HCL Commerce Enterprise

Creating a default contract asset

The default contract defines the default behavior of a store. As with all contracts, you can set the available products, prices, payment methods, shipping methods, and other store behavior.

About this task

The store default contracts provided with the HCL Commerce starter stores contain terms and conditions that specify the following conditions:

  • Customers can purchase all products available in the master catalog for the store at standard prices set in the master catalog (no discounts or mark-ups).
  • Any shipping charges are paid to the seller (store).
  • Customers can return purchases without penalty charges within a certain number of days.
  • Customers can receive refunds using the same payment method used for the original purchase.

Also, the most general version of a store's default contract omits terms and conditions that restrict the payment and shipping methods that buyers can use. Omitting these terms allows buyers to pay for purchases using any of the default payment methods supported by the store and use any shipping method available in the store.

The default contract's properties are defined in its terms and conditions. Some of the terms and conditions reference business policies.

Procedure

  1. Review information about terms and conditions, contracts, default contracts, and business policies.
  2. Review the business policies defined in the wcs.bootstrap.xml file.
  3. Review the files used to create default contract assets for the starter stores. All starter stores files are located in the corresponding store archive file. Each starter store includes a businesspolicy.xml and contract.xml, which includes additional business policy information and default contract information.
  4. Create a businesspolicy.xml file by copying one of the businesspolicy.xml files in the starter store, or by creating a new file. If you want to create different business policies from the ones discussed, see the DTD file that corresponds to businesspolicy.xml.
  5. Load the businesspolicy.xml file using the loading utilities. If you are creating a multicultural store, you may want to create separate XML files for each locale your store supports. The locale-specific file should specify all description information, so it can be easily translated.
  6. Create a contract.xml file by copying one of the contract.xml files in the starter store archives, or by creating a new file. If you want to create a more complex default contract, review the B2BTrading.dtd or Package.xsd file which defines the structure of a contract file. The B2BTrading.dtd file is located in the workspace_dir/WC/xml/trading/dtd directory; the Package.xsd file is located in the workspace_dir/WC/xml/trading/xsd directory.
  7. Publish the contract using the ContractImportApprovedVersion command.

Results

Users can define contracts for specific customers using the HCL Commerce Accelerator.