Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

[1st Ergo]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

When editing a product, images, attributes, etc.. above the tabs there is a header that says: Edit Product: xxxxx. It shows the product name but not the product code. It would be very nice to have the product code as well as the name.
Thank you.
David

[deldridge]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Payment Plan Option at Checkout integrated with cycle billing :)

[RayYates]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Invoice Page Preview!

When editing the INVC page it would be great if their was a preview button that would render the INVC page with sample order data in a pop up window or tab.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

I've trimmed this thread heavily tonight. I went through and deleted requests that were either:

Duplicates (although not all dupes)
Already completed and added to the software (most of the removals were these)
Things that are in Wombat.

After Wombat comes out, we'll compile all the best items from this list, retire it and start a new one so it's manageable.

[RayYates]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Sorry, I did not search the edited forum to see if this is still is in here.

To the CategoryXProducts table Please, Please, Please, add a "primary" category field that will indicate, when a product is in multiple categories, which one is prime. By default it would be the first, but should be editable in the admin with a select box.

I don't know how many times I've had to have customer un-assign their products from categories then re-assign them so that the most important one is first.

For example: The Viking FedX module lets you assign category over-rides for shipping options, and then lets you assign product specific settings that over-ride the category.

When a client has product in multiple categories, which category shipping setting is being selected? Can you see the confusion this causes?

For Example when a client wants to preserve the category link in the basket, which category is primary? We routinely have to choose between the first, last or re-assigned all the product categories.

The addition of the field will not affect existing modules (it would simply be ignored), but I'm very sure shortly after its inclusion it will find it's way into the tool modules everyone uses.

It's probably too late for the Wombat release, but please bump this up in the priority list for the future.

[intunegp]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

I recently updated to Miva 5. We are still in the process of preparing our upgraded store for launch and during the process we found a few minor things that were available in our earlier version and are not found in our upgrade. I was told it would be a good idea to post here with what we would like to see added. Although these are minor, my processing department used the items Dailey. In the Unbatched order section, there is no longer a selection for Payment Method, Shipping Method, Sales tax or # of orders (at the bottom left of the page. In the Batched Orders section there is not option to display the Shipping Method. Again, minor issues, but little things that make life easier.

[Viscott]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Images:
We need to have multiple product images and perhaps integrate something like LightView as an image viewer.

http://www.nickstakenburg.com/projects/lightview/

Custom Product Fields:
The custom product fields should allow you to select not just the code but the type of field you would like it to be IE: Paragraph, String, Image, MP3, etc.

This serves the purpose of allowing the user to easily enter text or upload an image that is associated with the product right from the product screen in admin. Right now you need to FTP the associated file and manually enter the path and file name.

I also use these fields as switches, a way of having conditionals on the product templates to hide or display parts of the product page without having to create multiple product templates.

Sorry if these are repeats.

[photodon]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Certain modules such as Storeman require that no changes be made in admin to product areas until the downloaded information has been inported back into the store. This is not a problem for a one man operation but with several persons making admin changes this could be a problem when someone makes changes while another person is working on the main product files outside the store.

Unless there is some way of taking care of this that I'm not seeing, my suggestion is:

A "Red Flag" option that could be turned on with a lable as to who inplimented the red flag. Another option would be to be able to actually lock the admin from changes until unlocked by the person with the locked files.

Don

[crozon]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

I wish there was an easy way to put an attribute on sale either as a percentage or fixed price. Right now you have to go in and add a <strike> to the old price in the attribute prompt then add the new price in the price box. Then you have to implement something to let customers know it is on sale on the category pages. It's such a pain right now. I have many products that the price is dependant on the attributes only. I can NEVER put these items on sale easily.

Also, the ability to search custom fields in Admin. I know many of us use the custom fields to store vendor information such as part numbers and it would be great to search those fields easily.

Thanks,
Christine

[Biffy]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

We've been thinking a lot about this - how to synch a multi-user database with a multi-user store.

Some of what you ask is already done using what I call "housekeeping" fields. These track who and when changes are made. We can then use the timestamps to decide if the database gets updated or if the store gets updated.

Thinking this through even further leads to a need to let the user decide which updates which and what the update rules should be. Options would be automatic or manual updating, scheduled or manual updating, update throttling so the update doesn't hog the CPU, plus update preferences that the user can set.

Take this one step further and we're working on including image uploads with the updates. We can even locate orphaned images and move them to an archive directory. We can optimize image directories in two ways - human readable and maximum machine optimized for faster page loads.

These are not Miva solutions - they are third party CMS solutions that became possible when Miva upgraded to MySQL. But yes, people are indeed thinking about these issues and are working towards solving them.

Certain modules such as Storeman require that no changes be made in admin to product areas until the downloaded information has been inported back into the store. This is not a problem for a one man operation but with several persons making admin changes this could be a problem when someone makes changes while another person is working on the main product files outside the store.

Unless there is some way of taking care of this that I'm not seeing, my suggestion is:

A "Red Flag" option that could be turned on with a lable as to who inplimented the red flag. Another option would be to be able to actually lock the admin from changes until unlocked by the person with the locked files.

Don

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Certain modules such as Storeman require that no changes be made in admin to product areas until the downloaded information has been inported back into the store. This is not a problem for a one man operation but with several persons making admin changes this could be a problem when someone makes changes while another person is working on the main product files outside the store.

Unless there is some way of taking care of this that I'm not seeing, my suggestion is:

A "Red Flag" option that could be turned on with a lable as to who inplimented the red flag. Another option would be to be able to actually lock the admin from changes until unlocked by the person with the locked files.

Don

Actually, this has nothing to do with using 3rd party tools. If there are two people working in the admin, and both access the same setting, then the setting that sticks is the one which is last updated...

[ecentralstores]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Features that would be helpful.

1. Better error handling when a customer removes and item from the cart.
For example, a customer adds and item to the cart, they view their cart and remove the item. They hit the back button. And notice the item is still in their cart, so they click remove again and get this not so helpful error.

Fatal Error
Miva Merchant has encountered a fatal error and is unable to continue. The following information may assist you in determining the cause of the error:

Error Code: MER-00007 Description: Unable to load requested Basket Item. Some or all of the Basket Contents may no longer be available. Other Information:


This not very good for customers because they have no idea what this means and there is no go back to the store button.

This is a common issue with clients.

2. Proper XHTML code, no more HTML. Use of <form> tags outside of tables rather than outside of <tr>.
Use lower case tags.....
Use this format <form><table><tr><td></td></tr></table></form>
Not this format <TABLE><FORM><TR><TD></TD></TR></FORM></TABLE>

3. Ability to export products and not include the Description field. Or better let us deside what product fields we want ( i.e. like for custom fields )

Reason, being that some HTML in the product discription breaks the product speadsheet do to 255 char limitations. When using Excel or other Spreadsheet software.

Theres many more I'll let you know when I have more time.

Cheers.

Thomas

[William Davis]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Features that would be helpful.

1. Better error handling when a customer removes and item from the cart.
For example, a customer adds and item to the cart, they view their cart and remove the item. They hit the back button. And notice the item is still in their cart, so they click remove again and get this not so helpful error.

Fatal Error
Miva Merchant has encountered a fatal error and is unable to continue. The following information may assist you in determining the cause of the error:

Error Code: MER-00007 Description: Unable to load requested Basket Item. Some or all of the Basket Contents may no longer be available. Other Information:


This not very good for customers because they have no idea what this means and there is no go back to the store button.

This is a common issue with clients.

2. Proper XHTML code, no more HTML. Use of <form> tags outside of tables rather than outside of <tr>.
Use lower case tags.....
Use this format <form><table><tr><td></td></tr></table></form>
Not this format <TABLE><FORM><TR><TD></TD></TR></FORM></TABLE>

3. Ability to export products and not include the Description field. Or better let us deside what product fields we want ( i.e. like for custom fields )

Reason, being that some HTML in the product discription breaks the product speadsheet do to 255 char limitations. When using Excel or other Spreadsheet software.

Theres many more I'll let you know when I have more time.

Cheers.

Thomas

We recently discovered this problem along with a few others thanks to to ClickTale -great service.

How did you fix it?

[ecentralstores]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

We recently discovered this problem along with a few others thanks to to ClickTale -great service.

How did you fix it?

Dear William,

If your asking about the Fatal Error on empting a basket that is empty.

We have not fixed this issue, the logic for the function needs to be updated so that it first checks to see if the item is in the cart, then if not it would just refresh otherwise it would do as it does.

However, I don't have access to an uncompilied version of the code to correct this.

Please, consider a fix for this issue.

Will post more recommendations soon.

Thomas

[ecentralstores]

Re: Miva Merchant 5.5 Dream Features

Other ideas, that would be helpful are:

Allow for the Basket Contents and Customer fields to be a Global rather than independent. ( i.e. so you don't have to go thru each page that has these items and change in at least 4 different places. )

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Default Font tags in the code should either have greater control in the admin or be removed from the code altogether, currently we have to remove all <font> items from all the code in order to have better control over the look and feel of the site. Currently, miva uses em's for most font tags and this causes issues sence you do not have control over if its using em's, pixels.

Thomas