MultiPub contains different options for connecting your website to MultiPub using the technology that best suits your organization.
Mult-e-commerce is an add-on module that allows a web site to communicate directly with the MultiPub fulfillment system. Mult-e-commerce is not a shopping cart or a website design tool, rather Mult-e-commerce is the engine that is responsible for submitting data to MultiPub and retrieving data from MultiPub.
Mult-e-commerce can perform the following functions:
· Authentication (i.e. access control – validating subscriber login access)
· Customer Service Functions
· Address changes
· UserID changes
· Payment Entry
· Duplicate Checking
· Order Entry, which can include the following subcomponents:
o New order entry
o Renewal order entry
o Trial order entry
· Subscriber/Order Comment Entry
· Pricing (the subscriber, product, and rate information is sent to MultiPub and pricing is returned to Ecomm)
· Sales tax calculation
· Delivery Weight Calculation (calculate total delivery weight based on the weight value on the rate code for each product ordered)
Mult-e-commerce makes use of an ‘e-comm server’ that holds the software mentioned above and the e-comm database. This is usually a separate server from your webserver and MultiPub server, but it should be on the same back-bone as your webserver and on a vpn with your webserver and MultiPub server. Utilizing a separate server enables you to keep website traffic from accessing your MultiPub server.
The Mult-e-commerce module consists of two primary components:
1) Software that can be called from your website in order to submit data to or retrieve data from the e-comm database (the Mult-e-commerce api).
2) Replication software that runs between MultiPub and Mult-e-commerce to replicate updated data back and forth between one another.
Mult-e-commerce uses an api for integrating your website with MultiPub. The api supports two different technologies to make it easy to integrate with your website. You may use web services, .dll files with ASP.net, or .clas files with any environment that supports java. The ‘result set’ from executing the Mult-e-commerce api can be tailored for your needs, with the results being in .xml, .csv, .ini. or in cookies.
Additionally, you may simply use ASCII files to tranmit updates back and forth between your website and The MultiPub System.
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