settings area (Figure 15.1), select your shop in the shop-dropdown and your order context in the context cart-dropdown

Figure 15.1 Setting up a quotes cart

• Check the Checkout to quote checkbox
• Don’t forget to Save and close the app settings

With the proper order context and the quotes cart set up, you need to enable users to add products to the quotes cart.

To enable users to add products to the quotes cart, you must create an ‘Add to Quotes Cart’ button in either the product list template or the product details template – or in both.

To do so:

• Edit your product details or product list template
• Insert the OrderContexts loop where you want an Add to cart button
• Create an Add to cart link using the OrderContext.ID tag to render all context carts that are available for the selected shop 

See example below.

Once your templates have been modified to your satisfaction, your customers will be able to add products to the quote cart and check out. You will then be able to view and process the quote request in the backend, and send it back to the customer.

In order to enable the customer to react to your quote – e.g. to create an order from it – you must modify your Customer Center app (or add one to your solution).

The OrderContexts loop is not rendered unless you set a shop under Website settings > Ecommerce > Shop (Figure 16.3).

Figure 16.3 You must select a shop under your website settings > Ecommerce settings in order to render the OrderContexts loop

In order to finalize your quotes setup, you must modify you Customer Center setup.

To do so:

• Open you Customer Center app settings (or create a page & paragraph and add the app to it)
• Edit the My Quotes menu text to suit your solution
• In the Templates section:
  • Select the NavigationQuotes.html template in Menu layout (or add <!--@Ecom:CustomerCenter.MyQuotes-->&nbsp;|&nbsp; to your existing navigation template)
  • Select the QuoteList.html template as the Quote List template
  • Select the QuoteDetail.html template as the Quote Details template
• Save and close

Your logged in customers will now be able to react to quotes, as per your quote flow design. Read about creating or editing your quote flows below.

Quote states are individual steps in a quote flow, which can be configured to control the quote flow behavior on your solution.

To create a new state:

• Click New quote state
• Configure the quote state settings (Figure 20.1)

Figure 20.1 Creating a quote state

From the settings area you should provide a name and description (optional) for the quote state, and then configure the quote state behavior:

• Default means new quotes are created in this state
• Allow order means a quote in this state can be converted to an order
• Allow edit means that this quote can be manipulated in frontend from a shopping cart
• Exclude from statistics means the quote is, well, excluded from Ecommerce statistics

To add the quote to a cart and edit it, use the Ecom:CustomerCenter.Quotes.AddToCart tag in the Customer Center app with an appropriate order context parameter, e.g. &OrderContext=ORDERCONTEXT5. Once the quote has been edited, it can be converted to an order - or a new quote can be created, in which case the quote will get a new quote-id (e.g. QUOTE9).

From the Notification area, you can set up notification emails for when an order enters the order state. This is particularly useful for notifying a customer that you have sent them a quote:

• Specify a subject for the email
• Select (or create/modify) an email template to use
• Specify a sender name and email
• Specify the recipient: use either the shipping email or an email from a custom order field

Finally, you can control the quote flow by restricting how a customer can move a quote between states in the Customer Center:

• Specify which existing states a quote can move from to this state
• Specify which existing states a quote can move to after this state

Don’t forget to save the quote state before exiting.

There is no database specific information for this subject.