CyberOffice Shopping Cart's Delivery Module allows customers to choose the date and time for delivery or service on any individual product/service item. The online process is real-time in the sense that the merchant who offers the product/service pre-allocates human resources on a given set of weekly time slots. The number of available resources decreases as the orders comes in. In other words, the module provides a real-time controlled process on the assignment of the time slots.

The delivery module is shopping mall readiness. The link (typically /cybermall/shopping_cart/custom13.asp) to the delivery schedule page can be provided to participating merchants . Each merchant is free to define the available time slots and resources for each day on a weekly basis. Time slots can vary with respect to the customer types (for example, commercial or residential customers). If exceptional circumstances arise, the merchant can alter the resources on any particular time slot. This way the system caters for holidays or employee sickness.

Items that are "deliverable" must pass a hidden field named "DeliveryMode" to the shopping cart (along with other standard fields).   The value of the field can be either 1, or -1. If "1" is specified, the item does not share a time slot with any other items. This applies typically to a service type product. On the other hand, A "-1" mode indicates that multiple items (of the same mode) can share a same time slot. For example, all grocery products can be delivered at the same time. CyberOffice Warehouse Builder has a built-in "DeliveryMode" field to handle this feature.

The shopping cart will automatically display a Schedule button on the item. A customer can simply click on the item to pick a time. Note that CyberOffice Club must be used in conjunction with the Shopping Cart. The customer is required to login to proceed (so that whose type can be identified). The on-going time slot assignments are updated when he/she finalizes the order.

This section lets you configure general settings on the schedule. If you are system administrator, you can select a merchant from the drop-down list to configure. Click on Delete to remove the account from the system. If you are a participating merchant of the underlying Trading Mall or Virtual Warehouse system, you will see your merchant account after login (an entry is created automatically when a regular merchant accesses the page the first time).

Disable Status: Enter any non-zero number to suspend the schedule operation.

Delay in Display: This is the number of days from the current time on which the first available time slots will be displayed to the customer on the shopping cart. Typically, there is one day delay.

Daily Cutoff Time: The cut-off time on a day after which the first available schedule is to be pushed one day further.

Display Range: The number of days that the time table of slots is presented to the customers.

Extra Range: Specify extra day range on which the time-slots are created, before they are presented to the customers. This gives you a chance to modify the available resources manually.

The allocations are configured against each Customer Type and Week Day (picked from the drop-down lists). Then simply edit the fields and press the Update button to submit. The text area is provided for entering any remarks on the schedule.

Different types of customer accounts can have different schedules. For example, you will delivery to residential addresses and commercial addresses using different time slots. The residential address can include night time and weekend.

Only the first account type has been set by default. To enable customers with other account types, you must explicitly go through each account type, each weekday to configure the setting. As you clicks, database entries are created automatically.

There are four elements on the form:

Display

This is a list of texts displayed to the customer. They typically specify time intervals in a day. There can be time overlaps between the intervals.

Start

Starting times of the intervals. Each entry must be a valid time.

End

Ending times of the intervals. Each entry must be a valid time.

Allocation

The allocation of resources on these time intervals.

Entries of these on-going assignments are created and deleted automatically as customers hit the "Schedule" button on the storefront. Select a Date from the drop-down list to display the available resources for the time being. The text area is provided for entering any remarks on the schedule.

This section offers you an opportunity to adjust the resources in any way you want, albeit manually.