How does the RetailVista ShopServer Stock Updater work?

This document describes the operation of the RetailVista ShopServer Stock Updater.

This software has been developed to allow an offline RetailVista store to communicate its inventory with a centrally determined webshop assortment. In this case, an offline store refers to a store that is not in the same instance as the RetailVista store coordinating the central webshop assortment.

This applies to situations where a RetailVista store acts as a ShopServer substore '0'. This is essentially a regular ShopServer integration where the store determines the assortment that should be available on the webshop. All other RetailVista companies and stores in the same instance will automatically communicate their inventory to the ShopServer, provided that these companies/stores use the same ShopServer store number.

Example: A RetailVista store communicates with ShopServer store 23, substore 0. This RetailVista store determines the webshop assortment. Two other RetailVista stores in the same instance as RetailVista also have ShopServer store 23 set up, but with substores 1 and 2. These stores do not need to define a webshop assortment: due to the substore, RetailVista will look at the products determined by ShopServer store 23, substore 0. These two stores will only communicate their inventory for those products to the ShopServer.

It is still possible to receive orders with ShopServer substores. It is up to the webshop builder to determine which ShopServer store and substore orders are offered to.

It is possible to choose to offer all orders to the 'main' branch '0', or to choose to deliver orders to other branches as well. It is a choice in implementation how this will work.

The ShopServer Stock Updater software is a 'console' application (executable to be started from a command prompt). It is recommended to schedule this software using the Windows task scheduler. The software automatically creates a logfile per month in the folder c:\programdata\Nedfox\ShopServer StockUpdater\Logs\.

The first time this software is started, all stock levels in the past year (365 days) will be sent. From that moment on, only the changes since the last time the application was started will be sent.

This software includes a .Config file in which, among other things, the Retail3000 data must be set to establish a connection with the Retail3000 Cloud. And there is a section where the ShopServer data must be specified. It is likely that when using this software, a sub-branch number (<>0) will be used!

In this same .Config file, there is also a setting 'LastSyncDateTime'. This is updated every time the application is started and successfully completed. It is possible to resend stock levels by manually adjusting this date/time. The format of this field is YYYY-MM-DD.

This software communicates the stock levels of all products. For example, it does not consider whether something is a webshop product or not. The idea behind this software is that a webshop assortment has been determined elsewhere. The other stores do not need to do that, they simply communicate all stock levels. The ShopServer will automatically ignore stock levels of unknown barcodes.For this reason, when starting this software for the first time, it may happen that a lot of mutations are sent to the ShopServer, namely the entire active product range of a store. This is not a problem and does not lead to any issues. Afterwards, the sent amounts of data will become smaller.