OIT Software Distribution Store - General Documentation

We have developed an online OIT Software Distribution Store, similar to Amazon or Newegg, to automate purchasing proprietary software with an Account and Fund number. Below, we’ll refer to it as the ZotCart. To speed development, we used an Open Source e-Commerce package called Prestashop, which provided most of the basic features of an online store. The rationale for selecting Prestashop is discussed in more detail here.

For this effort, the academic environment differs from a purely commercial one mostly in the payment method. Researchers are awarded merit-based grants and those grants are monetized within the univerity via Account/Fund numbers which point back to the grant. To support payment via Account/Fund, we had to develop a new payment mechanism that supports this according to UCI administrative norms.

After registering and supplying the Account/Fund info (see User Guide) and selecting products the user can pay for his/her choices with this Account/Fund number instead of the usual Credit Card (CC). Delivery of the software is entirely electronic, so no physical transfer of goods is necessary.

The Zotcart can currently accept 2 payment methods and 1 more is pending.

Checks are accepted like most other online stores - the order is held until the check is delivered and clears. It’s up to the user to make sure the check is delivered to the correct address.

The user will need to establish an Account/Fund registration to complete purchase via this mechanism. If one is not available, the user cannot complete the purchase. A single user can have multiple Account/Fund combinations, similar to having multiple CC numbers. This payment mechanism assumes a responsible relationship between the Grant Holder and staff or advisee regarding use of the grant monies. To assure this, the Grant Holder, the associated Departmental Bookkeeper, the purchaser, as well as OIT are emailed at the end of each transaction.

PAL cards are effectively CCs and can be implemented fairly easily as this is a default payment module of the PrestaShop software.

This is simply a user-defined name for his/her Account/Fund registration. Upon checking out of the store, a list of Purchase Aliases will be displayed where the user selects one to complete the purchase.

This mechanism also supports the purchases of network licenses where the user must define a unique Project Name and provide the IP Addresses of their hosts.

This is simply a unique name for the project, which is used as an index and as a identifier for that software that requires a network license to run. For example, if a graduate student needed to buy MATLAB for the Pyrosequencing group of PCs for the Snape lab, she might name it SnapeMatlabPyro2011.

If the user is buying networked licenses for a group of PCs, he/she must provide their IP Addresses. After a successful purchase, the store can automatically send the IP Addresses to the Network License Server.

In order to maintain reporting consistency, the Departmental Bookkeeper must be notified of purchases against a particular grant. Therefore before any members of a Department can buy this software, the Bookkeeper must pre-register by simply logging into the store once.

Aside from the usual online store features (searching for products, reviewing purhases, adding to a cart, checking out, etc), the following unique features have been implemented:

Users will login with their UCINetID. The user does not have to provide any personal information since user information is obtained through the campus LDAP server and only public information is retrieved.

Users will be able to purchase proprietary software with a Account/Fund numbers that are associated with a grant.

Departmental Bookkeepers can download a spreadsheet-friendly delimited text file which contains every Account/Fund transaction they are affilliated with in the ZotShop. The spreadsheet generator page is here.

After purchasing with an Account and Fund number, the reported Departmental Bookkeeper will be sent an email with an attached PDF file, which contains an invoice for that specific order.

Due to the lack of database access, we cannot validate Account/Fund information. We are currently trusting users to input a valid Account and Fund number, which is manually resolved. This is one of the highest priorities to resolve.