284573 Zen Cart Custom Scripting

Zen Cart Modification Project There are 3 parts to this project. The first is creating an online order form for the TCM Formulas portion of our website, that will allow acupuncturists to order custom herbal formulations for their patients online. The second part of the project is the modification of the Zen Cart navigation system of the entire web store. The third is part is implementing a drop ship plugin to manage our various suppliers. TCM Formulas – This portion of our website requires the creation of a form/table which customers can use to create custom herbal formulas. The herbal formulas can vary between 2-25 ingredients. The amount of each individual ingredient can vary between 1 – 100 grams. The ingredients will be stored in a database which can be created from an Excel file that we'll provide. Once the form is completed to the customer's satisfaction, it should total up the cost of the herbs, and become an item for checkout on Zen Cart. Emails of with the details of the herbal formula should be sent to the customer (practitioner), the store owner, and the company that fills the prescriptions. It would also be great to add a separate email to the patient if they are receiving shipment, at the point shipment is made. The form details or prescription should be stored in the Zen Cart database so that the practitioner can reorder without having to fill the form out again from scratch. Also, the practitioner should be able to modify a previous prescription and all versions are stored (with patient info and date). Additionally, practitioners will only be able to see their own records and not those of anyone else. We would like an auto fill feature on the form, so that likely matches of herbal ingredients are suggested as the customer types them in the form. We will have both the Latin and Chinese name (written in Standard English Alphabet) of the herbs in the database. The auto-complete feature should suggest from either of these fields. Also Chinese characters? (Is this practical to implement?) There are two different ways that people construct the type of powdered herbal formulas that we sell. We'd like to offer our customers both options. The first way is to simply type the weight of each powdered ingredient required. This way should be straight forward for cart design. The other way that formulas are made is based on equivalent weights of raw herbs. This is how formulas are typically written in books. These weights need to be converted by simple math, based on the daily dose and number of days of prescribed use to the powdered herb weights. The conversion is necessary because powdered herbs are more concentrated than their raw counterparts. Each herb may have a different conversion ratio, and this will be part of the Excel file. As this process could be confusing to the first time user, especially if they are not good with computers, we want to put “more information” icons at every step of the processes. Clicking on one of these icons will bring up a window that explains that specific step. Eventually, they will also include a link to a video showing the creation of a formula from start to finish. We will create the video; we just need the ability to add it later. Navigation System Modification – The purpose of this part of the project is two-fold. Firstly we want to streamline the shopping cart so that there are as few steps as possible between finding a product and completing purchase. The second part is increasing navigation throughout the cart so that it's easier to discover and add products to the cart. The increased navigation would consist of a box in the shopping cart that would have icons for each of the three main sections of our store. Clicking on the icons would take the user to the main store (not home) page for that section. Below the icons would be a collapsible site tree of the above section with links. This tree could be navigated without leaving the page. The other navigation item that we would like to add throughout the cart is an auto-complete search box for all the items in our store. Drop ship – The store will be supplied by, at this time, 3 different companies shipping their own inventory. An email must be generated to the appropriate parties showing only their items so that they may fill their particular part of an order. The store owner would receive the copy of the entire purchase order. We will likely need to add additional suppliers in the future. Here is a link for the plugin we're thinking of using for this functionality. [login to view URL];amp;cPath=1&products_id=3