Blog posts of '2012' 'October'

As per the blog that discusses Shipping Director built-in variables:

Rate Request Type - When Packaging, can be set by user to indicate the way that rate requests are made to other rate calculation methods when Packaging

Note that the Rate Request Types pertain when rate requests are made to other rate calculation methods (i.e. external methods like FedEx, UPS, etc.)

An external method like FedEx does its own "packing" - it will take the items in the cart, and "approximate" the number of packages based on dimensions/weight.   I've posted nopCommerce forum topics about how poor the algorithm is, and that's why I provide here at nopTools.com a modified version of the FedEx plugin(which was adopted by nopCommerce in version 2.50), and also created SD’s First Fit Single Box packing.

“OneRequestForAllPackages” is the default setting - it calls the external shipping plugin just once, and that plugin will do its own approximation of the number of packages.  That's when it's useful to use the new FedEx plugin which supports "PackByOneItemPerPackage" - then, the packing done by SD is respected by the FedEx plugin (no additional "approximate packing" is done).

With “OneRequestPerPackage”, SD will make multiple requests (one per package) to the external plugin, and aggregate the like named carrier options.   Liked named aggregation means that when FedEx returns a "Ground" rate for each separate request, they are added together, and the customer sees a single "Ground" option/rate.

“OneRequestPerSender” is used when using the Packing record type’s Sender Expression.  Here too, SD will make multiple requests (one per sender) to the external plugin, and again does liked named aggregation.  This blog about Packing by Warehouseprovides a good explanation.

Here a basic example of how to set up various shipping rate options.  When you have certain conditions that depend on Country where you only want to offer a single option, then use OptionExit so that no other options are evaluated.  When you want to offer multiple options, then use Option - each condition expression is evaluated, and if true, then the option is presented to the customer.  A typical example would be when you want to offer Ground, Next day, etc.

Example requirements:

• International $100
• Canada $55
• Hawaii & Alaska $55
• Free ground shipping orders over $100, except HI and AK.
• Ground $15 for all orders under $100
• Next Day Air $95
• 2 Day Air $85
• 3 Day Air $75

Also, check out the first part of this blog   I.e. you need to use ErrorExit to check for country/state as the initial record, because if in Estimate Shipping the customer does not choose a Country or State it will cause an error in the above references.

You can leave out the zip code check based on above conditions:

ShippingAddress.Country = null  or ("US,CA".Contains(ShippingAddress.Country.TwoLetterIsoCode) and ShippingAddress.StateProvince = null)