Possibility to log order for selv-dowload services

[Christine Khor]

Hi
Does anyone know if it's possible to program the 'Submit order' button to log an order and at the same time download whatever software the service refers to?

Example: We have a selv-service download of Visio, which we'd very much like to log the transactions. So I was thinking that instead of just placing the download program in the description, I'd like to build it into the AFC. But in order to log the transaction, the user will have to submit the order - is it possible to program the 'Submit order' button to log the order (its default function) and at the same time download the software - probably using javascript?

Has anybody tried this, or knows how to do this? Any suggestions or help is much appreciated. Thanks.

[David Lucey]

I haven't seen anything done directly with the submit button to launch the installation, but you could have the order auto-complete and fire an email with a link that the user can click to launch the installer, that way the user can install at his or her convienience.

[Tim Schmitt]

I think David's solution would be the simpliest way to make that work.

[Christine Khor]

We've considered that solution. But want to find a more smarter solution.

We have some software that are automatically uninstalled if not used for a period of time. In such cases, when the user needs the software and realises that it's been removed then we want to make it easy and fast for them to download it. With the email solution it takes a slightly longer time before the user can download. Even worse, if  there's problem with the  email system.

Nevertheless, thanks for the suggestions. Some of our technical experts will try to see if they can find a solution. If they do, I'll definitely post our solution here.

[David Lucey]

A slightly different way would be to make the service non-orderable, but in the short description create a link to "Order" (make it look exactly like the normal order link that's seen in the search results list) and have that link go to the installer. The "Proceed to Order" button would be greyed out and disabled. Good luck, let us know what you come up with.

[David Lucey]

I think I figured out a way, use ISF to launch the installer, and have it fire onSubmit. You could either have a script for each title (might get unwieldy) or you could pass a variable that's stored within the request form dictionary.

[Ant Erickson]

Hi Christine,

Apologies for coming in late, but I think it depends largely on the software set-up.  If you have IE and machine settings configured to allow exe files to be run from a pages then David's solution sounds pretty good.

If you're looking for a more scalable solution, it will depend on the enterprise deployment technology (SCCM, SMS, etc).  We've got a couple of ideas on the drawing board for application deployments but as we use SCCM largely, we'll be looking to build a web service that can interact with the SCCM modules and basically send a computer name, software package ID and any other required information (as an example, business unit for granularity of deployment packages) which will return a take-action 'done' and success statement.

This would happen using ServiceLink and SCCM deploys software automatically; so it should only take a couple of minutes for this to process; if the response from the web service is a failure for whatever reason, then we can use a manual task in the workflow to send a ticket to the service desk to do this maunally.

Thanks,

Ant