StoreSuite can now send notifications when you receive an order in three different ways: via SMS message to any phone in the world, via email or via MSN messenger, as you can see above. Because PHP is such a popular programming language, it was quite easy for me to find an open source library that "talks" to the MSN messenger servers. All I had to do was create a module in StoreSuite:



So basically all you need are two working MSN messenger accounts. To prevent abuse, MSN makes it mandatory that both accounts have to be on the others contact list, which simply means that you have to add account #2 as a contact in the MSN messenger program for account #1 and vice-versa.

So why would you want to use MSN messenger notifications? If you have someone responsible for stock keeping and or order processing who sits at a computer most of the day with MSN messenger open, then it's just another way to alert them that a new order has come through instantly:



You can also configure order notifications to go to one or more email addresses by enabling the "Notifications via Email" module with one click in the StoreSuite control panel:



Now that notifications are finished, we're also close to wrapping up importing from other shopping carts right into StoreSuite, which I'm very excited about. I'm not working on the import process directly, but from what I've seen it allows you to pick and choose exactly what to import from your existing third party shopping cart, such as orders and/or customers and/or products and/or settings, etc. We'll have some screenshots by the end of the week.