Tutorial: Creating contracts to reference base entitlement contracts

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create base contracts and contracts that reference base contracts. Referencing base contracts provides you the ability to have multiple organizational accounts referencing a base contract, sharing the contract terms and conditions of the base contract. In this tutorial, you will create multiple organizations with accounts and contracts that reference shipping attributes specified in a base contract. A shopper with an account and contract that references the base contract will have access to the shipping attributes of the base contract when shopping in your Deprecated featureElite starter store.

A base contract refers to a contract that contains terms and conditions that apply to an organization unit that uses your store. A contract can refer to another contract. For example, contract A can refer to contract B. Thus, a buyer who is entitled to contract A will be entitled to all the terms and conditions from contract A, as well as to all the terms and conditions in contract B. For instance, a base contract (contract A) can specify that a customer receives 10% off purchases over a specific amount of money, or a base contract (contract B) can specify that a customer receives free shipping on orders over a specific amount of money. You can create a contract (contract C) to reference contracts A and B, allowing a customer to receive all the terms and conditions contained within these contracts, as well as additional terms and conditions specific to that customer contained in the referring contract C.

Note: A base contract must be in active state to allow customer contracts to refer to the base contract. You may not suspend or cancel a base contract if there are active customer contracts that refer to the base contract. Once you have specified that a contract should refer to another contract, you can change the reference, but not that the contract refers to another contract. The validation of a contract is not performed on base contracts. You may create a contract without buyer participants and without pricing and shipping terms and conditions. You can deploy this contract, but a buyer will not be able to purchase directly against a base contract. Contract validation is done on the contract that refers to a base contract. For example, the validation rule that states that there needs to be at least one pricing term and condition in a contract is done on the combination of terms from the contract and the base contract. Therefore, there must be at least one pricing term and condition in either the contract or the base contract.

Learning objective

After completing this tutorial, you should be able to:

Register organizations
Approve registration requests
Create accounts and contracts
Create contract referrals
Export accounts and contracts

Time required

Expect this tutorial 2 hours to complete. This tutorial can take longer to complete if you explore other concepts related to this tutorial.

Skill level

This tutorial is intended for intermediate business users responsible for creating organizational contracts and accounts.

To complete this tutorial you should be familiar with the following terms and concepts:

System requirements

Before beginning this tutorial, ensure that you have completed the following tasks:

Install WebSphere Commerce Version 7 or WebSphere Commerce Developer Version 7.
Publish the Deprecated featureElite starter store.