Create New Facility

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Creating your facilities is part of the opentaps system configuration, often performed by a System Administrator. The general method (using the server URL/Facility) is the most flexible and general method for creating facilities and fully describing them, but there are also end-user methods, that do not require System Administrator assistance. These end-user methods can be used for creating retail stores, web stores, warehouses, and backup warehouse facilities. These methods are located in various parts of the opentaps system related to each facility type, and we will explain each one of them in the following sections. We will discuss the general method first.

Using the General Method for Facilities

The general method uses a section of the system which is located at the following address on your opentaps server:

 /facility/control/login
 (Example of the address might be this type of URL: 
     https/your_server_name:port_number/facility/control/login).

*  Using your system URL, and port number, open the /facility/control/login page and 
      log in to the system 
*  The "Facility Manager Application" screen opens
*  The screen displays the Facilities List of all your current facilities 
     (stores and warehouses).
*  Click: [Create New Facility] the Facility (ID:) screen opens with a blank ID.  You can name
     the facility or let the system give it a numeric ID, but note these special rules: 
     ** Names are case sensitive
     ** Names cannot contain blank spaces -- use the underscore (_) instead of blanks
     ** Names must not contain special characters or punctuation marks (except the 
        dash (-) is acceptable.
     ** Incorrect names will cause system processes to fail, so if you are not certain, 
        let the system provide a numeric ID for you.
**  Select the Facility Type ID from the drop down box, for example "Warehouse"
**  Enter or look up the Owner = a unit of your company, or a Supplier
     who is listed in your system under Purchasing > Suppliers Tab if the facility is owned by
     the third party.
** Optionally enter a Default Weight Unit
** Select Default Inventory Item Type either serialized on non-serialized
** Supply a text Name for your new facility
** Optionally enter a Square Footage value for the facility
** Enter a Description if desired
** Enter the Default (lead time) Days To Ship from this facility after a request.
*  Click: [Update] to create the facility

The "Facility your-facility-name" page opens with a full set of facility defining tabs, but no other entries are required in this section of the system, at this time. Your facility has been created and you can return to this page to add or edit the various tabs provided.

Create a New Warehouse

From the Main Navigation screen proceed to:

* Click: Warehouse Icon
* Click: [Create a New Warehouse]  link

This link is incomplete, use the method described in the previous section.

Backup Warehouse Setup

Refer to Backup Warehouses

opentaps Store Setup

About the Stores in opentaps

The Store in opentaps is a database container for a group of your products sold together under the same policies. Your company can to set up multiple stores, each with its warehouses, fulfillment policies, currencies, languages, promotions, and look-and-feel. You can have stores in different countries with various different policies, shipping, taxation or other rules.

The stores you set up can be for the support of various real stores, such as web-based businss to business stores, or consumer e-commerce stores, or internal order entry applications, and also Point Of Sale applications.

Where the Store(s) are Configured

To configure a Store, from the Main Navigation screen, proceed as follows:
Click: Catalog Icon > Stores Tab, the Product Store list opens, which is a table showing your
   existing Stores, and can be used to select one for editing.
Click: any Store Name (ID) in the table to edit all the properties of a working store. 
The "Store For your_store_name page" opens to the [Store] sub-tab showing a long list of store 
   attributes and several more tabs for administering different characteristics of that store.

Detailed Guidance on Store Set-up

Please see the User Guide Section Working_with_the_Product_Store(s) for details on store set-up. For details on set-up of the Website Store, refer to the section Web-Site_Online_Stores_for_your_Catalogs_and_Products.

Overview of Store Set-up and Configuration Items

The following Sub-Tabs offer functions that configure the store and how it will function:

[Store Tab]. Sets the values for a long list of store general properties which control how processing is to be done, and how various options are to be used. For details, refer to Store General Properties Screen.

[Roles Tab]. Defines parties with specific roles for this store. For an employee to be able to take orders using the internal order manager application, he must be defined as a “Sales Representative” here.

[Promos Tab]. Shows a list of active promotions for this store.

[Catalogs Tab]. Catalogs which are available for the current store and the sequence in which they are to be shown to the user in a navigation menu.

[Web Sites Tab]. Websites which are related to this store. This is directly used to link a store to a web application. Each web application has a configuration file called web.xml, and it is defined to reference a particular web site. The web site in turn is defined to relate to a product store. Thus, by setting a store on a web site, it becomes “live” on that web application.

It is possible for a web application to have more than one store associated with it, as long as it knows how to use the correct one.

The WebSite screen in Content Manager can be used to configure the static http and https content URLs and ports, so you can have your static content, such as images, served up by the Apache httpd server instead of the embedded Tomcat server.

[Shipping Tab]. This page shows the shipping options available to store customers. A list of shipping options and their pricing is shown. Click on “View” for a shipping option shows all the settings for this shipping option. At this point, this tab can only view shipping options available and not be used to define them.

[Payment Tab]. This is used to set up payment processing for the store. The payment processing interfaces are defined as services. Each payment method will have a series of service types available to it, such as for authorizing, capturing, and refunding payment. This page links the payment types and the services together by their purpose. Thus, one service would be used for credit card authorizations, another for credit card capture, and so forth.

[Emails Tab]. This defines emails which the store would send to customers. The actual email services are either mounted in the controller, such as the order confirmation email, or from scheduled services, such as back order notifications. This page defines where the template for the email is located on the file system, the addresses and subject of each email, and a content type (which can be left blank.)

[Surveys Tab]. This page is for adding surveys to the store. Surveys can be associated with certain events or with products and categories.

Setting Up Multiple Stores -- For Technical System Administrators

It is possible to set up multiple stores in the system which sell the same products on different websites. (This is different than setting up completely separate companies with their own products and customers—opentaps is not a mall like Yahoo stores.) To set up multiple stores, you would need to:

1. Create multiple Product Stores in the Catalog Manager
2. Create catalogs and associate them with your stores
3. Create WebSites in the content manager, and associate those Websites with your ProductStores.
4. Copy the online store in applications/ecommerce/ to separate directories to your hotdeploy directory, 
      one for each store
5. For each of your stores, edit its webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml file and change the webSiteId to point to one 
      of the WebSites you defined for your ProductStore.
6. You can edit base/config/ofbiz-containers.xml to set up different Tomcat servers or AJP13 listeners on 
      different ports, and then configure each of your stores to use a different server in its 
      ofbiz-component.xml file. At this point, each store can be configured to its own IP address or web URL.

Navigation into the opentaps Setup chapter:

Manual pages >> Store General Properties Screen

Section pages >> Setup for opentaps email Handling

Navigation into the opentaps Fulfillment chapter: Manual pages >> Create a Backup Warehouse

Shipping Tab << Tab pages

Shipping Processes << Section pages >> Warehouses Organization