setting up automatic email notifications to subcontractors

[DebraWoods]

Version 1.3.8a

I have inherited administration of our zencart store since the death of my partner in Dec. I discovered right away that recent orders with products of subcontractors had not been filled - and then discovered that none of our subcontractors had been receiving their email notifications for several months. Apparently my partner had not even been aware of this problem. I can't figure out where to even indicate that I want subcontractors to receive emails so they can fill orders - it used to work, and I have no idea why it stopped working. So for all these months I have had to manually copy and paste the invoice into an email message to each subcontractor. It is a big pain.

Since the problem cropped up months before I took over and had all administrator emails forward to me, I don't think that is the issue.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

[schoolboy]

Hello Debra

Firstly, my condolences on the death of your partner.

The function you describe will have been custom-built, because there is no standard feature in zencart that can separate out different suppliers/contractors based on the product data.

If this function was built by your late partner, then there's no alternative but to seek professional help. An experienced zenner may be able to "locate" the function's code, but will probably charge a fee for his/her time.

There are many php-knowledgeable people on this forum (I am NOT one of them), but you may like to post a "help wanted" request in the "Commercial Help" forum.

[DebraWoods]

Thanks! I did hunt around and I see that there is a send/resend POs function that has each and every item ordered listed with the appropriate vendor indicated, but apparently you have to manually check that you want to send a PO to them. I really am not sure how they were generated before, but I know our vendors got notification when their products were ordered so they could fill the order. Maybe my partner went in to this function and checked all the boxes he wanted sent out. It's hard to believe there isn't a built in function, or that there isn't a module already developed for this.

In any given order, there may be 3 or 4 items from one vendor, but this function would send a separate PO for each one. This is bothersome, I would be afraid they might send separate packages to the same person from the same order, greatly increasing shipping costs.

Debra

[schoolboy]

Yes... I imagine it was done manually - probably by your late partner in the wee small hours when you were not aware of this activity!

If nothing has been changed in your setup, and you have found this function, then it looks like it is indeed a purely manual system.

There is an outside chance that it could have been driven by a cron-job (a timing device on the server that triggers a script to activate) but you may need to get a guru to have a look for you.