Contracts
A Contract helps defining the terms & conditions for the online customer. It becomes very crucial in setting up the different shopping experiences on the same online store for different buyer accounts in B2B setup.
These T&Cs modify the online customer's shopping experience including-
Products entitlement,
Price entitlement,
Shipping and payment options,
Permissible order limit.
1. A contract can either be assigned to Member group or Organization.
2. Buyer can have multiple contracts setup and active during the shopping session and he can even avail distinct contracts for distinct orderitems of the same order(OrderItems.TRADING_ID & TERMCOND_ID) provided that the contracts are compatible against each other(OrderItemBaseCmdIml-> validateTradingPaymentMethods()).
3. ContractSetInSessionCmdImpl command helps to setup a particular contract during shopping (out of various active contracts created for the buyer organization) which is ultimately saved inside EntitlementContext context of Ctxdata table
Types
1) The default contract
A store has a default contract which allows guest and unregistered shoppers to shop in the store
Storedef -> Store default contract & default shipmode (Buyer default contract through Contract.Usage column 0 value)
2) A base contract
Can be shared by many contracts
3) A customer contract.
A customer contract is one that has a Buyer participant
Data Model
STOREENT(STOREENT_ID) -> ORGENTITY(STORE OWNER) -> ACCOUNT(ACCOUNT_ID) -> TRADING(TRADING_ID) -> PARTICIPNT
Store Contracts (STORECNTR)
Store -> Contracts
Business Accounts (ACCOUNT)
Store -> Accounts
Participants (PARTICIPNT)
Buyer organization -> Contracts
Terms and Conditions (TERMCOND)
Contract -> Terms & Conditions
Storcntr- Contains all contracts deployed in the store
Contract- Base table for contract
Account- Represents a business account between a Buyer organization and a Seller organization
Participnt- Contains the Buyer organization and Contract relationship
Trading- Contract is a specific type of trading
TermCond- Contains all the terms and conditions associated with the contract such as Price rule, Catalog filter, Price list, Payment and Shipping method, Approval required etc.
Catfilter- Base table for catalog filter
Pricerule- Base table for the price rule
Expression- Contains the solr runtime expression for the contract.
Tradeposcn- Contains the price list details
Creating Contracts
1. Simplest way is to create a contract using accelerator,
2. We can also create a contract by extracting/loading the XML,
3. Creating a new version of a contract,
4. Creating a contract through custom dataload utility.
TermCond Mapping
TermCond table contains a number of generic columns used to store information about terms and condition with different terms and conditions use the columns differently. Each mapping shows how the information in the XML elements of the terms and conditions map to columns in the TERMCOND table-
PriceRuleTC
CatalogFilterTC
PriceTCMasterCatalogWithFiltering
ShippingTCShipToAddress
ShippingTCShippingMode
ShippingTCShippingCharge
OrderApprovalTC
RightToBuyTCByAmount
ObligationToBuyTCByAmount
Price List, Price Rule & Contracts
A very prominent usage of contracts in B2B system is to utilize it to setup the multiple pricing tier for the buyer aligned under different buyer organizations.
Price list can be created and assigned to the contract through price rule allowing the different set of buyers to avail different prices for the same products.
For a price rule to display offer prices on store pages, you must assign the price rule to a contract.
BUYER -> BUYER ORG -> CONTRACT <- PRICE RULE <- PRICE LIST <- PRICE
After you assign the price rule to a contract, customers shopping under the contract see and are entitled to prices from the price rule. Remember a price rule is one of many terms and conditions that a contract can have.
Tables-
PRICERULE: Each row of this table represents a price rule in a store. Price rule is a business rule which defines how to get a dynamic price under different business conditions
PRELEMENT: Each row of this table represents a price rule element.
PRELETEMPLATE: Each row of this table represents a price rule element template
PRELEMENTATTR: Each row of this table represents a price rule attribute in name value pair. P.S: This table maps the price rule of termcond table with actual price list in tradposcn table.
Data Flow-
CONTRACT -> TERMCOND(STRINGFIELD1) -> PRICERULE -> PRELEMENT -> PRELEMENTATTR -> TRADEPOSCN -> OFFER -> OFFERPRICE -> ACTUAL PRICE
CMC provides support for-
Price Rule,
Price List
UseCase: Applying Multiple Tier Pricing for different buyer orgs
Export an existing price list and then upload it again after modification as a new price list through CMC.
Now create a price rule to make use of this new price list
This price rule can be applied to a contract through accelerator
User logging into the buyer organization can avail the special pricing through the contract.
Catalog Filter and Contracts
Another prominent usage of contracts in B2B system is to utilize it to setup the multiple catalog tier for the buyer aligned under different buyer organizations.
Catalog filter can be created and assigned to the contract which allows the buyer to shop for the filtered items in the e-site.
BUYER -> BUYER ORG -> CONTRACT <- CATALOG FILTER <- CATALOG ENTITY
Data Flow-
CONTRACT -> TERMCOND(BIGINTFIELD1) -> CATFILTER -> CFCATGROUP -> CFCONDGRP -> CFCOND -> CFCONDVAL
We can use catalog filters for the product entitlement, that is, to entitle customers to a subset of the catalog
Note: We can create catalog filters to filter objects for only our master catalog. We cannot create catalog filters for a sales catalog. So if we apply the catalog filer to the master catalog it eventually retrieves the entitled products from the sales catalog.
Catalog Filter Tables-
CATFILTER - Each row of this table represents a catalog filter.
CATFLTDSC- Each row of this table represents a language specific description of a certain catalog filter.
CFCATGROUP- Each row represents a selected catalog group in the catalog tree.
CFCONDGRP- Each row of this table represents a condition group in a certain catalog filter
CFCOND- Each row of this table represents a condition in a certain condition group
CFCONDVAL- Each row of this table represents the association between a condition and an attribute value.
PRODUCTSET- This table holds the definition of a product set. The actual representation of the product set is held in the PRSETCEREL table.
CFPRODUCTSET- Each row represents the relationship between a catalog filter and a product set used for filtering.
Unit Testing Contracts Filtering
Expression table entry helps building the solr expression for debugging for catalog filter or productset-
e.g.
http://server/solr/MC_10001_CatalogEntry_en_US/select?q=*:*&fq=catalog_id:"11111"&fq=storeent_id:("22222" "33333")&fq=published:1&fq=((( +*:* -*:*) productset_id:("55555555") ) productset_id:("44444444") )
A Contract helps defining the terms & conditions for the online customer. It becomes very crucial in setting up the different shopping experiences on the same online store for different buyer accounts in B2B setup.
These T&Cs modify the online customer's shopping experience including-
Products entitlement,
Price entitlement,
Shipping and payment options,
Permissible order limit.
1. A contract can either be assigned to Member group or Organization.
2. Buyer can have multiple contracts setup and active during the shopping session and he can even avail distinct contracts for distinct orderitems of the same order(OrderItems.TRADING_ID & TERMCOND_ID) provided that the contracts are compatible against each other(OrderItemBaseCmdIml-> validateTradingPaymentMethods()).
3. ContractSetInSessionCmdImpl command helps to setup a particular contract during shopping (out of various active contracts created for the buyer organization) which is ultimately saved inside EntitlementContext context of Ctxdata table
Types
1) The default contract
A store has a default contract which allows guest and unregistered shoppers to shop in the store
Storedef -> Store default contract & default shipmode (Buyer default contract through Contract.Usage column 0 value)
2) A base contract
Can be shared by many contracts
3) A customer contract.
A customer contract is one that has a Buyer participant
Data Model
STOREENT(STOREENT_ID) -> ORGENTITY(STORE OWNER) -> ACCOUNT(ACCOUNT_ID) -> TRADING(TRADING_ID) -> PARTICIPNT
Store Contracts (STORECNTR)
Store -> Contracts
Business Accounts (ACCOUNT)
Store -> Accounts
Participants (PARTICIPNT)
Buyer organization -> Contracts
Terms and Conditions (TERMCOND)
Contract -> Terms & Conditions
Storcntr- Contains all contracts deployed in the store
Contract- Base table for contract
Account- Represents a business account between a Buyer organization and a Seller organization
Participnt- Contains the Buyer organization and Contract relationship
Trading- Contract is a specific type of trading
TermCond- Contains all the terms and conditions associated with the contract such as Price rule, Catalog filter, Price list, Payment and Shipping method, Approval required etc.
Catfilter- Base table for catalog filter
Pricerule- Base table for the price rule
Expression- Contains the solr runtime expression for the contract.
Tradeposcn- Contains the price list details
Creating Contracts
1. Simplest way is to create a contract using accelerator,
2. We can also create a contract by extracting/loading the XML,
3. Creating a new version of a contract,
4. Creating a contract through custom dataload utility.
TermCond Mapping
TermCond table contains a number of generic columns used to store information about terms and condition with different terms and conditions use the columns differently. Each mapping shows how the information in the XML elements of the terms and conditions map to columns in the TERMCOND table-
PriceRuleTC
CatalogFilterTC
PriceTCMasterCatalogWithFiltering
ShippingTCShipToAddress
ShippingTCShippingMode
ShippingTCShippingCharge
OrderApprovalTC
RightToBuyTCByAmount
ObligationToBuyTCByAmount
Price List, Price Rule & Contracts
A very prominent usage of contracts in B2B system is to utilize it to setup the multiple pricing tier for the buyer aligned under different buyer organizations.
Price list can be created and assigned to the contract through price rule allowing the different set of buyers to avail different prices for the same products.
For a price rule to display offer prices on store pages, you must assign the price rule to a contract.
BUYER -> BUYER ORG -> CONTRACT <- PRICE RULE <- PRICE LIST <- PRICE
After you assign the price rule to a contract, customers shopping under the contract see and are entitled to prices from the price rule. Remember a price rule is one of many terms and conditions that a contract can have.
Tables-
PRICERULE: Each row of this table represents a price rule in a store. Price rule is a business rule which defines how to get a dynamic price under different business conditions
PRELEMENT: Each row of this table represents a price rule element.
PRELETEMPLATE: Each row of this table represents a price rule element template
PRELEMENTATTR: Each row of this table represents a price rule attribute in name value pair. P.S: This table maps the price rule of termcond table with actual price list in tradposcn table.
Data Flow-
CONTRACT -> TERMCOND(STRINGFIELD1) -> PRICERULE -> PRELEMENT -> PRELEMENTATTR -> TRADEPOSCN -> OFFER -> OFFERPRICE -> ACTUAL PRICE
CMC provides support for-
Price Rule,
Price List
UseCase: Applying Multiple Tier Pricing for different buyer orgs
Export an existing price list and then upload it again after modification as a new price list through CMC.
Now create a price rule to make use of this new price list
This price rule can be applied to a contract through accelerator
User logging into the buyer organization can avail the special pricing through the contract.
Catalog Filter and Contracts
Another prominent usage of contracts in B2B system is to utilize it to setup the multiple catalog tier for the buyer aligned under different buyer organizations.
Catalog filter can be created and assigned to the contract which allows the buyer to shop for the filtered items in the e-site.
BUYER -> BUYER ORG -> CONTRACT <- CATALOG FILTER <- CATALOG ENTITY
Data Flow-
CONTRACT -> TERMCOND(BIGINTFIELD1) -> CATFILTER -> CFCATGROUP -> CFCONDGRP -> CFCOND -> CFCONDVAL
We can use catalog filters for the product entitlement, that is, to entitle customers to a subset of the catalog
Note: We can create catalog filters to filter objects for only our master catalog. We cannot create catalog filters for a sales catalog. So if we apply the catalog filer to the master catalog it eventually retrieves the entitled products from the sales catalog.
Catalog Filter Tables-
CATFILTER - Each row of this table represents a catalog filter.
CATFLTDSC- Each row of this table represents a language specific description of a certain catalog filter.
CFCATGROUP- Each row represents a selected catalog group in the catalog tree.
CFCONDGRP- Each row of this table represents a condition group in a certain catalog filter
CFCOND- Each row of this table represents a condition in a certain condition group
CFCONDVAL- Each row of this table represents the association between a condition and an attribute value.
PRODUCTSET- This table holds the definition of a product set. The actual representation of the product set is held in the PRSETCEREL table.
CFPRODUCTSET- Each row represents the relationship between a catalog filter and a product set used for filtering.
Unit Testing Contracts Filtering
Expression table entry helps building the solr expression for debugging for catalog filter or productset-
e.g.
http://server/solr/MC_10001_CatalogEntry_en_US/select?q=*:*&fq=catalog_id:"11111"&fq=storeent_id:("22222" "33333")&fq=published:1&fq=((( +*:* -*:*) productset_id:("55555555") ) productset_id:("44444444") )
