Architecture Overview
Overview
The following is an overview of the technical environment in which Aspenware Commerce functions. Commerce is designed to work with two Point of Sale systems, RTP|One and Siriusware, multiple different payment providers, as well as several other third-party products, to provide ultimate flexibility for our resort clients.
Aspenware Commerce System Architecture Diagram
(click image to enlarge)
Component Detail and Troubleshooting
Each component plays an important role in the overall function of the system. This section provides detail and offers common troubleshooting tips for each component.
1 - Microsoft Azure Cloud
Description: Azure is the cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers. Azure houses Aspenware Commerce.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
Azure Outages: Azure rarely goes down, but there are occasional outages. When these occur if it impacts the site Azure location the site may go down (usually no longer than 1 hr is the max we've seen). Aspenware will proactively reach out to resorts and alerts them when Azure outages are resolved. There are also several sites online to check the current “health status” of Azure. They will indicate if there is some sort of global outage and will offer updates as to when it will be back online and/or what specific components of Azure may be affected.
Improper Scaling: The most common issue is that Azure isn’t properly scaled for the load (load meaning resources required for volume of customers on the site). This can result in outages. See Aspenware’s article about Scaling for Flash Sales or Product Launches to ensure you are prepared for high-traffic dates.
2 - Aspenware Commerce
Description: Aspenware Commerce is often referred to by its open-source foundation, nopCommerce. nopCommerce is an open-source eCommerce solution based on Microsoft's ASP.NET Core framework and MS SQL Server 2012-2016 database. It provides a catalog frontend and an administration tool backend, allowing shopping cart creation.
Aspenware has greatly enhanced the nopCommerce platform with custom components that build upon and enhance nopCommerce functionality for resort industry users to create its Aspenware Commerce product.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
Bugs: Occasionally, there will be bugs with Aspenware Commerce. If you have found a bug, please contact your Aspenware Representative by emailing support@aspenware.com for assistance and troubleshooting. For guidance on reporting bugs, refer to Guidelines on Submitting Tickets.
SSL/DNS Entries Expiring: Your Aspenware Commerce site and Unity instance(s) have a custom domain such as shop.yourresort.com, which also has SSL security. This SSL and DNS entry requires upkeep by the resort to keep the SSL cert up to date annually. Your Aspenware representative should reach out when expiration dates are nearing, but this upkeep is ultimately the responsibility of the resort and should be tracked by your IT/networking team. For assistance on manually renewing an SSL refer to Aspenware’s article How to generage .pfx file for new/renewed SSL cert. It is also recommended to set up SSL to auto-renew.
Unsupported Configuration: Aspenware publishes its supported configuration options within its documentation. Sometimes configuration changes that are not supported are made by administrators that can at best cause a published product to be unusable and at worse take down the site. If a change was recently made that coincides with a P1 or product issue, consider undoing the change and opening a support ticket to confirm the configuration change you made was a potential culprit. Aspenware only asserts that the configuration detailed in its extensive documentation is supported, please avoid enabling unsupported configuration.
3 - Payment Gateway
Description: Aspenware Commerce supports the integration of digital payment providers through a payment gateway via https. See Overview: Payment Gateways for a list of currently supported providers. Affirm payments are also supported for financing purchases over time.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
Payment not processing correctly: Check the Payment Gateway Documentation for the payment provider that you are using for configuration instructions and common troubleshooting.
Provider Outage: Occasionally, the payment provider may have an outage or issue. Contact the provider representative for assistance.
4 - Resort Website
Description: Each resort hosts its own resort brand site. Aspenware Commerce offers custom theming to on the ecommerce site to ensure seamless integration with the resort’s brand site. Customers are not usually able to determine when they’ve left the brand site and moved to Aspenware Commerce’s ecommerce store site.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
Brand site outage or header issue: When the header from the brand site is used on the Aspenware Commerce site, an outage on the brand site or issue with the header can materially impact the shop. Typically when the brand site and or header issue(s) are resolved, the shop will be restored as well. If desired, contact Aspenware support and we can usually disable the header integration so that your shop can continue to function while the resort brand site is down.
5 - Google Analytics Tag Manager
Description: Google Analytics Tag Manager is a free tool that allows you to manage and deploy marketing tags (snippets of code or tracking pixels) on your website (or mobile app) without having to modify the code. Information from one data source (your website) is shared with another data source (Google Analytics) through Google Tag Manager. Google Analytics is an analytics tool that provides reports. It is used to send data from your website to other marketing/analytics tools.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
Google Analytics is not working properly: See our documentation on Google Analytics for configuration instructions and troubleshooting.
Google Tag Manager JS Library Interferences: Very occasionally JS referenced from tags that fire within the shop can potentially interfere your shop. For this reason, it is important to always test Google Tag Manager changes in both test and production before publishing changes or new tags. Ensure that you check the console for any potential new errors being introduced by tag changes prior to publishing.
6 - General Ledger Management System
Description: Aspenware Commerce supports the integration of several third-party GL management systems to provide detailed reports and tracking via an FTP flat file.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
Failed orders: If an order fails to interface to the POS for any reason (list of potential order failure reasons can be found here), and the order is not sent to the POS within the same day that it was created, it can result in a GL imbalance. This is because the Aspenware Commerce payment for the order will occur on the day that the customer placed the order, but the balance will transfer to the POS for the order on the day that the order successfully interfaces to the POS. For this reason, Aspenware has created an order failure alert email that can be sent to resort staff in the case that an order fails to send to the POS. If the issue is a product setup issue or something that can be resolved by the resort, those measures should be taken first within the same business day as the failed order. If the failed order issue is unable to be resolved internally, either manually enter the order into your POS, or open a support ticket with Aspenware who can potentially help fix any issues with the failed order.
7 - Unity API
Description: Aspenware’s Unity API product is built to integrate with leading systems including RTP|One, Siriusware, Skidata, Infogenesis, Axess, and more. It is a single API that supports all major resort systems.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
See our Unity Documentation for information on this product.
Internet Outage: Unity is hosted in the resort's infrastructure so if the outage is due to an internet outage, contact your local tech support.
Bugs: If you have found a bug, please contact your Aspenware Representative by emailing support@aspenware.com for assistance and troubleshooting. For guidance on reporting bugs, refer to Guidelines on Submitting Tickets.
8 - Point of Sale API
Description: The Point of Sale API is also on the webserver and works in tandem with Unity to handle all calls to and from the Point of Sale database. For RTP|One, resorts may use Aspenware’s Unity product, with or without RTP’s web service, RTP|Connect. For Siriusware, this is ww.dll. The distribution of which API performs which calls varies depending on the Point of Sale system and on the configuration.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
For issues with the Point of Sale API, contact your POS product representative.
9 - Point of Sale Database Server
Description: The Point of Sale Database Server houses all of the back-end order management and customer tracking in its database. This houses both the production database as well as the test database. Aspenware Commerce currently supports the use of RTP|One and Siriusware for Point of Sale systems.
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
For issues with the Point of Sale product, contact your POS product representative.
10 - Third-Party Products
Description: Aspenware Commerce integrates seamlessly with many third-party partners who are able to connect directly through the Unity API. Integration partners include Skidata, Axess, and more!
Common Troubleshooting and Communication:
For issues with third-party products, contact your product representative.