Home > XML IDE - XML Editor > Customers > Modernizing an Old FAX Based Order System

Modernizing an Old Fax Based Order System

Featuring XML Pipeline Server

This customer story features an organization which owns more than 900 menswear stores in the United States and Canada. Their more sophisticated clients like to buy menswear that is custom designed to fit their specific measurements. These custom orders were previously hand written by the shop assistant and then sent by fax to the company headquarters where an operator had to re-type all the information into a terminal. This approach was error prone and very time consuming.

In need of an upgrade, the customer came to IVI Technologies at the beginning of 2015 and presented their requirements. The IVI Team worked with the customer to design a much better solution that fit within their current store technology and was within the company's budget.

In order to improve order accuracy and reduce time, all stores running point of sales software began to collect custom orders on a simple form. The form data is saved as an XML document and sent to an SFTP server hosted at the company headquarters. When a new order arrives on the server, an email notification is sent to the operator. The operator verifies the order, assigns an internal ID, and submits the order to the mainframe using an HTML form. With this solution there is no need for handwritten notes, slow faxing, or manual tracking. The data is collected, transferred, and maintained in electronic format from start to finish.

The following diagrams shows the old and the new system side by side.

Legacy Fax Based Order System

Modernized Order System

XML Pipeline Server is a perfect fit for this customer. With its built-in support for SFTP and SMTP, XML Pipeline Server pulls the custom orders from the secure FTP server and generates email notifications.

The following XML pipeline pulls the order from SFTP and sends two email notifications ã’– one for the operator to review the order and the other rendered as a PDF document for archival purposes.

Here the XSLT transformation which generates the Email notification. In the email body the operator can see the order summary and access the order details by clicking on the hyperlink.

The hyperlink triggers the execution of different XML pipeline through a simple HTTP GET and renders an HTML form.

Here you can see the XML pipeline triggered by clicking the hyperlink embedded in the email.

The following screenshot shows a portion of the HTML form in which the operator assigns the internal ID after the order has been verified.

In the following screenshot we can see the order turned into a PDF document using Stylus Studio XSLT Editor. This particular XSLT transformation takes advantage of XSLT 2.0 for-each-group to organize the list of items by order.

Lastly, when the operator clicks the submit button on the HTML form, the third XML pipeline gets executed. If the order was already processed by another operator, a simple HTML page is rendered with a warning message, If it has not been processed the order is updated and the submitted back to the mainframe via secure FTP.

---

If you have a similar requirement or want more detailed information, please contact us and we can get you started right away.

If you have a great story or quote about XML Pipeline Server or Stylus Studio XML IDE that you would like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please Contact Us and let us know how XML Pipeline Server or Stylus Studio has helped you or helped your company.

Prev: "Genpro XML Data Processing Case Study" Next: "Enterprise Data Processing for Standard Bank"