Using Isotope to select Plans and get Quotes

I want to use Isotope to allow a web user to first select a drill down process – e.g. navigate through categories - and then to select a plan within a category, the products. Each product can have multiple options to enable or select to modify the price. Then when the client is ready, they can cart and checkout, which we will then follow up with a custom designed quotation based on the product selection and the options chosen. Now, my questions.

Can Isotope support these types of add-ons -- this is similar to Apple's iMac builder, where you can choose a base product and then add memory, add custom support options and other types of options, which will change the price of course.

Apple's iMac Builder
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MC8 ... jIwNTQ2Njc

The rest I think will be handled as standard.

You should be able to do most of that with variants. However, it's likely that depending on how many options you have that you could end up with 100s of not 1000s of variants, which would be a pain to manage. Therefore, I don't think that anything exists just yet for what you are describing.

I was actually looking at Apple's site today as I was configuring a new iMac and wondered the same thing. The way I see this being done is with a custom product type designed to create a bundled product. You can assign other products and their options to this bundled product in the backend admin, and when the user visits the product page they are presented with the base product as well as the other products and options as part of the selection process.

So say you create a bundled computer product that consists of 4 other products that can have varying pricing: processor, graphics card, hard drive, and monitor. You can then create a "bundled" product type that consists of one of each of those products and the associated options for each. The bundled product default is the lowest cost option of each sub-product, and the user can add on from there by selecting the variants of each sub-product, and the price is subsequently adjusted for the parent product.

Then you could add other products onto the bundled product just as easily (software, printers, accessories, etc) just like it offers on the Apple site. Then you only need to manage the variants of each sub-product and not every single combination of variants under one single product.

However, a problem that would need to be solved is that none of the sub-products would be aware of the other, which is the disadvantage here. So if a 256GB SSD Hard drive is only an option on the 27" monitor i7 processor, then we'd need to figure out a way so that the options were adjusted accordingly.

That's where I would start, at least.

I suspect isotope needs a static product option, instead of doin it like variants, since this isn't a variant of a product, but a product with options added...

I like your bundled products idea. Assign bundles products as related products, but then restrict a bundled product from appearing as a main product because you modify the module to only show non-bundled products by only showing products from certain product TYPES. Then you can display bundled products below the main product, preferably automatically (not as related products) but have logic that auto-updates the pricing when you select an option in the bundle.

Perhaps add a field to the select attributes that they "must match" values. So if inside a bundled product choices a product has been selected that has attribute x, then all other products that have attribute x should have a matching value (or at least intersect any value).

Perhaps you'd need to sometimes add attributes for that purpose only, but it could work to some extend. More complex dependencies might require an extra table??

pff, webshops tend to get complicated...
I thought I saw we get product groups now? Can they be used to select products that belong to the bundled product? (bundled product: PC; attr: =CASE, attrgr: CPU's, attrgr: MBO, attrgr: GPU, ...; dependency: CPU.socket == MBO.socket, dependency: GPU.slotType >> MBO.slotTypes)

Not sure if I'm helping here, but that is the way a system works I've used on several occasions.

Just to note. In this case it's not a IT system I'm building, but a quotation system for Life and Medical Aid Insurance policies. They usually have lots of optional choices and add-ons to choose from, then the person carts the option list and then they checkout/get-a-quote to have the service advisor call them back to complete the transaction. The setup will be reasonably simple:

Main Policy
Members -- variant (single, single+partner, single+partner+kids, etc).
[x] Add-on Rewards Program
Donations - pre-defined amounts, or zero. (*) No donation, ( ) R10.00, ( ) R20.00, ( ) R50.00, ( ) R100.00, own amount R____.00

It could be done with isotope, but I thought it would be easier using the carting system and registration integration to checkout the quotation. Perhaps isotope is not suitable for this type of situation and I should write something more custom.