In the Admin>Order>order Profile Page>
 
What is the tab Predefined Order Email please

foxtrotdomains - this one I can't explain.
 
I have never taken notice of it before so perhaps someone can educate us.
 
Chris

The predefined order email is generated by the order system when the customer places an order through the payment gateway. In our case it says:
 
Thank you for your order with Ale On Tap.<br>You should also receive a confirmation email when your payment is verified by our payment gateway allowing us to deliver your selection or gift. <br>We will also send you another email as we get your delivery ready for dispatch.<br>
<b>Your Order number is {order_id}</b><br><br>
We will deliver to<br>
{delivery_name}<br>
{delivery_address1}<br>
{delivery_address2}<br>
{delivery_city} {delivery_zip}<br>
 
etc..

Thank you Ned - but that is just an alternative to using the status emails?
 
Either we send the message this way or we send the same message when an order receives the status "PAID"?
 
Or have I misunderstood?

Like I said - Too Many Places with email options.

Yes Chris you can do it either way but the advantage to us of using the predefined order email is to give instant feedback to the customer that the order has gone in. Later as we change the Order Status they get reports on how the order is progressing, paid, dispatched etc.

One of the things I appreciate about ViArt is its many options for sending different emails for different status, and even product specific email notifications which is quite rare among other carts.
 
But, in this case at least for the way I am set up I think the predefined order email will always go out exactly at the same time as the email I send with the "paid" status, as noted by Chris. There is probably a situation where the distinction between the two methods would matter? But I don't yet see it.
 
Greg

The speed of this does depend on the type of payment system you use. In the UK most card authorisation systems do not allow the vendor to collect card numbers and then process through a gateway, the vendor must pass the customer to the gateway where the card details are collected securely.
 
So in this case the predefined order email is sent to the customer when the customer presses the confirmation on the order details page. The administrator also is notified at the same time of the new order in progress.
 
Then the customer is redirected to the remote gateway and credit card details are entered and when accepted the gateway sends the customer a payment successful email. After this the gateway redirects the customer back to the vendors site and updates the order status to "Verified" when that email is sent by the vendor site to the customer.
 
By doing it this way if there is a communication error with the gateway, if the customer has a problem with a card or if the gateway can't communicate with the vendors server at least the customer knows the order is placed and if the confirmation doesn't arrive can query this with the vendor because the details for doing this are in the predefined order email.
 
 

Ned, that's very helpful, thank you
 
I will take a second look at my set up following your notes above.
 
Chris

Hi guys,
 
"Predefined Order Email" is NOT some kind of notification for orders.
 
If you go to any order details page (Dashboard > Orders > Sales / Orders > View/Edit) and click on user e-mail address there will appear a page offering to send an e-mail to customer with some pre-filled data. A link to this page will look like this http://yoursite.com/admin/admin_order_email.php?order_id=XX
 
So "Predefined Order Email" is the page where you can re-define settings for this e-mail form. If "Predefined Order Email" doesn't have any information then the default settings from script will be used. If you specify another text and tags in "Predefined Order Email" then default text will be neglected by the one on this page.
 
Hope that's clear now.
 
Regards,
ViArt Support Team