Manage Options

Under Manage Options I run into this problem: Changing the price for a particular Variation and then saving that updated Product Variation does not, in fact, SAVE the price changes I've made. Likewise, on the same Product Variations, selecting or deselecting the "For Sale" flag DOES NOT always "save" its status when I select the "SAVE VARIATIONS" to update my database. I have lost days deleting a product and all it's options to start over in the event Cafe Commerce software has corrupted my database. I have even reduced the number of Groups/Options a product can have with no success, despite your claims that we can have UNLIMITED options per product, to test if there is in fact a limitation. But I have not tested this extensively to prove one way or the other if there are in fact limitations. Please, help.

Additionally in this process of deleting Groups/Options, I have had your software auto populate... (that's right, AUTO POPULATE) my "products" with literally hundreds and hundreds of products. I presume your software somehow converted my SINGLE product, which may have hundred of variations under MANAGE OPTION/Groups, into individually separate products. And since your web interface software only allows deleting ONE product at a time (absolutely ridiculous, BTW) with a confirmation screen slowing the process down even further... THAT has cost me days of just deleting as well. I even had to create a keyboard script to delete these individual product files in my absence by running the script overnight.

The overall impression these apparent bugs in YOUR software create is that Cafe Commerce is NOT ready for prime time. Of course, my hope is that I am completely wrong and you will now tell me about the simple fix - on my end or yours.
Thank You.

Well, I found a way (on my own) to make changes to my product variations "stick." I am on a Mac/ OSX 10.6.8... but my solution should work for any platform so long as you can actually monitor your network activity. Personally I used the software called, Little Snitch, to watch what happened when I clicked on CafeCommerce's green "SAVE VARIATIONS" button.
THAT is when I noticed that even though CafeCommerce appeared to be done with it's "save" (because their web interface gave me back control and their green "SAVE VARIATIONS" button went to black and then back to green again upon moving the cursor) according to the network activity, my computer was still very busy UPLOADING to CafeCommerce. I counted off (in my head) 15-20 seconds of continued network activity with my account on CafeCommerce after I clicked their "SAVE VARIATIONS" button. I am on a relatively fast cable modem connection - so absolutely no issues with my connection.

In any event, I found that if I did absolutely nothing (ie. did not continue to work on my e-store) until AFTER the Little Snitch software told me my computer was no longer communicating with CafeCommerce, THEN any change I made to pricing or otherwise was actually saved.

Seems to me the CafeCommerce web interface should NOT be returning control back to me until AFTER all my variations have indeed been saved. This is a major flaw in this interface for anyone like me who sell products that allow lots and lots of variations.

My products for example have 7 "Groups" and each group offers 2 - 3 options.

This also may or may not explain CafeCommerce's bug of auto-populating my products lists with those hundreds of Variations as individual Products when all I was doing was deleting the Groups. I suspect, there too, if I had NOT repeatedly, quickly, deleted whole Groups as soon as CafeCommerce returned control back to me following it's confirmation screen... but rather, had watched the network activity and WAITED for there to be none before deleting the next Group, then the auto-populating bug would not have shown up.

I share all this in hope it will save others from many hours or days of lost time working with this ecommerce software.

Like to share one other observation which is not a "bug" with the CC software, but I would argue a shocking omission with regard to the current design for setting up Groups, Group Options and the exponential growth of resulting Variations... so I guess this is really for Jason Byrnes ,WebAssist Technical Support Manager (who seems to be the only one responding to this forum for CafeCommerce) to toss into the suggestion box.

Part of the time killer that some of us have to deal with in setting up our stores (for me, literally 1-2 ENTIRE days to configure a single product with 7 Groups and 2-3 Options per group) is that CafeCommerce requires us to manually do the math for how an option affects a product's price! How prehistoric! Simple math is entirely what computers were first invented to do - you know, like a hand calculator?

Why is there not a data field, per Option, where we can enter a plus or minus dollar amount? And then your computer code AUTOMATICALLY calcs out what the price is of each VARIATION of a Product? It is ridiculous that I am sitting here mentally adding 8 different number combos for EACH Variation and then manually typing in the resulting prices for each, for over HUNDREDS of Variations per Product, when such activity is EXACTLY what computers do best and INSTANTLY! Just my 2¢

I have created a support ticket so we can look into this issue further.

To view and edit your support ticket, please log into your support history:
supporthistory.php

If anyone else is experiencing this same issue, please append to this thread.

Hmmmm... ONE support ticket??? Let's see... I, in great detail, describe at least 2 serious problems:

(a) Changes to Variations not being reliably saved. And
(b) CafeCommerce corrupting my database of products by auto-populating it with hundreds and hundreds of individual products that were perviously 1 product with 7 groups, each with 2-3 Options. (Put it this way, I had 1 page/screen of FOUR total Products; but upon deleting the Groups of just One of those Products, CafeCommerce software auto-populated 59 additional pages/screens with the exact same product! Also for what it is worth, ALL the auto-populated Products had their product images deleted.

I also describe 2 serious and (IMHO) extremely odd design/feature omissions in the CafeCommerce software - which I assume should go into the may-never-be-worked-on "suggestion box" versus a "support ticket":

(a) We should be allowed to delete multiple products/ whole pages of products - all at once. And
(b) HUMANS should NOT be required to mentally calculate price combinations for Options and manually type them in, when THAT is exactly what computers are best for. (There is little doubt in my mind, given I had to do this extremely boring, monotonous task... literally hundreds and hundreds of times... for many, many hours on end... over many days... that there are numerous pricing errors in my store. - absolutely ridiculous, if not down right lazy designing. Sorry, it just is.)

Are you sure that these 4 separate things belong on a SINGLE support ticket? Okie Dokie.

it only takes one ticket to have someone investigate the issues you report... don't see why multiple tickets would be needed unless you report the issues in multiple threads.

Well as someone who has designed, programmed, produced and/or published literally hundreds of internationally distributed computer software and console video games, grossing many millions of dollars in sales... As someone who has run whole companies and QA departments for privately owned and publicly traded companies... And as someone who managed development projects which were likely infinitely more complex then silly web based database interfaces... I could explain this to you. But I am already spending waaaaay too much time working for free, QA'ing CafeCommerce's software.

As I have read from other posters, it seems to be the way of CafeCommerce to "pass the buck" - as one poster put it. So it doesn't surprise me that you, or whoever trained you/manages you, erroneously feels it is the paying customer's job to separate out these issues nice and neatly for you in separate threads. Whatever.

If it does not matter as you say, then great. My apologies for even questioning that the issues I brought up are, at least in part, COMPLETELY separate issues (bugs versus suggestions)... and that, if true, would then be filtered and separated by CafeCommerce staff (as you have previously written you have done with other posters suggestions versus bugs.) My Bad.

I'm not sure what the issue is. I have started an incident for you so that our engineering department can get in contact with you to correct the problems you have reported.

The incident is tied to this thread, meaning that the engineering department will read all of the issues that you are reporting here and move forward in correcting them as appropriate.

As I already said, if you say it does not matter then... Great! I will sleep like a baby tonight. However in EVERY large software development company or department I have run (or associates have), product ideas are completely different then software bugs and there are different groups and processes in place within a company that handle these two different objectives. Again, I am not interested in explaining why companies do this.

And certainly, I don't mean to say such is the way is HAS to be, especially at very small companies where the employees wear many hats. Perhaps this describes the CafeCommerce operation?

So you appear to be saying there really is no difference between the people who decide what upgrades/features to build into next revs. (which BTW there apparently hasn't been one in 10 months since your "What's New" link states that Tuesday, October 18, 2011 was the very last time any upgrades went live) versus the staff that tracks and fixes current bugs. Ok. Good for you.

But one can't help but wonder then why CafeCommerce even has this separate page, tracking suggestions:
52771-cafecommerce-feedback-suggestions?lang=en

Or why you told jesse441246 on 08-09-2012 that you would "add a feature request to have [his suggestion] considered for future versions" instead of opening a support ticket. Perhaps a "support ticket" is exactly what you meant?

Anyway we are now both wasting time discussing nothing that matters. I don't care how CafeCommerce operates. Put my ideas in a separately tracked "suggestion box" or not.

Ten months with not a single new feature upgrade from CafeCommerce does not have me expecting to see my suggestions get implemented anytime soon... or ever.

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