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Products tree |
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Products explorer
Software-Promoter has a feature called "Products explorer" - an easiest way to navigate products information in Software-Promoter database like folders in Windows Explorer.
Software-Promoter maintains a list of software products. Each product has property "Remark" and aliases list that uses in registration orders detection. Software-Promoter maintains a versioned database of products. You need to add at least one version for each product. The "Product" item defines only the name of software, all other data is defined in version.
NOTE: When you delete a product, all related information will delete too (versions, multi-language descriptions, submission items, registration orders and so on). Use "Delete" command with care.
Products
The product is a top entity in hierarchy. At first, product is a container for versions. Semantic role of the product is a common name for all its versions. Product maintains a set of aliases for best recognizing product during registration orders detection. You can specify any remark to the product here.
Product may be in active state or not. Inactive products are operable for all except submission to sites. As example, you can process customer's orders, create PAD files or track your existing submissions for inactive products.
Versions
The version is a basic entity that contains all data for submission, messages and PAD file generation. All fields in version properties must be filled out with care.
You may specify key generation method and greeting message template for each version. Look to Registration orders extraction for details.
NOTE: Field "suggested categories" is used only for compatibility with PAD specifications. Use a predefined drop-down list of categories.
Non-English descriptions
Each product version must be described. You must fill out at least English description for correct processing version in auto-forms, e-mail templates and during PAD files generation. If you want to submit product for national archives, you can create national (non-English) descriptions. Software-Promoter supports languages as described in ASP PAD specification.
Each site in the Software-Promoter sites collection has a "Language" property. Software-Promoter parses macros in the auto-forms according to this setting. Software-Promoter finds language-specific descriptions of processed version for the site's language. If the description for this language was not created, Software-Promoter uses English description.
English and non-English descriptions contain file related information, too. Software-Promoter uses "local file name path" parameter to get file size into appropriate field.
Software-Promoter tries to use proper character sets for all controls within "Edit description…" dialog.
PAD files import and generation
PAD is the next generation dataset that will allow Authors to communicate specific and most often requested information regarding their products to the Online Communities and Vendors abroad. PAD was designed with the future in mind. Many Internet sites support PAD.
If you have exists PAD file for your products, use this information for import products definitions into Software-Promoter database.
To do this switch to "Products" tab, press "Import PAD" command and specify exists PAD file. Note that PAD file cannot contain values for all version and multi-language description properties. I recommend checking these properties after PAD import is complete. If you want to import new version from PAD for product that exists in Software-Promoter database, select "Product already exists, append version only" option then select product from drop-down list below.
It is a good idea to provide PAD files for each of your product. PAD generation is a customizable process in Software-Promoter. Usually you need to create some number of PAD files for different sites because PAD sites use different parsers. It is sad but true. Some sites supports "UTF-8" encoding, another sites do not supports it, etc. Typically, national sites supports only national code page. Since version 2.60 Software-Promoter has an option "Human readable". Use it for sites that work with PAD files as text files, not as XML. PadGen uses this algorithm for making PAD files.
Software-Promoter supports some PAD extensions. TPA, ASP, S.A.V.E, MSN and RoboSoft extensions are supported.
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