Web Sales is an ongoing development effort to provide a complete web-based solution for initiating the full scope of front office transactions including billing orders, tendered retail sales and direct invoice transactions. This supports convergent selling of wireless and wireline services and products on the same transaction. The start/assembly/finalize phases are basically the same regardless to the type of transaction with some unique steps as needed to complete the respective transaction types.
Leveraging this functionality, you can use a transaction in the Orders web module to either sell, order, or direct invoice any post-paid billing and/or retail catalog item for any service or account. If the starting block and/or direct invoicing solutions are not currently enabled in your system, functionality described in this article will not be visible in your system.
If you need to use retail functionality in Web Sales:
The full range of web sales functionality that supports selling billing and retail products in the same transaction, and other POS location/register applications is covered in a comprehensive web sales knowledge article. This includes:
Direct invoicing.
Tendering retail transactions via the Paymentus payment vendor.
Returns and voids.
Support for service and installment agreements.
If you want to benefit from advantages Web Sales provides for billing (non-retail) orders:
Continue in this article. It covers how to use starting blocks for billing only orders. This includes making use of IDI-provided starting blocks that you can use as is or modify for a wide range of transactions including disconnects/reconnects, suspend/restore, new service/feature and more.
This article lets you start simple, and learn the basics. If you’re interested in learningabout the broader range of functions and benefits that web sales offers, you can consult the comprehensive article referenced above, or consult more targeted articles for:
Release History
Functional milestones will be deployed over a series of IDI solution software releases where each subsequent release builds on the prior one.
Below is a list of deployments that concern providers that don’t require retail functionality:
Version 24.7
This release provides an enhanced user experience for performing credit checks on web transactions. Also, not strictly related to web sales, this deliverable provides:
The ability to manually add deposits to a transaction.
the ability to navigate directly to Customer Care from the Orders Enhanced Customer Search to create a new customer and then return to the order seamlessly.
Version 23.10
This release provides the following enhancements:
Behavior options to order pages when not applicable for the current transaction (for instance, a disconnect customer or hotline service). You can choose to skip one or both of the following pages when the starting block’s and/or Order Field configuration provide the required information:
Skip New Transaction (Basic Information) page and begin on the Details (Assembly) page.
Skip New Transaction and the Details pages and begin on the summary (either the Review Cart or the Summary page).
Display New Transaction page and then skip Details page. After saving the basic information, the transaction resumes at either the Review Cart or Summary page.
Additional starting block options for certain starting actions – Additional options are presented for starting block configuration when applicable for the selected starting action. This lets you prepopulate the required information on the order to streamline the process and potentially avoid errors. The options depend on the selected starting action.
Version 22.12
This release provides an enhanced web transaction experience and new starting block functionality. You can initiate an order, sale, or direct invoice transaction that requires a retail location and register. You can do this by either:
Configuring the specific register and location on the starting block. In this case, the selected starting block sets the register and location for the transaction without any user involvement.
Applying the location and register from the user’s specified My Location as set via the Orders web module application tray.
Applying a register and its location to a transaction lets you:
Have a receipt or direct invoice generated for the transaction.
Email the generated receipt or direct invoice to the customer as a message or notification using IDI’s Communication web module.
Version 22.4
This release provides an enhanced direct invoicing solution aligned with Web Sales and starting block functionality. With this release, you’ll use a starting block to begin the direct invoice transaction that is tailored for that user experience by page labeling, icon, and button names. Prior direct invoice functionality required you to begin a direct invoice transaction as either an order or cart/sale where it would be converted to a direct invoicing experience by adding a direct invoicing item. With this release, direct invoice transactions are initiated via a direct invoice starting block, so this conversion is no longer needed. The following enhancements are also provided with IDI solution version 22.4:
The Orders and Customer Care web modules facilitate searching, tracking and managing direct invoice transactions.
Existing direct invoicing orders or sales are converted to direct invoice transactions such that you can use the new search/history functionality in Orders and Customer Care to manage them.
First Deliverable – Version 22.1
This release introduces configurable Starting Blocks. Starting block configuration and maintenance is done in the Product Catalog web module. Leveraging starting block configuration, you can initiate either a front office sale transaction (remote customer presence) or back office order transaction (no customer presence) in the Customer Care and/or Orders web modules. The type of transaction you initiate drives order or sale-oriented functionality from assembly to completion.
When you configure a starting block, you can also define parameters to streamline transaction assembly by setting default values and/or limiting options. For sale transactions, you can assemble, review, and finalize a remote sale containing billing items that can be assigned to either an account or to any type of service.
In addition, this milestone enhances Orders web pages to support desktop- and mobile-friendly presentation/usability.
Terminology
Order | Typically, providers that don’t require retail functionality will use starting blocks set up to start order transactions. Orders follow the assembly and billing order phases of the traditional (pre-web sale) orders. |
Cart/Sale | A cart is the assembly phase when you select a starting block configured as a sale transaction. This is a transient phase where items are selected for eventual checkout (purchase). Carts also provide a review cart page where you can review the result (change in customer’s invoice) based on the cart content. Carts do not persist after being finalized. At this point the cart transitions to a sale. A sale is the result of a finalized cart. The cart/sale scenario may be of interest to providers that handle over-the-phone orders and want to take advantage of the opportunity this flow provides to review the transaction with the customer prior to submitting. |
Transaction | This term is used in this article as a generic reference to carts, sales, and orders. |