X-Cart forums

[quietcoolone]

Customers who purchase anonymously are not able to sign in to check order history etc.
Later on, many of these customers decide to create accounts with hopes of being able to check their orders, however that is not possible.
I've tried associating their newly created accounts to their orders by adding the userid to xcart_orders table etc, but that has resulted in a 403 error.
Being able to do this would be great for my customers.

My question is:
Is there any software or add-on that can be used to associate anonymous customers to existing orders?

Thanks.

[CenturyPerf]

Since no one else has posted a reply, I too am getting more customers who have ordered anonymously getting frustrated that they cannot login to check on their orders.

Aside from disabling anonymous checkout, is there any way to change a customer from anonymous to registered?

[quietcoolone]

Originally Posted by CenturyPerf

Since no one else has posted a reply, I too am getting more customers who have ordered anonymously getting frustrated that they cannot login to check on their orders.

Aside from disabling anonymous checkout, is there any way to change a customer from anonymous to registered?

I'm still waiting on an answer -- seems like this is not an issue for many but its good to know that i'm not the only one.

[carpeperdiem]

Originally Posted by quietcoolone

seems like this is not an issue for many

Sure it is.
I have at least one or two a day...

customer: I LOVE your products! I want to convert to a full registration.
me: Great! I will get you bonus points for your prior orders, but I can't merge your activity.
customer: OK.
me: I wish I could merge anon + new account so I have a happier customer.

THE PROBLEM is that an anon "customer" is not a customer.
I don't think we can technically call it a "bug" -- but it sure is a design oversight.

I think the solution is:

1. have the anon customer "register"
2. "assign" or "convert" an anon order to the new "registered" customer.

Anyone have any ideas how to accomplish #2?

[quietcoolone]

Originally Posted by carpeperdiem

Sure it is.
I have at least one or two a day...

customer: I LOVE your products! I want to convert to a full registration.
me: Great! I will get you bonus points for your prior orders, but I can't merge your activity.
customer: OK.
me: I wish I could merge anon + new account so I have a happier customer.

THE PROBLEM is that an anon "customer" is not a customer.
I don't think we can technically call it a "bug" -- but it sure is a design oversight.

I think the solution is:

1. have the anon customer "register"
2. "assign" or "convert" an anon order to the new "registered" customer.

Anyone have any ideas how to accomplish #2?

This is what i wrote in my initial post:
"I've tried associating their newly created accounts to their orders by adding the userid to xcart_orders table etc, but that has resulted in a 403 error."

[cflsystems]

To me this is a bug and serious design flow. I have mentioned few times in the forum and to QT that if person places an order on the site this person is a customer. No matter if they have registered or not.
Started with when email as login was implemented anon customers do not get an entry in customers table hence they are phantoms. The only entry for them is orders table. But trying to only replace userid may not work as there is more info which they may have provided differently as anon customers.
Not saying that having anon customers in customers table would solve merge problem but would make it easier to do this probably.

[BCSE]

Well it also depends on what X-cart versions. Older versions did create customer accounts for anonymous users. So it was easier to convert them to real users. So we could create something easily for earlier versions but something for the latest versions would require a good bit more edits unfortunately. I do think it's something that would be convenient.

Feel free to drop us an email if you'd like to see this (http://www.bcsengineering.com/contact_us/#contact_form ) and mention this thread. If it's not too hard we'll make it a free module, otherwise it sounds like a good small module.

Carrie

[carpeperdiem]

Thinking out loud:

Expecting X-Cart to fix or change this? We know the answer.

OT: I reported a bug about x-payments connector log files not being visible in the admin, and they tell me [9 months after I reported it] that this is a feature request, not a bug - after many years, I've learned that "if the programmer wrote the code so that it does exactly what the interface designer specced, it's done". Even if the design or spec is defective. X-Cart thinks like programmers, and not designers. Accept it.

So let's take a look at an order from an anon vs. an order from a registered customer...

I have a 4.5.5 default with no customers and no orders. I did the following:

1. placed order as an anon customer. phone ordering. then set status of order to "complete"
2. registered user ID #5 (other IDs are admins). Placed an order as customer #5 logged in. set status of order to "complete".
3. search for all orders: order #1 is anon; order #2 is registered cust #5 -- ok, let's have some fun now...

4. REGISTER the anon customer -- same name, address, email -- anon customer is now registered as ID 7

5. phpMyAdmin...
table: xcart_customers
evaluate customer IDs... anon customer ID = 7

table: xcart_orders
evaluate both orders -- the anon order does not have a userid set (it's empty)

6. edit the anon order. set userid to 7

That's all folks... so this can be done.
- phone order (least complicated order)
- what if order was with paypal
- or x-payments
- or other payment methods?

Is it possible to make a button or function that edits an order and sets a userID? The "OBVIOUS" place would be here:

/admin/order.php?orderid=2&mode=edit&show=customer

Ah, the AOM can of worms.

What is tricky here, the anon customer must FIRST become a registered customer before setting the userid in the orders table.

SO what is the ideal workflow?

[cflsystems]

The ideal workflow for XC 4.4.x and up (I think not saving anon customers started with 4.4.x)

1. Use the default XC search for orders to search based on customer data - since there is no customer you cannot search users.
2. Found some orders - mark the orders (just like marking them for deletion) and there should be a button on the page - assign these orders to customer.
3. Next to the button can be a dropdown list of all registered customer to select from so click on button and the script will assign the orders to that customer based on customer id...

Of course customer has to be created first

Not that hard to do. There could be a little bit more than just adding userid to orders table though but as Carry mentioned it is easy enough to be free mod

[carpeperdiem]

Originally Posted by cflsystems

3. Next to the button can be a dropdown list of all registered customer to select from so click on button and the script will assign the orders to that customer based on customer id...

Of course customer has to be created first

Possibly avoid a dropdown since this can be 1000's of customers and can slow page load considerably?

The magic function (button?) would be the "convert anon customer into a registered customer" - I did this by brute force... (copy/paste) but this is one function that could really benefit from a magic button. It probably should also create a default password and check the "force password change on next login" box.

Once that is done, "assigning" the now-registered customer to the order should only require the one table to be edited. Yes?

Anyone see issues?