Guest Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 auctionblox has created an order management interface for eBay to integrate with OSC. Here is the link to the previous page Here are my questions... Can it handle multiple item auctions? (multiple items, but auction ends at a set time) What about multple 'Buy It Now' auctions? (mutiple items, item ends at various times) Does it create a new item in the OSC store for each ended auction? Or does it use existing items and override the price/shipping? Either way, does this need set up before the auction, during, or after? When reading the auctions, does it pick up if the customer has paid (ie, via eBay's checkout with Paypal, so it shows 'Paid' on eBay). If they haven't paid, does it pick up the price, shipping, ebay id, email and auction # automatically? (Could create the item/email/invoice directly from it) If the customer has already paid, does it skip them, or enter them and show them as paid (definitly prefer it picks up and shows as paid). Is all of the info stored in a table somewhere so it can be referenced/crossreferenced by open invoice, auction #, email or eBay id? What kind of subscription service are you suggesting? Monthly, weekly? Cost? What's it involve? This is a programming community, alot of people will want as much as the nitty gritty as they can get. Is this something we can set up ourselves with the personal eBay development token? Do you have a demo that includes the automation so we can see it work? Or a detailed description with screenshots or something. I myself am very interested, but before I pay any subscriptions I want to try it to see if it will suite my needs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♥auctionblox Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 Can it handle multiple item auctions? (multiple items, but auction ends at a set time) I currently only do standard auctions, so I don't know the requirements of a multiple item auction. In principal, it can handle this type of auction because it uses the end time as the trigger to go read the information. Bottom line, I can easily and reliably get any information from eBay that I need. The system just needs a "trigger" to know when to go get the auction info. In this case, it still has an end time, so I have a trigger. However, the system does not currently support this type of auction because I haven't needed to support it. I'll set up some auctions like this and work on supporting this too. What about multple 'Buy It Now' auctions? (mutiple items, item ends at various times) Buy It Now is the most difficult to support, because there is no external trigger that wakes up my system to download the auction information. For this to be a scalable system, it cannot poll eBay but rather be notified by eBay or some other trigger. That trigger could be the osCommerce store owner clicking a button which says "Download Buy It Now Auction". But, I don't like this option because it requires manual work on your (our) parts. Instead, I will need to add a feature to the osCommerce portion which will download the auction whever the winning bidder comes to the store and their order cannot be found in our system. Does it create a new item in the OSC store for each ended auction? Or does it use existing items and override the price/shipping? Either way, does this need set up before the auction, during, or after? The automatic portion creates a new "Ended" auction for each auction in eBay. This is so that we can always tie an eBay won auction to an actual order in the osCommerce system. If you do it manually, I would expect you would use the same process for record-keeping purposes. But, there is nothing to prevent you from re-using an existing auction listing AS LONG AS the existing auction listing that you are modifying has already been checked out by the customer with an order created. It does not create new catalog items in the store. If you don't want those items displayed in your store, then you need to also use the hidden products contribution. It overrides the price and shipping of the existing item in the store. If you are using the automatic download option, then you have to have the catalog items set up beforehand and use a new screen which maps the Auction Title to your catalog item. If you're doing it manually, then can set up catalog items at any time prior to the setup of the "Ended Auctions". When reading the auctions, does it pick up if the customer has paid (ie, via eBay's checkout with Paypal, so it shows 'Paid' on eBay). If they haven't paid, does it pick up the price, shipping, ebay id, email and auction # automatically? (Could create the item/email/invoice directly from it) It downloads the auction within 5 seconds of the auction end, picks up the eBay ID, eBay email, price, shipping, title, auction #, etc. It automatically sends an invoice to the buyer with the checkout link. In my experience, it has totally eliminated the "How do you want me to pay?" and "Do you accept PayPal?" emails. Currently, it does not pick up whether they have paid or not, because the auction is download before they could complete checkout. When the volume increases to include more auctions that just mine, then I expect it may not be so instantaneous (but still within seconds). If the customer has already paid, does it skip them, or enter them and show them as paid (definitly prefer it picks up and shows as paid). Regardless of whether they have paid or not, it downloads their information into the system. THere are times when the buyer for whatever reason, does not checkout but pays thru PayPal. You have to do a manual order for these customers, but at least you have all of the info in the system. I accomplish this by going through the checkout link myself with the information they provided in PayPal. In my experience, about 95% of the time, people will check out via osCommerce. Is all of the info stored in a table somewhere so it can be referenced/crossreferenced by open invoice, auction #, email or eBay id? I have added new osCommerce tables to maintain all of the downloaded or manually added auction information. It can be easily cross-referenced. What kind of subscription service are you suggesting? Monthly, weekly? Cost? What's it involve? This is a programming community, alot of people will want as much as the nitty gritty as they can get. Is this something we can set up ourselves with the personal eBay development token? I'm thinking about a monthly subscription probably based on volume. I have nothing concrete at this point. But, I'm just looking to help the community. I will have to charge to be able to host this system somewhere. (It won't be able to be hosted on a $10 ISP.) I am currently interviewing several hosting partners focusing on SLA. It could easily cost around $100-200 / month for me since it requires a Java VM and requires a great deal of bandwidth download auctions from eBay and sending them to the respective osCommerce site. I would imagine that if you do less than 5 or 10 auctions per month, I'll support a free or donation account. If you have around 100 auction per month which is close to what I do, you're looking at less than $20. But, no pricing structure has been defined yet. I'm here for the osCommerce community and because of the osCommerce community, so you tell me what you think it's worth and we'll work on pricing structure together. Currently, this portion is "closed-box" written entirely in Java. Essentially, it downloads the info from eBay, and posts the data to your osCommerce store via SSL if you have it (but doesn't require it). When it sends the auction information to your osCommerce store, it sends a passcode previously provided by you. If your store authenticates the passcode, then the data is uploaded. Otherwise, it is denied. This passcode is stored encrypted in my system and in your application_top.php file. Do you have a demo that includes the automation so we can see it work? Or a detailed description with screenshots or something. I myself am very interested, but before I pay any subscriptions I want to try it to see if it will suite my needs. When I get the www.auctionblox.com site live, then I'll be giving free trial accounts (probably 30 days) to my osCommerce friends. You can determine within that timeframe whether it meets your needs. If you don't need it, then you at least have the auction mgmt integration into osCommerce. Regarding screenshots, it is entirely a batch system. The only user interface is administrative. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 29, 2003 Share Posted September 29, 2003 All my auction are Buy It Now auctions for multiple items, so that's where my questions are focused. That, and trying to get the most amount of automation from your program. As far as the trigger goes, I don't know what kind of thing would work, but you could have it check every hour until the auction end. If it checks the My eBay page, you can look at the 'Items Available' for each item and see if any have been sold. Then you'd have to keep a log of each auction, it's end time, and items remaining each time, so that it could compare on the next check. I like being able to set the auction to existing items. That way I could sell 'Smallville Season 1 DVD Set', assign it an auction number, and override the price and shipping. That would be ideal. So it would still keep track of the Smallville sets for inventory and tracking purposes. For me, the most important thing will be the "Paid" thing. As soon as someone clicks on the Buy It Now, it takes them to a Paypal payment screen. 90% of people pay at that screen in the first 30 seconds after the auction. Which is fine by me. The program should then create an invoice for them and show as paid. Does your program get their address from eBay automatically? Or do they enter it? If they need to enter it, then a receipt should be sent, and a link that they go to to enter their info. Otherwise, a paid invoice should be sent so show that we got the payment. Maybe a note included with the invoice, or paid invoice. I would gladly pay $10/month if it can provide everything I need it to. I would be happy to help test it once I get my clean install of MS2 set up. My ISP has been pretty bad lately, took them over a month to get my SSL set up, takes them weeks to respond to tickets, etc.... Looking for a new one... If anyone has any suggestions, please msg me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♥auctionblox Posted October 1, 2003 Share Posted October 1, 2003 All my auction are Buy It Now auctions ... As far as the trigger goes, I don't know what kind of thing would work, but you could have it check every hour until the auction end ... Good thoughts. I have some ideas here. I will be working on that next. I like being able to set the auction to existing items... The system requires that the auction be tied to an existing catalog item. That way you can control inventory and accounting. It also ensures that all your orders in the system are the same regardless of auction or storefront. You do that manually for each auction if you're doing it the manual way. If automated, there is an admin screen that "maps" auction titles to osCommerce products. That way if you sell the same item over and over on eBay, it's a one time setup. For me, the most important thing will be the "Paid" thing. As soon as someone clicks on the Buy It Now, it takes them to a Paypal payment screen. 90% of people pay at that screen in the first 30 seconds after the auction. Which is fine by me. The program should then create an invoice for them and show as paid.Does your program get their address from eBay automatically? Or do they enter it? If they need to enter it, then a receipt should be sent, and a link that they go to to enter their info. Otherwise, a paid invoice should be sent so show that we got the payment. Maybe a note included with the invoice, or paid invoice. It does get the email address from eBay automatically. This is the part that most other implementations are not capable of doing. I have completed the remaining features of the PHP portion of the auction sales manager and have integrated Pablo's PayPal IPN. (Thanks for that!) I am now working on PayPal IPN from the PayPal site directly to build an order from an auction if the user did not checkout via osCommerce. All checkouts via storefront or PayPal will generate the familiar osCommerce invoice and PayPal receipt. That will solve your issue of payment. However, it does not address the Buy It Now trigger. I have some ideas, and will work on that as soon as I complete the auction enabled PayPal IPN. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aceclimber Posted October 2, 2003 Share Posted October 2, 2003 Here ya go. How about setting up a cronjob to handel the automatic updates of auctions. With a cronjob doing the job...that takes away the manuel part. I do not know if this is doable, but i did use cron jobs on Mewsofts NetAuction to update the auctions every hour. -Jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 2, 2003 Share Posted October 2, 2003 Sounds like your really getting things going auctionblox! :) I very anxiously await yuor results and want to take it for a spin :) I'm taking a vacation from things right now for the next few weeks, but as soon as you get your contrib worked out and tested, I'll be using it to make a strong comeback :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♥auctionblox Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 eBay Auction Manager for MS1 and MS2 have been released. You can find them in the contributions section: MS1: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1578 MS2: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1577 Hope you find it useful and please feel free to provide feedback. Also, I have a long list of features I would like to see added to it, but I don't have time at the moment considering that I am finalizing the automation piece. If you would like to add features, then feel free. That is the intent behind "free" software and open-source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deborahgsmith Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 Does this contribution subtract from the already existing inventory in the store? Thanks! Deborah Smith Spinning Frog Internet Services Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deborahgsmith Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 Sorry, I didnt see that you had already answered my question a few posts above. Deborah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve*** Posted October 31, 2003 Share Posted October 31, 2003 you readme file says you mst install Auction Checkout for osCommerce MS2 where can I find a link to this? also I am getting an error when trying a test purchase. I log in using the test e-mailaddress, select the auctions, enter all my details (name address etc) click continue, then the confirmation page appears, but will not go any further. Anyone any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 8, 2003 Share Posted November 8, 2003 Did anyone ever find the Auction Checkout contribution that's required to complete the Ebay Auction Manager? I'd love to finish the install but can't find that one part. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dimports Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 anybody find it yet?? why is the auction checkout hidden?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♥auctionblox Posted November 19, 2003 Share Posted November 19, 2003 Auction Checkout for MS2 is "eBay Auction Sales Manager for MS2". Smitty1's "Auto Update" contribution is in the same contribution, but they are not combined. So be sure to get the latest one labeled "eBay Auction Sales Manager for MS2". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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