Accessing Administration

You can login to Bison Plains by accessing the login page. Once logged in if you are an administrator a gray header titled Administration should appear on all pages. Clicking this or proceeding to the administration area will allow you to edit the site.

To edit the roles of users access the hamburger menu of the administration page and select Customers and then Customers. Then find the user you wish to edit and choose Edit. Select the appropriate Customer Roles for the account.

Editing Products

Products are imported automatically by the Workwise Data Import scheduled task which runs daily. It can be run manually from the Schedule Tasks page by accessing the hamburger menu and choosing System then Schedule Tasks. Select the Run Now button for the Workwise Data Import task to run it manually. The task will create a product from each active item in Workwise. If the Workwise FLAG_STAT_ITEM is not A then the product will not be created. The Bison Plains SKU is created from the Workwise part number. The Bison Plains Product Name is created from the Workwise DESC_1. The Bison Plains Short Description is created from the Workwise DESC_2. Pricing, volume pricing, quantity available, and weight are also syncronized from Workwise. Editing any of the previously mentioned fields will be overwritten the next time the task runs.

It is recommended to edit products in Advanced mode. You can switch between Advanced and Basic by using the toggle near the top left of the page. Various fields of interest are listed below. Nearly every field has a question mark you can hover over to get more information.

Product Info

  • Visible Individually - Whether or not a product appears on Bison Plains
  • Product Name - Imported from Workwise, do not edit manually
  • Notice - Displays a notice at the top of the product page in red text
  • Short Description - Imported from Workwise, do not edit manually
  • Install/Application Notes - Displays a section on how to install. This field is rich text and can have hyperlinks to manuals.
  • Full description - A longer description of the product
  • SKU - Imported from Workwise, do not edit manually
  • Price - Imported from Workwise, do not edit manually
  • Tier Prices - Imported from Workwise, do not edit manually
  • Stock Quantity - Imported from Workwise, do not edit manually
  • Display Availability - Shows whether the product is in stock or out of stock
  • Display Stock Quanitity - Displays the exact number of a product’s stock quanitity
  • Backorders - Determines if a customer is allowed to place an order for a product with 0 quantity
  • Minimum cart qty - The minimum order quanitity
  • Maximum cart qty - The maximum order quanitity
  • Weight - Imported from Workwise, do not edit manually
  • Categories - Determines which categories this products is shown under for more information visit Product Categories
  • Related Products - Imported from RelatedProducts, do not edit manually. For more information visit Special Files

SEO

  • Meta Keywords - Keywords to help the item show up in search engines. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing have not used this for at least 5 years, it is recommended to not worry about it.
  • Meta Description - Up to 155 characters. This typically is shown in search engines.
  • Meta Title - The tab title. It defaults to Your Store. PRODUCT NAME but can be changed with this field

Pictures

Do not edit pictures here. For more information visit Pictures

Product Categories

To edit categories navigate to Catalog then Categories in the hamburger menu. To add a category click Add new. From this page you can choose the category name, an image for the category, the parent category, and whether it should be shown in the top menu and on the home page. Setting Limited to customer roles to Administrators may be useful for working on a category that is not ready to be shown to customers. The Products tab will show all products that are a member of the category. To add a product to the category you can do so from the product page or by clicking Add a new product. This page will allow you to change the order products show up on the category page.

FTP Server

Connecting

There are various tools for connecting to an FTP server. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox will both allow you to view and download files from an FTP server but not modify them. The FTP server for Bison Plains is ftp://40.113.231.147. You can connect to it with the credentials you have been provided.

To modify files on the FTP server on Windows using WinSCP is recommended. It can be downloaded here. Launch WinSCP and enter the connection settings as shown. Use the credentials you have been provided. You can save the site for later so connecting at a future time is easier. You should see a user interface similar to the one pictured. The left panel is the files on your computer, the right panel is the files on the remote server. Double clicking a file from either side will download or upload it to the opened directory on the opposite panel. You can also drag and drop files from one panel to another.

Product Images

To add images for a product create a folder in the top level of the FTP server where the folder name is the same as the item SKU in Bison Plains. You can now places images inside of the folder. Images on Bison Plains will show up in alphabetical order of the FTP server. It is recommended to name images starting with 01_, 02_, etc. to control ordering but it is not required. It should be noted changes on the FTP server do not take effect until the Workwise Data Import task runs on Bison Plains.

Special Files

The FTP server also contains two special files. These are CompanionProducts.txt and AssemblyProducts.csv. Companion Products will populate related products as shown below. Assembly Products will populate assembly data for products. An example of an assembly is shown below.

Orders

Orders are located in the hamburger menu under Sales and Orders. You can search for orders using the provided filters. By clicking View you can see the details of any order. From this menu you can cancel an order. It is not recommended to change the order status here. If you cancel the order you likely need to refund the customer. See Refunds.

Ship Order

When an order is Processing and Paid it needs to be shipped. You can click View and go to the Shipping Info page. From this page you can select Add Shipment On this page the tracking number for the order should be entered. If not all of the products on the order will be in the same shipment ensure the quantity of each item to be shipped is correct and then Save the order. If there are multiple shipments for the same order the process can be repeated.

Returns

Customers can request returns for products unless the item is configured Not returnable. When a return is requested it will appear in Sales then Return Requests. You should select Edit and then choose a new Return request status such as Return Authorized or Return Rejected. Select Save and Continue Edit then Notify customer about status change.

Refunds

From either Sales then Orders or Sales then Return Requests you can View an order. This will let you Refund or Partial refund a customer.

When issuing a refund it will confirm this is what you want to do. When issuing a partial refund it will ask for the ammount to refund.