donation

Ain't integration fun!? We hope so... Lots of talk recently about integration GetPaid with PloneFormGen (for flexible forms leading into transactions) and Salesforce.com (to write transaction data into the CRM). These have long been areas of interest in the community, and I wanted to point out a couple threads of conversation going on around these (yes, I have been instigating some discussion again...).

PloneFormGen + GetPaid = single page checkout

At least, we hope! Ever since the first release of getpaid, we realized that a flexible  donation/payment form making option was desired for GetPaid. We know that everyone wants their donation form slightly different, so an option like
PloneFormGen, which also has wide adoption in the community, seemed like  an obvious choice.

One/Northwest and others have worked on an adapter for mapping PFG data into salesfoce.com, which seems like a great model for this use case. This leverages the flexible form making and integrates it into another system for storing/manipulating what was collected in the form - brilliant! For more on
this, see this blog post.

The concept would be similar for Getpaid integration with PFG: map fields from a form into GetPaid cart and/or checkout process. Some potential use  cases:
  - Make a single page checkout (so you enter all on one page and that generates the order directly)
  - Ordering multiple items from a single page

See an example of both of these at: http://tinyurl.com/53yr8o

See and contribute to thread here.

Salesforce + GetPaid = tracking those customers

See and contribute to thread here

And one day...maybe there will be a GetPaid + PloneFormGen + Salesforce.com integration! Oh the bliss!!

We would  appreciate your ideas, feedback, questions, and offers to contribute :)

At last I am getting around to updating some GetPaid news...over a month since the last posting. It has been way-busy in GetPaid land and for me personally, so here come hopefully a few updates.

Most exciting for me, is to see sites launch that are using GetPaid, especially when those sites also result in contributions to the product. Just recently, we had two of those:

• Trees for Life: TFL is actually a sponsor of the GetPaid Red Ochre release and we are very greatful for their contribution. Their site just launched with a donation/catalog management powered by GetPaid on a Plone 2.5 site. The site includes some custom email notifications and also a donation "add on" to your cart. Check out the site at www.TreesForLife.org .
  

• African Books Collective: African Books Collective is a non-profit organization of African publishers whose site uses GetPaid to power its book sales. The site, developed by the Ely Technology Group, is built on Plone 3 and uses Google Checkout. Thanks for adding a new processor to the mix! Visit the site: www.africanbookscollective.com

It's great to see we are almost at 300 downloads for the GetPaid RC1! So far just one small bug in that file so far so expect a final shortly. Already, new work has started on the trunk and in some of the branches, so I wanted to give a quick update about two exciting pieces.

Google Checkout Integration

Thanks to Michael Dunstan, a simple integration of Google Checkout now exists for GetPaid! That gets your order straight into Google Checkout so you can use their infrastructure for fulfillment and order management. See screenshot of order management interface.

This is good news for US non-profit organizations, as Google is offering GoogleCheckout for free (at least through end of this year). That means no processing fees, monthly fees etc to accept donations online!

Still pending is a smooth buildout experience to get the feature, but if you are interested, check here to check out the product (especially README!).

More sophisticated integration (ie getting messages back to GetPaid from Google Checkout) requires an SSL certificate and secure communications with the Plone site.

UPS Shipping Integration

Liam started off UPS integration and Kapil has refactored it, including unit tests and more. Now shipping costs can be looked up in real time from your GetPaid site. The work is currently happening in the UPS branch of the code, but will be rolled into the trunk and available tomorrow.

Some other goodies in the work include persistent shopping cart, ability to print order, and more!

If you have suggestions for things you would like to see, please send comments to our dev mailing list.

After a lot of design and development work at the sprint, Kapil is leading the charge to prepare the Red Ochre release!

Since the sprint, there has been a lot of refactoring. What does that mean? Well, for one, the product is getting a LOT better! But what that means that impacts you...is that we need your help testing.

The product is now available in a more traditional Plone product way - just download a tarball and stick in your Products directory, restart Zope and see how it goes! (for more on the issues with buildout see dev list message). Get the latest tarball from our Google Code downloads section (The Friday the 13th version is here).

You should be able to:

• Install it to your site
• Go to product config area and: Configure it for donations, shippable products, etc
• View order history, search them
• Note: to do this, you will probably want to generate test orders using the script included in the product.
  
• Go to content in your site and make it "buyable" or "a donation" from the actions menu
• Set the price etc
• Browse the site and when on buyable content, be able to add to cart
• Review your cart
• Checkout (fill out info for the order)
• View your order history
• Get Paid!