More Advanced Shipping Method Restrictions

[joshpappas]

We've run into a couple of scenarios not currently possible with shipping methods in Miva:

1. The ability to assign a combination of product + state for a shipping method. Example, widget A has to use FedEx Priority Overnight to ship to California. Currently, I can limit what states a shipping method is available for, and I can limit what items can use what shipping methods, but I there's no matrix that allows combining both of those options specifically for that state + item combination while leaving everything else unaffected.
2. The ability to restrict a shipping method by customer. We have a custom shipping module for LTL that runs rates against a lot of carriers and presents the best available rate to the customer for their order, then allows them to choose the delivery options (residential, liftgate, terminal pickup) without worrying about who the carrier is. This works for the vast majority of customers, but a few have a preference for a specific carrier, and there's not way to limit which shipping methods those customers see.

It would be nice to address these gaps (and I'm sure others) with future shipping enhancements.

[Brennan]

Have you spoken to Advanced Shipping Manager, https://apps.miva.com/advanced-shipp...-merchant.html they may be able to solve both of these today.

For #2, you can limit shipping methods per customer but it would require you to put that shipping method into an availability group, which would hide it from the rest of the site.

[joshpappas]

Thanks, Brennan , I'll look into that. At first glance, it's probably overkill for our needs, especially with a subscription fee, but I'll take a deeper look and see what makes sense.

My alternative thought for #2 at the moment is to create a custom module to provide a "Limit shipping methods" option on the customer admin page to mimic the functionality on the item page. That seems like where it should go in Miva core, anyway, since that design pattern already exists.