Apsona ShopAdmin - a free tool for import/mass update/reporting

To explain a bit more. Although each order is issued with an invoice, business customers still want to see a statement - for example, outstanding unpaid invoices. I would like to be able to add a "PO" reference (for purchase order) to the report so that when the report is generated, it has a list of outstanding invoices listed. This can then be sent as a chaser for non-payment. Hope that makes sense.

Does this work for attributes or is it just hype?

I have tried to import attributes several different way and I always get the same error message.

does not match any existing value in the product table

I get this error when using Product Name, Product ID, Product Model as Product

anyone know why?

raybar81:

Does this work for attributes or is it just hype?

I have tried to import attributes several different way and I always get the same error message.

does not match any existing value in the product table

I get this error when using Product Name, Product ID, Product Model as Product

anyone know why?
For each row in the product attributes CSV, ShopAdmin looks for a matching product record, i.e., one that has the same product id or the same product name as the value in the "product" cell. It issues this error if it is unable to find a matching record. Please bear in mind that the matching is exact: the product name (if that's what you have specified) must match exactly, including case and embedded spaces.

Hope this helps.

apsona:

ShopAdmin looks for a matching product record, i.e., one that has the same product id or the same product name as the value in the "product" cell.

I guess I just do not get it, I created a product, gave it option, option value & option price.

Then I tried to import several products using PRODUCT ID

products have a unique ID, I must be doing something wrong. Do I have to assign attributes to products in ZC first. I looked for tutorials and cam up with this but that did not explain much as I did this.

I have allot of products, the only attributes are extra protection, I guess I will look to other solutions.

OK

this is what I have:

Option Name: EP
Option Values:
1year, 2year, 3year, 4year, 5year

Option Prices:
Vary based on product

above is set in ZC - I have added attributes to product, can see here.

I export that in apsona fine

when I try to upload using same cvs layout as the export it wont accept the new products.

Please bear in mind that the matching is exact

If I am using PRODUCT ID, why wouldn't it match that?

raybar81:

I guess I just do not get it, I created a product, gave it option, option value & option price.

Then I tried to import several products using PRODUCT ID

products have a unique ID, I must be doing something wrong. Do I have to assign attributes to products in ZC first. I looked for tutorials and cam up with this but that did not explain much as I did this.

I have allot of products, the only attributes are extra protection, I guess I will look to other solutions.

Two questions:

• Did you watch the video on that page? Was it of any use?
• Any particular reason you can't use the product name instead of the product id for matching? I would think it would be easier to match names, provided of course that your products all have distinct names.

Regards.

apsona:

Did you watch the video on that page? Was it of any use?

I did watch video, i checked for mis-spelled words, ect. but as I stated I copied right from export. Only difference is Option Value Price

apsona:

Any particular reason you can't use the product name instead of the product id for matching? I would think it would be easier to match names, provided of course that your products all have distinct names.

Have you seen my product names, (example: Sony Cyber-Shot DSCTX1/L Digital Camera - 10.2 Megapixel, 4x Optical Zoom, 3.0" LCD, 11MB Internal Memory, USB Slot, HD Movie, Blue ) Why I choose PRODUCT ID

raybar81 - you are correct, there is an issue with updates by product id. Now looking back at the logs, I see that we used to support lookups by ID as well as by name, but that was leading to some rather hard-to-find errors because people were using them interchangeably. Obviously we did not fully resolve this issue.

We'll put this on our list of upcoming bug fixes, but in the meantime, I'm afraid it can only do lookups by product name. We'll definitely post a note here when this bug is fixed.

Apologies for the miscommunication and the inconvenience.

Regards.

Hi again,

Any chance of getting an extra field added to the "Orders" table in ShopAdmin, to show "Purchase Order ". I have an additional field in the orders table of the database "po_number" (string data type). I do not need auto detect of fields. This would enable me to run a lot of reports. The PO is a customer supplied reference. Many thanks.

Javier

Hello again

Apsona is working great, but now we found a litle problem we hope you have a solution to, and its this: when we export new pending orders, we are not able to import them into our accounts system because we do not know what the customer has in its order, is it possible to get the products lines as well as the other info? the model name and net price is all we need as well as what you allready have in there.

Is this possible?

Regards

harlyman:

now we found a litle problem we hope you have a solution to, and its this: when we export new pending orders, we are not able to import them into our accounts system because we do not know what the customer has in its order, is it possible to get the products lines as well as the other info? the model name and net price is all we need as well as what you allready have in there.

Is this possible?
Perhaps I don't fully understand your question, but it seems to me that you can create an ordered-products report with all the fields and filters you need, run it and export it. You can filter the report by the "Pending" flag on orders, and you can add fields into it from the order record, the ordered products record and the products record.

Does that help?

Regards.

I have been trying, through this program, to access the products_discount_quantity file so I can export, to make changes and import back, without any luck.
With my limited knowledge, can't seem to find the file in Apsona.
Help please?
Rufusclc

Another quickie question:
I would like to export from the products file the products_discount_type filed together with the product ID.
I get the product ID but I don't see the other field noted in the export options box.
help
Rufusclc

rufusclc:

I have been trying, through this program, to access the products_discount_quantity file so I can export, to make changes and import back, without any luck.
With my limited knowledge, can't seem to find the file in Apsona.
Help please?
Rufusclc

This is a hard one. We tried to incorporate support for discounts, but it doesn't seem very easy. The database table for product discounts has no primary key, and the Zen Cart code seems to use the <discount_id, products_id> combination as the key to the table. And we don't yet support such compound keys. It would have bee SO much easier if the table had a straight auto-increment primary key.

rufusclc:

Another quickie question:
I would like to export from the products file the products_discount_type filed together with the product ID.
I get the product ID but I don't see the other field noted in the export options box.
help
Rufusclc

The Discount type is part of the product record - below is an image to show it. (Assuming that's indeed what you're alluding to?)

Hope this helps.

Thanx Apsona for the answer to part 2 of my questions,
any chance of in the near future doing something with the products_discount_quantity file?
RufusCLC

I'm not sure what the developers of Apsona are getting out of this?? They don't charge for the service and the scripts are hosted on their server, so this is costing them money in development time/customer service (in this forum and elsewhere) and server costs. You have to create an account to even use this service, what's that about?? There is nowhere to make a donation to the project as far as I can see, so again what does Apsona have to gain from this?? You'll notice on their site there is no mission statement, no about us, no telling you the reason why they are doing what they are doing.....

Am I just being paranoid? Why isn't this released as a product that is entirely hosted on the client server?? Why do I have to use remote scripts to use this product? Why do I have to create an account? I just can't get my head around doing all of this for free.... am I missing something? There isn't even a section on their site to hire them for commercial applications/modifications/etc, so how are they making any money from this? It can't be all out of love....

It looks kind of cool and I'd like to try it out but I have serious misgivings since the scripts doing the real work are on a remote server so I have no way to DEFINITIVELY know that all scripts are 100% benign since I can't look at the code that is interfacing with my cart's admin section!! We are pretty large and have a lot of sensitive data that could possibly be "harvested" for other uses.

I keep coming back to these questions every time I see this thread. And this statement from the Apsona's site FAQ:
"The ShopAdmin system works entirely within the context of your shopping cart application. It does not cause any security risks." is pretty vague and doesn't inspire confidence since it gives no specific details about how it interacts with your cart, and of course, since the scripts are hosted remotely there is NO WAY TO VERIFY THIS!! Plus, it DOESN'T work "entirely within the context of your shopping cart application" since it's using scripts that are remotely hosted, sorry to sound like a broken record and all that....but

Why not release this to be hosted on the individual's server with open source - non-obfuscated- code?? What do you, Apsona, have to gain by hosting this on your servers and forcing people to create an account before they can use it?? What am I missing here? Am I alone in thinking these things?? Does anyone agree with this? Or am I just being paranoid about letting an unvetted script full access to my data?

lankeeyankee:

I'm not sure what the developers of Apsona are getting out of this?? They don't charge for the service and the scripts are hosted on their server, so this is costing them money in development time/customer service (in this forum and elsewhere) and server costs. You have to create an account to even use this service, what's that about?? There is nowhere to make a donation to the project as far as I can see, so again what does Apsona have to gain from this?? You'll notice on their site there is no mission statement, no about us, no telling you the reason why they are doing what they are doing.....

Am I just being paranoid? Why isn't this released as a product that is entirely hosted on the client server?? Why do I have to use remote scripts to use this product? Why do I have to create an account? I just can't get my head around doing all of this for free.... am I missing something? There isn't even a section on their site to hire them for commercial applications/modifications/etc, so how are they making any money from this? It can't be all out of love....

It looks kind of cool and I'd like to try it out but I have serious misgivings since the scripts doing the real work are on a remote server so I have no way to DEFINITIVELY know that all scripts are 100% benign since I can't look at the code that is interfacing with my cart's admin section!! We are pretty large and have a lot of sensitive data that could possibly be "harvested" for other uses.

I keep coming back to these questions every time I see this thread. And this statement from the Apsona's site FAQ:
"The ShopAdmin system works entirely within the context of your shopping cart application. It does not cause any security risks." is pretty vague and doesn't inspire confidence since it gives no specific details about how it interacts with your cart, and of course, since the scripts are hosted remotely there is NO WAY TO VERIFY THIS!! Plus, it DOESN'T work "entirely within the context of your shopping cart application" since it's using scripts that are remotely hosted, sorry to sound like a broken record and all that....but

Why not release this to be hosted on the individual's server with open source - non-obfuscated- code?? What do you, Apsona, have to gain by hosting this on your servers and forcing people to create an account before they can use it?? What am I missing here? Am I alone in thinking these things?? Does anyone agree with this? Or am I just being paranoid about letting an unvetted script full access to my data?

I love the mod, but yes more info about the company and their intentions would be nice.

I think Apsona is keeping control of it so that it will rise in value. The more shops it services the more valuable it becomes.
If that is the case then one day Apsona will be up for sale, or it may decide to charge for the service.

Hi Guys:
another question -
is there a way I can import via CSV or Excel to several dozen products' several attributes at one time? The site seems to indicate importing 1 products' attributes at a time!
Rufusclc

rufusclc:

Hi Guys:
another question -
is there a way I can import via CSV or Excel to several dozen products' several attributes at one time? The site seems to indicate importing 1 products' attributes at a time!
Rufusclc

That's not the intent of the example on the website. There is no reason why you can't import the attributes of a thousand products in one batch. Why do you ask - are you seeing any anomalies? If so, please let us know.

Thanks.

kelvyn:

Is anyone else finding that on a store with > 1000 products and 5 attributes per product, that when going into the "Products" section of Apsona, it hangs the DB when filtering by product name?
Totally maxes my memory out.

Does this happen when you put in a name into the "search" box at the top, and click search? Or when you choose just "product name" in the "More options" area? Or both? (I would guess it happens in the first case, because by default it looks for matches in three fields, name, description and model - you can see the check boxes underneath the "Search" button).