RMS Integration

Hi,



Has anyone here done some integration with Microsoft RMS and CS-Cart? I know some companies use x-cart and do that integration. I think CS-Cart is much better and therefore wandering if anyone has done this kind of develpment.



Regards!



Sam

We’re interested in MS RMS - CS-Cart integration as well. Any advice would be helpful.

Coul either of you expend onw hat you are trying to integrate. I am about to open a retail physical store and have been looking at MS RMS, but haven’t looked into the online integration yet. hav eyou come across certain problems? Are you trying to get something in particular done?

Good luck finding any integration systems “outta the box” for anything other than Intuit’s Quickbooks “Point of Purchase”. Intuit simply controls such a large market share that developers can’t afford to put their efforts into anything other than Intuit products. :frowning:



I have been following Microsoft’s Office Accounting program for the last few years as it was an excellent alternative to Quickbooks. You could use SQL Express database, direct integration with Ebay, etc, etc,. They made a very valiant attempt to capture a chunk of Intuits marketshare, unfortunately MS recently pulled the plug (just as it was actually very close to being ready for prime time after nearly 3 years) and stopped development on this for some mysterious reason!

I work for a company with 50 RMS Stores. I am in the process of writing software that will allow you to access cs_cart through an addon webservice. My backend is Microsoft Great Plains though. I plan on having my first version done within the next two weeks now.



The software could be easily adapted to RMS, but I was wondering how you would handle the orders in RMS?



Scott Emick

DBA - Programmer

Maybe like they do in Netsuite?

Netsuite looks similar to GP, which has everything in it. GP has inventory, sales, accounting, fulfillment, etc to a limited extent.



I will have to look at the RMS HQ to see what it can do.

interested as well…

any one had any luck ?

Hi all, sorry for my late reply.



We are using RMS for our bookshop and CS-Cart for our webshop. There are companies out there like Nitrosell which offer an integration solution, quite good by the way, but quite expensive. There are others who offer integration with X-Cart (I believe).



I like CS-Cart and I believe the integration can be done. We are working on it and we are taking small steps because of lack of time and resources.

This is what we have found:

For the orders:

  1. RMS has already something of a webintegration for Yahoo Stores. There is a table in RMS database called the Exchange table. There, you add a row with a some data and an the order information in XML.
  2. Once a new order is added, you go to the POS and hit CTRL+F10 (if I remember well) and it will pull up all the orders that are in the exchange table that have not been processed. If litteraly pick up all the info and even creates clients for you if they don’t exist.



    Our approach in development:
  3. Use webservices. We are using Amazon’s webservices and a modification of the SMS addon. Once an order is processed, we then send the info to the amazon’s webservices.
  4. On our RMS server, there is a little app in php that pulls the info from Amazon’s webservice and then adds the orders into the Exchange table.



    For uploading inventory:

    RMS also has the integration ready for uploading and updating inventory, orders, etc. to a yahoo store. However, our approach will be to do it again through Amazon webservices.
  5. In RMS you can create COM apps to “hook” them or call them through “hooks”. There are a lot of events that can be used to call a COM app and get the information from RMS database and convert it into a file or XML format.
  6. That info is pushed to the Amazon webservice and then pushed to CS-Cart and use the exim.php functions to upload the file through webservice call in CS-Cart. This is a concept approach.



    For clients:

    Again, it will be a matter of probably reading a bit more how RMS does it for the Yahoo stores. We have not gotten into this yet.



    The reason we are using Amazon webservices is that it is simpler than SOAP or NuSOAP, plus is more robust and you can add other events and notifications etc.



    What anyone doind this will need of course is the RMS Customization Guide which you can get only get from a Microsoft Partner. I got it but I’m don’t think I’m allowed to distribute it. I can for sure upload a sample of the XML accepted by the Exchange table.



    I hope that someone with more experience can create something of a complete solution. I asked the CS-Cart tech support and they say they can create something for exporting and importing xml orders, inventory for $800, which to me was too much money for that functionality.



    shn

Thanks that is great information about RMS, it is hard just being a customer and not a partner to get all this information. :frowning:

did anyone get anything on this? Im interested willing to split developing fees

I have the know-how to do it, but no time, and I don’t have the partner resources, if I had that I could do it easily. The way hooks work is simple enough, you drop your dll into the addins folder and modify the registry. What you need to know is what are all the events that can be hooked and what the object model of RMS is. Here is a sample of what the registry looks like:



Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks]
"Count"="8"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\000]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"="GiftCardProcessing.MicrosoftAddIns.RMS.Hooks.PostTransaction"
"Parameter"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\001]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="1"
"ObjectName"="GiftCardProcessing.MicrosoftAddIns.RMS.Hooks.PrintReceipt"
"Parameter"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\002]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="2"
"ObjectName"="GiftCardProcessing.MicrosoftAddIns.RMS.Hooks.TenderBegin"
"Parameter"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\003]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="4"
"ObjectName"="GiftCardProcessing.MicrosoftAddIns.RMS.Hooks.AddItem"
"Parameter"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\004]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="6"
"ObjectName"="GiftCardProcessing.MicrosoftAddIns.RMS.Hooks.InitializeTransaction"
"Parameter"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\005]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="7"
"ObjectName"="GiftCardProcessing.MicrosoftAddIns.RMS.Hooks.StartPOS"
"Parameter"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\006]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="8"
"ObjectName"="GiftCardProcessing.MicrosoftAddIns.RMS.Hooks.QuitPOS"
"Parameter"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\007]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="15"
"ObjectName"="GiftCardProcessing.MicrosoftAddIns.RMS.Hooks.TenderEnd"
"Parameter"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\008]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\009]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\010]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\011]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\012]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\013]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\014]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\015]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\016]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\017]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\018]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\019]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\020]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\021]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\022]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\023]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\024]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\025]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\026]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\027]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\028]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Retail Management System\Store Operations\Hooks\029]
"Caption"=""
"Description"=""
"HookType"="0"
"ObjectName"=""
"Parameter"="0"

Now all that being said, it would probably be easier to just access the RMS database and input the records for an order.


  1. You could run the sql profiler and do a capture on a new order in RMS. It’s probably just writing to the Order & OrderEntry tables. There is a flag in the Order table called closed. I’m not sure if it then writes to history when the order gets closed.
  2. You could read the orders & order_details from the cscart database and push those into the RMS database directly once you get a picture of what is happening.



    Using hooks or api’s on either side is going to complicate things quite a bit.

Hi all,



Did anyone have luck with this? I´m very interested in connect my RMS stores to my web store.



Chris

Ditto. I have a client on Microsoft RMS and we are looking to upgrade their custom cart solution to either CS-Cart or Magento. I see there are 3rd party solutions for connecting Magento to Microsoft RMS in addition to E-Bay and Amazon Seller Accounts. Seems CS-Cart is behind the times in this respect primarily because Magento is much more popular so the developers go where there is the most money to be made.


[quote name='ligocc' timestamp='1331499466' post='132965']

Hi all,



Did anyone have luck with this? I´m very interested in connect my RMS stores to my web store.



Chris

[/quote]

Yep, CS-Cart is “behind the times” because they are not owned by eBay yet.

I am not familiar with Microsoft RMS, however, our team is currently developing full integration with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.



If MS RMS allows you to consume web services, it's entirely possible but very time consuming. The important is part is making sure all of your changes and customization are all done in addons and the core is never touched.

The worst thing is I don't see any indication from CS-Cart Developers as far as roadmap for Ebay, Amazon, and RMS. X-Cart and Magento have third party solutions for all. Even OPENCART has Ebay intetgration like we want!



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CS-Cart is as better cart than all three but integration with Amazon, Ebay and eventually RMS are very important. I will miss CS-Cart.