18 Item Basket

This chapter describes the Item Basket. The following topics are covered:

Overview: Introduction to the Item Basket.
Processing: Information on how an Item Basket is used.
Technical: Integration, web services, and the database structure.

Overview

SIM often has the only wireless network in the store. It is very expensive to run two applications with different protocols in the same store, especially with smaller retailers. Therefore, SIM's Item Basket on the wireless device is very well suited to aid the retailer with line busting, investigative item lists, and creating gift registries.

The handheld provides an Item Basket menu option that can capture items and their quantities by entering/scanning the UPC.

When all items are captured, the handheld presents an option to print a ticket with a barcode for the customer. This barcode can be scanned or entered by a third-party system to retrieve the basket from SIM.

An external system, such as a POS, can scan the barcode of the ticket or enter the ID and make a web service call to SIM to retrieve the basket information.

The process consists of two parts. The first part is the creation of the Item Basket using the handheld. The second part is interfacing the details of the Item Basket to another system.

Business Case

The retailer uses the Item Basket functionality in their store at the check out to "line bust" when the lines are long. The SIM handheld device is used to create an Item Basket which is retrieved by the POS using a web service to complete the sale.

Figure 18-1 Business Process flow

Configurations

This section covers store parameters and security.

Store Parameters

Parameters for Item Basket printing:

Values: Manual / Automatic
Default: Manual
Topic: Item Basket
Editable: Yes
Automatic: the Item Basket ticket is printed when the transaction is complete.
Manual: the system does not automatically print the ticket. The user has the option to print the Item Basket ticket using the handheld options.

Security

Security exists for the following:

Accessing, creating, deleting, saving, and printing an Item Basket
Adding to and deleting items from an Item Basket

Processing

Item Basket is a feature only on the SIM handheld. It is located under the Inventory Management menu and is used to create a list of items and quantities. When creating an Item Basket, the user selects the type of Item Basket to create. The retailer can define various different types of Item Baskets necessary for their business in the database.

Once the type is selected, the next step for the user is to enter an Alternate ID for the basket. This ID can be anything (member ID, random number, and so on). It is used to identify the basket at an external systems (such as a point-of-sale system).

Items are entered/scanned along with the quantities to be added to the basket. Items can be added and removed from the basket. Once all items have been added, the basket can be saved. Item Baskets can be edited as well as deleted.

When an Item Basket is printed, a ticket with a possible barcode is printed that can be used to enter/scan at the POS system later to identify the Item Basket. Printing can happen by selecting the print option from the summary. Printing can also happen automatically upon saving the Item Basket, if the system is configured for automatic printing.

User Interface Guidelines

Item Basket functionality only exists on the handheld.

Technical

The Item Basket process is designed to allow retailers to pre-scan the items in a customer's cart so as to reduce the item required at the checkout. At check out at the register, the sales associate only needs to scan the Item Basket tag, which will retrieve the items., calculate the pricing, and handle the payment.

The process consists of two parts. The first part is the creation of the Item Basket using the handheld. The second part is interfacing the details of the Item Basket to the external system.

From a technical approach, Item Basket and all related items are designed like all other transactions in SIM: with a single header record and one or more detail records.

Business objects are used within the application code for all business processing.

Business Object	Description
ItemBasket	Item Basket is simply a collection of items and quantities that get persisted to the database.
ItemBasketLineItem	Item Basket Line Item contains attributes and logic for a single item within an Item Basket.
ItemBasketType	Contains information about various Item Baskets.

Integration

This section covers integration of Item Basket.

RIB

This functional area does not integrate using RIB to any other Oracle Retail products.

Web Service

SIM supplies an Item Basket SOAP web service. The service operations are supported:

Service Operation	Description
lookupItemBasketTypes	Retrieves all Item Basket types.
readItemBasketDetail	Reads Item Basket detailed information by SIM internal reference.
readItemBasketDetailByExtID	Reads Item Basket detailed information by reference external to SIM.
deleteItemBasket	Deletes an Item Basket.
saveItemBasket	Creates or updates the detailed information of an Item Basket. This operation requires having an activity lock.

Data Structure

The following database tables are used by SIM:

Table Name	Description
ITEM_BASKET	Contains Item Basket header information such as user ID, create-date, update-date, store ID, and customer reference.
ITEM_BASKET_LINE_ITEM	Contains detailed item level information for all the line items in the Item Basket.
ITEM_BASKET_TYPE	Contains the type of Item Basket.