Web Services Overview
If you looked up web services in a technical dictionary you might find them defined something like:
Web Services is the umbrella term of group of loosely related web-based resources and components that may be accessed by other web applications using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) or its encrypted counterpart (HTTPS – hypertext transfer protocol (secure)).
Hopefully, that's about as technical as we're going to get!
So far as many Khaos Control users are concerned, all they need to know is that a web service running on their Khaos Control server receives details of sales orders taken by their website immediately the customer places the order, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These sales orders then go straight into the Sales Invoice Manager Staged Processing screen, where they are ready to be processed.
Other web services provided by Khaos Control include facilities for things such as:
- Telling your website how many units of each item you have left in stock. Your website could then do things such as automatically tagging items with a "Buy Now - only 5 left" flash or add a "Sorry, we've sold out of these, why not try..." message that links to other stock items you've previously linked as cross-sells.
- Maintaining multiple website categories (the search paths that may show up in your web browser as "biscuits", letting you see how far you've drilled down into your website) and the specific products that get displayed on your website.
- Receiving details of catalogue requests and prospects who want you to "email me with special offers".
More detail of a highly-technical nature is provided in the integration guide. Please email Development if you're updating (or replacing) your website and would like a copy for your web developers.