Method to Log Employee Activity on orders & customer accts?

[AnySupport]

Hello,

We are investigating transitioning to AbleCommerce as the core system for our call center/web site order processing from beginning to end. By the time we start an implementation, we'd be working with GOLD instead of 7 I believe, so I'm hoping this is the right place to ask.

I had found that users(employees-NOT customers) could add notes to orders, and either natively or through some customization, they can add notes to customer records directly. I also see there is a site wide log for admins to be able to read.

However, since we would want to be using this our primary system, it means our employees would also be processing orders (entering new orders for customers - who may or may not have/want a web account), accessing and working on existing orders, or reviewing new orders before releasing it for charging the card (our business requires hands on review, we mostly never just take an order from a customer and send it through without some oversight).

So we'd have multiple people processing orders at once. I had thought there was a log/stamp of who entered ordered or accessed orders (without requiring the user to remember to manually add an internal note). I had thought we could then use that to make/commission a couple of custom reports/logs that would be viewable by our CS Managers, without having to open up those users as super admins to every other system control. I cannot find any user history stamp anywhere though.

Has anyone else ever done this with their AbleCommerce system? Either through customization or through purchasing an add-on (or a combination of both)? I understand now that this will not be a simple project as I had hoped, but I'm trying to determine if it is even possible at all to do. I'm afraid that if we can't monitor/log our employee's activity, it could be a dealbreaker on AbleCommerce entirely, which would be highly disappointing.

Please let me know either way. Or perhaps where to investigate further?
Thank you,
Eliz

[jmestep]

There is really nothing other than what the audit log shows under reports, which is kind of sketchy. I had talked with one client about doing one, but they never came back with specifics of what all they wanted logged. There is a need for it.

[AnySupport]

Hmm..
I've been thinking about the whole thing since your message to try and determine what functionally I'm really looking at.

I found this: http://help.ablecommerce.com/mergedProj ... _notes.htm

That there are automatic notes made on an order at least (haven't determined yet if a similar history is recorded on a customer account). Would you be aware if it is possible at all to override the "author" field on a System entry? That might be the place to do it, for at least order creation.

If it would be possible to check if the user entering the order belongs to say a particular group (defined for our CS reps) then put their log in as the author, otherwise leave it as System, which would mean the customer entered their own order.
Then a subsequent customization would be reporting on that table/field for summarizing activity?
A logical followup is that, if that area can be worked with for customizing 'system' messages AND can be accessed for reporting purposes (through customization or plug ins), then that would be the place to try and add logging for other employee related actions.

To be clear, I'm just hashing it out to understand if it is at all possible and not an already known impossible area to work within. I'm only asking if you or anyone knows of the feasibility based on past experience and not asking for specifics on how to do it or for anyone to take that kind of time!

Thank you!!

[jmestep]

Yes, it would be possible to replace the name system with a username. But since you want it for other actions (and you will probably want to add new actions as time goes on), it would be best to have one table that stores all the info, like timestamp, type of action taken, username, maybe even more detail about what was changed from what to what. Then you could filter the report. If you are familiar with SQL Server queries at all, you might want to look at our Report/Export wizard. I created it originally for a client who wanted a lot of custom and ad-hoc reports as a cheaper way for them to have that. One-off reports in the admin could take 4-6 hours each to do, so this is something reusable and the only time spent is how long it takes someone to create a query to pull the data.