A few general questions about Phoca cart

[app-n-web]

Hi,

I am thinking about using Phoca cart on one of our customer website but while testing it, I encountered a few limitation I could not manage to solve and thus am not sure it may fully suits the project needs. Maybe you can help me to get a better understanding of the component on those points :

- Is there a way to disable quantity select and stock options for downloadable products ? I did not find any but maybe I am wrong. The shop will have physical products that need those options and downloadable products for which it is not relevant so I need a way to get it to show only on physical products and note on others products.

- Is it possible to set prices for Joomla user groups or someway link Joomla user group to shop group ? I managed to set discount by access level but this way, the customer sees the discount only when going to checkout but not on the product / category pages which shows the normal price. I need it to appear there too so the logged in customers see prices relevant to his user group and I cannot rely only on shop groups for that as member registration is done by another component and then using Joomla user groups.

- Once a user is connected, if he goes to checkout, the page scroll to the billing / shipping section instead of first showing the cart content that is above. Is there a way to disable this behavior so that the customer arrives on top of the page and can first review the selected products ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Jan]

Hi,

1) quality for digital products - no, for now there is no such option, added to feature request list. For now the solution can be overriding view or layout (for add to cart buttons) by template - but I will take a look at it.

2) you can set specific prices for Phoca Cart customer groups



then such price is displayed for the logged in customer:



3) scrolling - you can disable it in Options:



Jan

[app-n-web]

Thanks for your answers Jan.

I found the "Scroll checkout" option and may probably find an override solution for the downloadable quantity selection.

As for the pricing, it's a bit more complicated as I really need to be able to link the prices to Joomla user groups or ACL as the customers can register as paid member via another extension and should benefit from member prices on products (phoca cart) and events registration (another extension) as soon as they have become member and are logged in.

So I saw it was possible to set prices for each Phoca customer group but as long as they are not linked or linkable to Joomla user groups, it does not really help me.

I also saw discount are ACL and Customer group based, and thus could be used instead of pricing but as they do not appear on product / category pages, it's not clear enough for the customers.

So probably the only way to get it to work in my case will be to duplicate each category and each product to have one for normal price and one for member price and then use ACL on products and categories to restrict to members the lowest priced one of each. Quite a big mess, knowing our customer will be managing products on his own after the initial setup.

I will probably find a solution in the end, but really, linking Joomla groups to Eshop groups would be a great feature to add. Something like being able to select a Joomla group in the parameters of a customer group and having each user in this Joomla group (already registered or new) also in the selected customer group. Unfortunately it's current on events extension but not in shops, that's why I am desperately looking for it right now.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your help and have a nice day.

[Jan]

Hi, for now the idea is, to modify the customer group feature and assign customer group in Phoca Cart to Joomla! group?

The question is, if e.g. adding Joomla! user group parameter to Phoca Cart customer can somehow help (of course, the duplicity will be not lost)?

But thinking about it, this can be very problematic - because if registered user is set in Joomla! registered group and set in Specific Phoca Cart group and such group is connected to e.g. Manager Joomla! group - then the rights and all other behaviour will be not unique

Joomla! groups are used to check the access but customer groups have something more, they manage e.g. different prices and can be extended through rules like Minimal Sum Of Purchases - which is not possible to solve in Joomla! groups - because e.g. people in Joomla! user group "Registered" can have different minimal sum of puchaches

So you cannot assign e.g. Joomla! Group to Phoca Cart customer group, because you cannot differentiate e.g. minimial sum of purchases in Joomla! User groups.

Jan

[app-n-web]

I understand your point of view but as I explained I was not thinking about replacing Phoca customer groups by Joomla user groups and / or access levels but more about having a possibility to link them. Sort of being able to select Joomla user groups and / or access levels in a Phoca customer group parameters so that every user in this Joomla group and / or access level is also set to be part of the chosen Phoca customer group and benefits from this group prices and minimal sum of purchase.

As for duplication, I guess it would be easy to disallow selection of a Joomla group and / or ACL if it's already selected in another Phoca customer group.

Most part of Phoca cart are already using Joomla ACL in addition to its own customer groups, for exemple the discount options for which we can set a group and an access level, but it's not the case for product prices that are only linked to Phoca customer groups and as in our case member register online via RsForm, it would really be better if we could set the prices at least using Joomla ACL if not Joomla groups.

I imagine I may be the first one to ask about such a feature but it's a problem I encounter each time I have to manage member prices on several extensions. RsEvents that I use on most websites for event registrations also has his own groups used for permissions and ticket prices but they can be linked to Joomla users or users groups in their parameters what solves part of the problem. Unfortunately I found no shop extension that really implements such a possibility and I am thus missing it quite often.

Anyway, we will probably use your extension on this project as it's still the best option for it and I will do with this limitation by using the discounts. I understand it would be many complications for you and if nobody else except me is asking for it, it is really not worth the effort.

Thanks a lot for your answer and have a nice day.

[Jan]

Hi, it is only about possible conflicts

Joomla! ACL - cannot be used for customer groups, this is why all extensions has specific customer groups. For example: User A and User B are both group "registered" but one has sum of purchase 100, second 1000 so both can be in different customer groups even both of them are still "registered"

So this is in fact no possible:

As for duplication, I guess it would be easy to disallow selection of a Joomla group and / or ACL if it's already selected in another Phoca customer group.

Let us say: there will be customer group "A" which you will assign to Joomla! ACL "REGISTERED". In customer group "A" you will set the rule that this is applied to all customers who makes sum of all purchases more than 1000, so how to solve this conflict:

a) User with sum of all purchases is set as "REGISTERED" (because of the assigning, he/she belongs to customer group "A"
b) But his/her real sum of all purchases is set so he/she cannot belong to customer group "A"

So what will be the priority: the real situation set by the rule (you can belong to customer group "A" only with sum of all purchases over 1000) or the assigning the "REGISTERED" group to customer group "A"?


So for now I cannot solve following:

a) when linking Joomla! ACL to customer groups, there will be some kind of duplicity - you need to set ACL groups and then link them to customer groups (so in fact Joomla! ACL will be then the same like customer groups) - this is only a question of more work for administrator, this is not logic problem, only more work for administrators

b) is much more complicated as there is possible conflict between rules of both: Joomla! ACL groups and customer groups. What to do with the rule: sum of possible purchases or any other new rule which cannot fit Joomla! ACL groups. If "REGISTERED" = customer group "A", will this group by managed by Joomla! ACL rules or by customber group rules?

Every new user is "registered" != every user with sum of purchases over 1000 is "registered"

For this I cannot imagine any solution and of course if there will be, will be great. The easiest way is just add the selection of Joomla! ACL to customer group (this is really very easy) but this means let the managers check all possible conflicts and confuse them totally. As programator you need to prevent from situation when manager will set each newly registered users and they will get customer group like they have sum of all purchases over 1000 (even they don't have)

Jan
Jan

[app-n-web]

You're right, it's probably because I do not use purchase amount that I do not get that correctly.

Another two questions and I stop bothering you :

- Is there a way to completely disable shipping for downloadable products ?
- Is there a way to not require customer address for downloadable products ?

Thanks for your patience with me.

[app-n-web]

Well, I finally found a way to get around the members problem by creating more ACL and groups in order to use the discount options for different member prices and as the discounts actually appear in the category / product pages, it's enough for that part. I will never know why it did not appear during my first test but no matter as long as it works now.

As for shipping of downloadable products, I added a "Direct download" free shipping method with a weight rule to limit it to zero. It's not a perfect solution and having a no shipping option in products would still be better, but it's not the most important feature in fact and neither is the required address. If it comes in the future it's great and if not we can live with it that way.

I now encounter another problem with Paypal payments for which I will open a new thread as it's much more specific, but before I do that I just wanted to say that I tested 8 different shop extensions for that project and that Phoca Cart is the only left actually.

So Phoca Cart is great and forgive me if I was a bit stubborn with my user groups theory, it's not that I do not respect your work, it's just the project that's driving me mad with its many requirements. Sorry for that ...

[Jan]

Hi,

the paypal problem, see:
viewtopic.php?f=44&t=59193&p=152937#p152937

Anyway thank you for your feedback, any feedback is welcomed.

Jan