1 - Trial Release

Welcome to Elastic Path 5!

The SnapItUp Demo Store is a fully-functional store that is included with this release. This store can be used to demonstrate the majority of Elastic Path 5 features.
This Trial Release has the following limitations:
- Operation System: only Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server are supported
- Application Server: only Tomcat 5.5 is supported
- Database Server: only Apache Derby is supported
- Source Code: no Java source code is included. (Source is included for Velocity templates)
- SSL certificate: the SSL certificate that is provided with this release is a non-trusted certficate as it is not possible to get a trusted certificate for a localhost application. Therefore you may see a security warning message in your browser when you switch from a non-secure to secure connection and vice-versa.

Installation, Startup and Shutdown

Minimum system requirements:
- Processor: 1.3 Ghz Intel or AMD CPU (or equivalent processor on Mac)
- Hard disk space: approximately 1GB
- Memory: 1 GB RAM (2GB strongly recommended)
To install, run the executable ep5-trial.exe and follow the instructions provided on the screen.
Once the application is installed, start the Elastic Path server through your Start Menu.
- You will need to wait 2 to 5 minutes for the server to start depending on how powerful your PC is.
  - The SnapItUp demo storefront and Commerce Manager administration site will NOT be available until startup is complete.
- Your CPU will be running at 100% during startup, this is normal.
- This trial release has no visual indicator of when the server has been started, but we will be adding this feature soon.
- The server will show up in the your Microsoft Windows process list as "elasticpath.exe"
Once the server has started, you can access both the Elastic Path Storefront and the Elastic Path Commerce Manager through your Start Menu.
The first time you attempt to use the Storefront or Commerce Manager applications, you will need to upload your trial license key which was sent to you after you registered for the trial download.
Memory consumption:
- Elastic Path 5.1 is an enterprise software application and is intended to be deployed on a relatively powerful server machine with 2GB of RAM to use all of the features
- However we understand that trial evaluators often don't have this much memory on their PCs
- So if you are running Elastic Path on a desktop PC with less than 2GB of RAM and experience performance issues with Elastic Path or your other applications, be sure to do the following:
  - shutdown your other applications
  - check your hard drive light for activity. If your hard drive is constantly in use, try disabling your swap file and this should drastically improve performance
  - restart your PC
You can shutdown the Elastic Path server through your Start Menu. It takes about 30 seconds for the server to shutdown.
Allowing external access to your Elastic Path server:
- To allow other users on your local office network to access your Elastic Path demo store or Commerce Manager, you will need to do the following:
  1. ensure that port 11080 is open in your PC's firewall.
  2. find your PC's "Full computer name" (right-click on "My Computer", click Properties, click "Computer Name" tab, look at your "Full computer name")
  3. send out the following 2 links to your colleagues (replacing "YOUR-PC-NAME" with your full computer name):
    - http://YOUR-PC-NAME:11080/ep5sf - this is the URL to your SnapItUp demo store
    - http://YOUR-PC-NAME:11080/ep5cm - this is the URL to your Commerce Manager

Documentation

All product documentation is available online.

Usage Tips - SnapItUp Demo Store

The SnapItUp Demo Store comes complete with:
- pre-populated product catalog containing thousands of products that you would find in a "camera store"
- pre-configured promotions, shipping regions, shipping service levels, taxes and user database
We suggest you become familiar with these pre-configured settings available through the Commerce Manager under the "Promotion" tab and "Admin" tab. This will allow you to demo various product features such as promotions and tax calculations.
You must have JavaScript enabled in your browser for certain features to work correctly in the SnapItUp store.
The demo store is configured to support 2 languages and a single currency. This is not a limitation of the Elastic Path application which can support multiple languages and currencies in a store.
When adding products to the catalog through the Commerce Manager, it may take up to 1 hour before the products will appear in search results as the Storefront is re-indexed every hour. If you do not want to wait this long, you can stop and restart the Elastic Path server which forces a re-index (after restarting the server, it will still take a few minutes for the re-index to take place before your new items appear).
When making modifications to products and promotion rules in the Commerce Manager, the change may not be reflected immediately in the Storefront. This is because the products' cache entries as well as the rules in use in the Storefront are only updated periodically for performance reasons. The time required depends on the job configuration defined in the quartz.xml configuration file. We suggest you become familiar with this file so that you can adjust the job running intervals to suit your needs. Please refer to quartz.xml for Storefront jobs and quartz.xml (CM) for Commerce Manager jobs.
The demo store is pre-configured with a "fake" payment processor that doesn't actually attempt to authorize the credit card entered. However, it does attempt to validate that the format of the number is correct for the given card type. To complete a checkout, choose the "VISA" card type with card number "4111111111111111".
Some editions of the demo store are configured with a product cache pre-loader enabled. This pre-loader lengthens the system startup time and may be disabled in commerce-config.xml if you are frequently restarting the store, e.g. while customizing the application.
PROMOTIONS: in order to qualify for the promotion "Buy any digital SLR camera and get a FREE carrying case" you must add both a digital SLR camera AND a carrying case to your cart. You will then notice that the price on the carrying case drops to $0.
PROMOTIONS: if you change an existing promotion through the Commerce Manager after you add an item to your cart, the promotion will not automatically apply to the items already in your cart.

Other Services

If you require assistance with your implementation, technical support or training, our world-class Professional Services team is available to ensure you get the most value from your purchase. Please contact your account manager for more information on these and other valuable services.

Regards,

Elastic Path Customer Service