As your business grows, your needs change. You’ll find you need to integrate and automate processes. One of those processes might require data import or export.

Data Import

The import and export of data is the automated or semi-automated input and output of data sets between different software applications.

Over the years, we have set-up many clients with a system to automate import of product data. In some cases, it was a simple update of inventory from a vendor. It several others, a more complex system of adding new products was created.

When creating a data import that will create new products, several items needs addressed. How will the products be assigned to categories? Will you use the vendor supplied product description (hint: No, write your own)? Will you use the vendor supplied pricing?

We work with you to determine how to match your business requirements with the data provided by your vendor. In the case of one client, they were working with two vendors. Each vendor that their own system to categorize their products. The vendor naming conventions did not meet the needs of our client. They needed a way to set their own categories. The result was a mapping system where they could create category mapping. The category name from the vendor would be assigned to a store category through a custom build admin panel. This allowed them to display products from both vendors in an orderly fashion.

For another client, we created a script that exported orders to a file.  This file was then provided to their warehouse each day. The result was a website that accepted and processed orders on it’s own. A warehouse that shipped orders to their customers. The final step was an update back to the website updating the order status to ‘shipped’ and emailing the customer to notify them. We’ve talked in detail about order process automation and shipping automation previously.

This allowed them to automate the entire order process and allowed them to focus on their customers and growing their business.

Do you need help with integration or automation? Contact Us to find out how we can help.

The Zen Cart development team has released version 1.5.5e

Changes in Zen Cart 1.5.5e include:

• Upgrade PHPMailer from 5.2.21 to 5.2.22
• Update gmail support to use TLS per published standards
• Fix bug introduced in v1.5.5c related to deleting customers
• Add built-in support for new .htaccess rules required for Apache 2.4, so mod_compat doesn’t need to be installed
• zc_install improvements better handling for upgrades from v138 / v139
• zc_install – removed extraneous backticks from upgrade SQL from v154-to-v155
• Bridge compatibility for transition to removal of the ENABLE_SSL_ADMIN constant
• Consolidate to a single upload class, shared between admin/catalog
• Updates to Payeezy and First Data HCO payment modules
• NOTE: There were NO Database Changes

If you are doing what we recommend and keeping current, Zen Cart 1.5.5e is a minor step so please contact us to schedule your upgrade.

If you are using something older and have not upgraded, the reasons to do so keep getting longer and longer. Please do contact us for an upgrade quote. It’s not a question of *if* you should upgrade but a question of *when*.

The Zen Cart team has released a new version of Zen Cart, version 1.5.5d. This new version includes all the bug fixes and patches since the first version in the 1.5.5 series was released in March of 2016. Many of the highlights are listed below, but this is not a complete list. Our recommendation is always to be on the current version so you can benefit from the improvements and avoid any issues these now fixed bugs might cause. For further details on why, see our post why to apply patches and updates.

To upgrade, please contact us for a quote.

Version d includes a few minor fixes to version c. Version c was primarily the fix to the security vulnerability with the embedded PHPMailer software but also included a few other items since they were completed and ready as well. Versions a and b included a number of fixes and patches. Depending on your current version, your could get some or all of these improvements.

• Fix several upgrade-related problems caused by zero-dates in the customers table data/history
• Revamp admin sanitization code to work better with various plugins such as Edit Orders, etc
• Admin orders page had some incorrect CSS classes specified
• Admin customers page had some incorrect HTML tags for span and bold markup
• Admin “Support” link restored to navigation menu
• Admin – fix privilege escalation vulnerability
• Fix missing SEARCH_DEFAULT_TEXT, ERROR_GV_CREATE_ACCOUNT and TEXT_PRICED_BY_ATTRIBUTES language defines
• The zc_install test for availability of SSL and .htaccess could fail due to timeouts when offline
• The zc_install “configure.php file update” was not always handling conversion of old SSL URLs properly
• Fix “uninitialized string offset” error in zen_random_name()
• Fix sort-order of shipping/payment modules when sort-orders are multiple digits
• Responsive Classic: Fix alignment/display of State Dropdown element on address pages
• Fix to inability to choose from address-book during checkout, and fix double “continue” buttons on same page
• Order comments flag was showing incorrectly on PayPal EC transactions
• Restore define for DIR_WS_HTTPS_ADMIN for legacy plugin purposes
• Added several .gitignore files in various folders, to help site developers avoid committing unnecessary files to version control
• For language-specific currency overrides, fix the default
• Fix bindvars to honor string entries that contain ‘null’
• add safety to fmod_round
• Fix extra breadcrumb that was appearing when always-open-with-category is enabled
• Update BOC currency parsing to cope with their data changes and division-by-zero errors as a result
• Fix a test-mode bug in Authorizenet AIM module
• Fix Chrome browser javascript incompatibility
• Several fixes to the Admin Sanitizer rules, to stop translating special characters to html entities unexpectedly
• Fixes from Known bugs and fixes with v1.5.5
• Fix some HTML markup “strict” errors, and CSS alignments in various admin pages
• Relocate shipping-calculation logic in checkout page, to be consistent with other checkout calculations and prevent some shipping rate errors
• Template fix to Responsive Classic to change postal-code to no longer be numeric-only
• Change authorize.net module to use Akamai servers
• Fix Payeezy payment module tokenization problem, and fix sandbox mode problem
• Fix some javascript on checkout pages related to form submission
• Fix out-of-stock alert inconsistency
• Trigger E_USER_ERROR when wrong bindVars rule set
• Update gv_faq language file with community contributions
• Change use of PHP_SELF to SCRIPT_NAME for consistency and to avoid legacy-related problems
• Fix false-positives in error-reporting logic
• Fix leftover indirection variables for PHP7 compatibility
• Fixes to AJAX handlers: reject fake requests; persist session data more effectively
• Change CKEditor trigger to use jQuery CDN instead of Google CDN, for broader global access
• Upgrade PHPMailer to accommodate broader TLS compatibility
• Accommodate MasterCard’s recent BIN 2 addition
• Include responsive-classic template layout-boxes in upgrades, even if not using it, for sake of cloning simplicity
• Template fix: fax field was showing even if disabled
• Template fix: fix “back” button on address-book edit screens during checkout
• Multilanguage: make hreflang tag appear for all languages, instead of only for “other than current” language
• Fix admin link to whois resource
• Fix checkout_shipping: No method chosen after cart goes from virtual to mixed
• Handle mysql strict typing issue with legacy PayPal IPN insert
• Fix Free Shipping tax calculation with ot_coupon
• Added several helper functions to shopping_cart class for calculating in-cart properties related to categories
• Fixes a critical bug in PHPMailer

To upgrade, please contact us for a quote.