QuoteWerks Support Portal

 Hi all, new to the forums, new to the software, and, generally, this kind of software is not in my wheelhouse but I've been tasked with figuring out whether Quotewerks can do what my boss has asked us to do with it.  Namely, he wants us to be able to generate a product serial number based on some key elements as one of our major pieces of hardware has a lot of variability baked in and each is created specific to the job it's intended for.  I've cruised the forums and even dug up a nearly decade-old version of the user manual but I haven't yet found a solution to the problem, both because some forum questions seem to imply it isn't possible and because so many of you are so experienced that the discussion is miles over my head.

That being said, this is what we would like to do.  Let's call the base product D.  When one of our sales people starts to enter D into a quote, they are first prompted with how many boards it contains, either one or two.  Once they've answered that question, they are asked how many ports each board will carry.  If the answer to the first question was 2, they are then asked how many ports are on board one and how many on board two.  If the answer to the first question was one, they are only prompted how many are on board one.  After answering that, they are prompted with what type of cabling it uses and on and on.  In total, there are roughly six or eight variable answers.  Once all of these variables are assigned through a question and answer, Quotewerks would generate a product number based on those variables so that the guys in manufacturing know exactly what specs to build the hardware to.  Each of these variables would also effect the cost of the hardware as obviously two board with ten ports each would be a more expensive unit than one board with five ports. 

Many other products in our line would hypothetically behave the same way as our product catalogue isn't huge, but each product has a huge capacity for wide variation.  Is this possible in Quotewerks?  If not, is there some alternative that would still let you generate an end product with defined variables?

Thanks for all your help, guys.

This is complex and I don't think QW will do everything you want, but it might be able to get close and could then be 'topped up' with some custom development.

Take a look into the QuoteWerks Configurator, this allows you to build a flow/wizard the user would run through.

https://www.quotewerks.com/helpfilelatest/creatingeditingandprintingaconfiguration.htm

Each step, typically, asks for a product (or products) choices.

The end result wouldn't generate one product with one part number, however.

What's the logic of generating that part number? Does each step indicate a character that could be used to create the master product code? Ending up with something like D-2-10-10-CABLEA

In terms of pricing, does each step/config element have a price associated?

i.e. 

D - £1.00

2 (boards) - £2.00

10 ports - £1.00

10 ports - £1.00

CableA - £0.50

Total price = £5.50?

You might want to take a look at the Configurator: https://www.quotewerks.com/helpfilelatest/creatingeditingandprintingaconfiguration.htm

I don't know ultimately how many Product Codes you could end up with... if the Configurator wouldn't do it for you, then certainly a custom script could output the Product Code. Custom scripting is definitely more techie orientated, but a developer (like myself!) could help you out with that.

I wrote quite a detailed reply to this yesterday, which unfortunately didn't seem to appear; maybe because I put the URL to the QuoteWerks Configurator Documentation.

Firstly, I'd take a look at the QW Configurator option. 

Think of this like a workflow/wizard process, each step presents products/navigations down the workflow based on your previous choices. This would end up with X number of individual products that you could then group together.

QW isn't going to create a part number, based on the contents of the group, but that could be scripted to create something based on the contents below somehow.

https://www.quotewerks.com/helpfilelatest/configurations.htm

I wrote quite a detailed reply to this yesterday, which unfortunately didn't seem to appear; maybe because I put the URL to the QuoteWerks Configurator Documentation.

Firstly, I'd take a look at the QW Configurator option.

Think of this like a workflow/wizard process, each step presents products/navigations down the workflow based on your previous choices. This would end up with X number of individual products that you could then group together.

QW isn't going to create a part number, based on the contents of the group, but that could be scripted to create something based on the contents below somehow.

I had thought about that as an option and I agree that it's probably the best solution.  My boss tends to have a very specific vision in his mind of how he thinks things should be done and while I don't think this matches his exact thought, it is the closest I've seen to what he has described wanting.  I'll see if I can string together something that matches what he described.  Thanks for the speedy response Matt.  You seem to be the board MVP on all things QW.  I will no doubt be back to ask more questions once we actually get stuff rolling.

Haha! I'm sure a software developer somewhere would happily take $xx,xxx off your hands to build something to exactly your boss' expectations :)

I think the Configurator is worth your investigation. The documentation is good and if you search YouTube for "Configurator QuoteWerks" you'll find basic/intermediate/advanced videos. They're a few years old, but the concept will be along the right lines.

If the configurator does what you want to the sort of 90+% level, it might be that we can get you to 90 'lots' % with a little bit of custom work.

Do post back with any queries!