E-Cart in house order processing, integration with CIM - authorize.net

Hello All,

I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere on my cart, but as soon as I start to make progress, a plethora of new questions and problems arise.

What I WANT to happen:
1) Customer enters in shipping and payment details at my website when they goto checkout.
2) SOMETHING occurs... (e-cart works it magic, I believe a payment gateway is necessary to validate the card (although I could do that in-house- see below) and securely transmit the info)
3) I am sent a secure email, or login to a website, or, somehow retrieve the information so I can process this at our cc machine in-house after confirming shipping, inventory etc. I do not need to STORE the information, just process the cc details and destroy it like we do when people call in on the phone.

The number 2 part is where I started to run into difficulty. It was recommended that I 100% needed a gateway to securely pass the information to us somehow. I wish ecart could just do this somehow. Ray, can you confirm that this is not possible and that I need the gateway?

So I purchased the gateway at authorize.net but next they inform that they cannot send me the information to process after confirmation order details. For that, I need to pay about double the price for CIM (Customer Information Manager). This way, at step number 2, the customers information will be sent and stored to authorize.net where I can look it up to process from our store (or they may make me process at their store, I'm not fully sure yet). So they sent me a link on how to implement this; CIM_XML_guide.pdf This all looks a bit daunting and over my head. I'm not sure how e-cart can integrate with this, or if it already will somehow. I'm very new to PHP etc. so mostly just patching this together as best I can with a somewhat limited amount of time.

Can anyone offer any advice here on how to proceed? Keep on the track with this CIM and try to integrate it into the e-cart somehow? If so, where do I begin with that??

Is there another path that might be better? It seems like I am after a fairly simple process here.... but the solution I am working towards seems not so elegant.

Your thoughts appreciated greatly.

Ernesto

Why is it necessary to process the information after and have the credit card details emailed to you?

That is the difficult part. Sending credit card information in email is never recommended. You say you would delete it immediately, but when it comes as email it already passed through dozens of computers on the way to yours thay may not be so kind.

Ecart can do everything except safely encrypt and unencrypt your data. If I were you I would:

1) Forget authorize.net unless you can process the CC real time
2) Figure out a secure way to encrypt and unencrypt the ccnumber for storage
3) Store the encrypted CC information in your database and don't send it in an email
4) Send an email that lists the cart contents and links back to an admin section of your site, have that section login protected with securityAssist.
5) on the back end enencrypt and display the CC number to the logged in user.
6) manually process the card from that page and delete the encrypted card information so that even that isn't stored long term.

PHP has several libraries that will help with encryption. Support is correct they don't come with eCart and are not directly supported. However it sounds like you need to go down a route that isn't directly supported and I wouldn't suggest CIM in your case.

We are just not setup right now to control inventory and provide shipping quotes since our database does not include item weights. Maybe, it will be easier to just become that way.

For shipping quotations, I only need the item's weight, correct? Not dimensions etc.?

I suppose we could take the money first and ask questions later.

I think that most of the steps you give me below may be outside of my skillset. I am very much using the wizard capability of e-cart.

If you don't have a skillset in php or eCommerce in general then I'd stick to what the eCart does by default, and that is real time payment processing. You only need weight unless you are shipping oversized items and then you need to specify them as such.

You could take the money first and refund later. You can take phone numbers and call for payment information and just use the cart as an online quote and contact request.

Hi there - just in case someone at your company is paying attention - I also need to do this - and I'm gonna guess there are quite a few more people who wish to use eCart in this manner.

Ray - Could you please provide more specifics as to how to implement these steps you've outlined above using eCart and DataAssist and Security Assist and Universal email together?

I've been working on this for quite some time and it's extremely frustrating. I'm specifically needing to know what database fields to set up etc... The one problem is that I'm trying to adapt and existing customer database. Where the customers already have unique IDs. So I'd like to use these existing customer IDs as the Visitor Keys, rather than having them generated by eCart's system.

Also I am adapting an existing Log-in System from the Adobe Developer's Toolkit where the same customer ID is used to call up their log-in info. These passwords are encrypted. I'm really hoping that I can adapt the existing log-in system to Security Assist.

Also - I'd like to require that the users are logged in before placing an order as this entire store is using SSL and in a password protected area.

Just trying to get your various plug-ins to work together in a seamless system has been extremely challenging.

As above - I also need the credit card info to write to an encrypted database rather than using a payment gateway. Then it would be retrieved by an admin as you've outlined.

I still have never received an answer as to whether or not Universal email can be used more than once on multiple forms throughout one website. (There would be different parameters required for each form.)

But it does all start and end with eCart as this is all tied into managing and administration on an online store.

Thanks!

Universal email can be used as many times as you want on the same page and throughout the site.

Managing and administering an online store is more about DataAssist than eCart. Ecart is for user shopping experience and payment processing.

I can't write a customized tutorial for you, but post back with specific questions and we can do our best to answer them and guide you through the process one step at a time.