What is MarketPlace?
In general terms a MarketPlace is ‘an open space where a market is/ was formerly held.’ It means that a space with relation between sellers and customers. There are several sellers selling goods to several customers.
An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce site where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties, whereas transactions are processed by the marketplace operator. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multi channel e-commerce.
In an online marketplace, consumer transactions are processed by the marketplace operator and then delivered and fulfilled by the participating retailers or wholesalers (often called drop shipping). Other capabilities might include auctioning (forward or reverse), catalogs, ordering, wanted advertisement, trading exchange functionality and capabilities like RFQ, RFI or RFP.
In general, because marketplaces aggregate products from a wide array of providers, selection is usually more wide, availability is higher, and prices are more competitive than in vendor-specific online retail stores.
Examples of online marketplaces are Amazon.com, etsy, eBay, Snapdeal, Flipkart, Kaymu, Rakuten, and NASDAQ.
MarketPlace Extension
MarketPlace extension for Magento is developed for simply converting a simple Magento store to a MarketPlace with lots of features to customers, sellers and store owner. Any customer can register as a seller and can enjoy the features of a seller as well as customer of the store.
The seller sells products on the store and in return the store owner gets a commission by percentage from the total sale made by the seller. The commission percentage that the store owner gets can be modified and the store owner can set percentage to any desired value.
Prerequisite
The Knowband MarketPlace Extension is necessary to be installed on the system for using this MarketPlace Extension.
Magento MarketPlace Contact Admin Extension
Introduction
The MarketPlace -Contact Admin extension is a MarketPlace extension developed by Knowband to facilitate a medium of conversation between the MarketPlace Admin and Sellers. By using this MarketPlace extension a seller can create a ticket with the MarketPlace admin. The Marketplace Admin receives an email in his registered email account regarding a new ticket that has been created by the seller or simply receives an email regarding a new message has been received from the seller. The extension provides a two way communication channel between the Admin-Seller or Seller-Admin
Installation Manual
Follow the following steps for installing MarketPlace – Contact Admin Extension
1. Download the extension package.
2. Unzip the package on your root folder of Magento setup via FTP manager (like Filezilla or WinSCP – download here: https://filezilla-project.org/).
3. In Admin Panel under the Menu “Market Place” next to System menu, you will see a new menu option “Seller Ticket System”. In case you are not able to see the link under System, please clear Magento Cache first then check again.
4. With this the extension gets installed on your system.
User Manual
This User Manual will guide you through the Admin Module/Store Front settings and features of the MarketPlace – Contact Admin extension.
Admin Module
In the admin panel of Magento the MarketPlace Extension adds a separate menu (named “Seller Ticket System”) under the MarketPlace Menu tab.
MarketPlace Menu
The MarketPlace Menu consists of total 12 sub-menu options by default. With the addition of the MarketPlace – Contact Admin extension, a new menu option “Seller Ticket System” is listed which redirects to several pages for the MarketPlace Seller Ticket management.
Admin Interface
The Location of Admin Interface is under “MarketPlace>> Seller Ticket System”. The interface is then divided into two main categories i.e. “Configuration” and “View Tickets”.
Configuration
Clicking on the “Configuration” tab will open an interface to setup the “General Settings” on the extension. The general settings interface will look like this:
1. General Settings: General settings has been provided to the Admin to setup the preferences of the extension and manage the settings for the tickets and the interface of the front end on the seller panel.
2. Enable Contact Admin Feature: If this feature is enabled, the seller on the marketplace will be allowed to contact the admin from the interface provided by the extension in the seller front end.
3. Automatic Close Ticket Interval: The Admin can set a time interval after which the ticket status will be automatically changed to closed.
4. Send Ticket Notifications To: By selecting a category from the below drop down list , the admin can set up an email category where the notifications from the ticket system will go. The emails are already set in the Magento admin panel, you have to just select any email account here.
5. Cron Instructions: The Cron Instruction are set to close the ticket after the set time interval in step 3.
6. View Tickets: There are two links to views the ticket. One is as provided in the 6, and other in provided in the path “MarketPlace>> Seller Ticket System”. Clicking on View in 6 will direct the admin to a new interface to view, reply and manage the tickets. This menu option is discussed in comprehension in later part of the document.
7. Save: Click save to save your settings.
8. Cancel: Click cancel to discard your settings.
View Tickets
Clicking on “View Tickets” opens an interface where the admin can manage all the tickets created by the sellers on the MarketPlace. The admin can Reply to a ticket, set filters to find a ticket, close a ticket and so on.
The view Ticket interface looks like this:
In Action tab, Clicking on View ticket will open a pop up window where the admin can reply to a ticket.
The Pop up will look something like this:
Reply: Clicking on Reply button will send the message to the seller. The seller will receive a notification on his registered email id and also on the seller inter face on the front end.
Filters in View Ticket interface
The Admin can apply multiple filters find the tickets in the list.
1. Filter by Ticket ID
2. Filter by Seller Name
3. Filter by Seller’s Email ID
4. Filter by entering a string in Seller’s Query
5. Filter by Ticket Status
6. Filter by Last reply by Admin
7. Filter by Replied date
8. Filter by date of Ticket Creation
9. Filter by last updated date
Seller Interface
If the MarketPlace – Contact Admin extension is enabled by the admin, then all the seller Dashboards will add one extra option of “Contact Admin” in their interface on the front end.
Clicking on contact admin will open an interface for ticket management which will look something like this:
To submit a new Query to the Admin
New Query: Clicking on New Query button at the top left in Blue color will allows the seller to create a new ticket with the admin. The New Query interface will look like this:
Submit: After writing the message in the text area, click submit to send a message to the MarketPlace Admin.
Viewing the tickets created by seller
1. View Replies: Click on “View Replies” at the left side of the ticket in the ticket listing.
The interface to see the ticket and reply to the Admin will pop up like this:
2. Reply: After writing the message to the Admin, click Reply in Green button to send the message.
3. Reply and Close: Click Reply and close if you wan to close the ticket after sending the message.
4. Close: Click “Close ” in orange button if you wan to close the ticket simply.
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