System administration

Bitrix Site Manager allows you to configure any aspect of product delivery:

• specify time and cost of delivery;
• stipulate the product weight and price allowable for a given delivery service;
• reorder delivery services by specifying the display weight, etc.

One of the most significant aspects that affect a delivery service is defining proper locations to which a given delivery service can convey goods. Let us study this matter thoroughly.

Defining locations

A location is geographical unit that stipulates delivery conditions. A location is a part of the full delivery address.

The Locations form (e-Store -> e-Store settings -> Locations -> Locations) displays a list of locations displayed to a customer from which they can select the appropriate delivery location. Later, the selected location will be used to: display available delivery services; calculate the cost of delivery; and form the final delivery address.

A common location is a pair Country / City. Additionally, you should provide a location without city for each country. This may be essential if a customer cannot find the appropriate pair Country / City.

Add a new location. The location editing form includes two sections:

Country If you cannot find the required country in the list, select New country. This will display fields to define a new country. You must type the full and abbreviated names of a country for each language in the system.
City Check the No city option to create a "cityless" location. Otherwise, the full and abbreviated names of a city for each language in the system.

Importing locations

It is quite obvious that creating many locations is a tedious task. The system provides a mechanism that you can use to load locations from a special file. Importing can be done in the Import locations section of the Locations form:

Click Browse to select a file with locations on your computer. You can have existing locations deleted automatically by checking the Clear locations before loading option.

A location file should have the following structure:

en
S,en,USA
T,en,Anniston
T,en,Birmingham
T,en,Mobile/Dothan
T,en,Montgomery
T,en,Huntsville
T,en,Tuscaloosa
T,en,Anchorage
T,en,Fairbanks
T,en,Juneau
T,en,Flagstaff
T,en,Phoenix

The first row specifies the language (e.g. en for English), in which the names will be displayed in the Control Panel.

Other rows contain data to be imported. First, specify the country (a row starts with "S"). Then, specify all cities of this country (rows start with "T"), and so on.

Names should be specified for all languages existing in the system. Names in other languages will be ignored.

If an imported country already exists, it will be rejected. However, cities are always imported, even if they are present in the system. You cannot import abbreviated variants of names.

Upon importing, the table will display new locations:

Hence, locations are used to configure delivery services in the Control Panel; and when ordering in the public section.

Configuring location groups

Joining locations in groups can facilitate configuring delivery services. You can create a location group and bind all delivery services that can convey to those locations, to that group.

When a new location appears, or tariffs of any existing location change, it would be sufficient to add or remove a given location to/from a group. You can avoid editing all the altered delivery services.

Create a new location group and add some USA locations to it:

After you have saved the location group, you can proceed with customizing delivery services.

Configuring delivery services

Open the delivery services form (e-Store -> e-Store settings -> Delivery).

Every delivery service can depend on the allowable weight and price; and always depends on the location.

You have to ensure that your delivery services cover all possible options. For example, if you specify that a given delivery service handle orders only over $500, make sure that there are other delivery services for those locations that can handle orders below $500.

Also ensure that your delivery services can dispatch orders to all possible locations.

Delivery services depend on the site on which an order is made.

Consider an example of creating a delivery service:

The service By mail to Florida:

• is available on the Demo site;
• can deliver within 10 to 20 days;
• handles orders under 5 kilos;
• costs $75;
• will be available for locations that are members of the group Cities of Florida.
  
  
  The fields Location and Group of locations are required. In this case, it means that you have to activate at least one of them, or both if required.

The system selects and displays the most suitable delivery service: