BackOffice – GFR Software

Katmando – or BackOffice Lite!

December 21, 2009December 21, 2009 Product Manager

A branch project was kicked off a while ago to produce a lightweight version of the BackOffice program to support just catalogue management. The first release of this has gone into test customized to work with the bespoke data model for eSeeds.com. Looking good!

eSeeds.com uses the concept of Vectors to group products of a similar type and this version of the program understands this special relationship and displays things accordingly.

Once this is completed and shipped work on BackOffice will continue.

Catalogue Management Taking Shape

September 6, 2009September 6, 2009 Product Manager

The initial framework of the catalogue management module is taking shape. The interesting part is that I am using the MVVM (Model – View – ViewModel) pattern here with two views sharing the same set of ViewModels and, subsequently, Models. This means that edits in the TreeView are reflected in the Form Edit View without having to write any new code!

So far I can navigate the category/product/variant tree and edit the category nodes. Later I will add the product and variant editing capabilities. Then, we need to add the ability to create nodes and move them about in the tree.

More to come.

Work Commencing on Catalogue Management

August 26, 2009August 26, 2009 Product Manager

With the Topics module completed work is now starting on the Catalogue Management module. This will give complete control over management of categories, products and variants as well as associated entities like manufacturers and vectors, to name a few.

Stay tuned for updates and the first screen shots!

Topic Editing added to BackOffice

June 21, 2009June 21, 2009 Product Manager

The ability to call up and save AspDotNetStorefront topics is nearing completion in BackOffice. The HTML Editor still needs to be added but finding a decent one for WPF is proving a challenge. I have found a few candidate examples and hope to roll those into a useful tool here that inherits the CSS styles and artefacts of the actual site so that you really see what you get! (Windows Live Writer for blogs is an excellent example of this.)

Inventory Management for ASPDotNetStorefront

June 15, 2009June 15, 2009 Product Manager

The BackOffice program has made a large step forward in that the Inventory Management module has now been built and deployed to the BackOffice WPF Composite Application Framework.

Using the WSI interface on ASPDotNetStorefront the application can load the product catalog and then allow you to make various modifications to the inventory. Changes are automatically sent back to the website so that the BackOffice application and the storefront are always in sync.

Next to come is the ability to modify Topics. Following that will be a full catalog management interface.

BackOffice Application Taking Shape

May 25, 2009May 25, 2009 Product Manager

The BackOffice application is starting to take shape. It is based on the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and is deployed as a Smart Client interacting with the eCommerce website through Web Service calls.

At present the only module completed is the Inventory module which lets you have quick access to the full catalogue and just manage the inventory counts.

There is still a lot to add but now that the major framework is in place the next modules should slot in much more smoothly. Stay tuned!