Help me decide which Breezing Forms & VirtueMart integration extension I should use.

Question: Polished Geek has several Breezing Form & VirtueMart integration extensions to choose from.  How do I decide which one I need?

Answer: At client request over the years, we've developed several complex integrations between Crosstec Breezing Forms and VirtueMart.

And they just keep getting better and better! So we know it can be confusing sometimes to know exactly which one to use for your situation.

Here is some helpful information to guide you to using the right extension for your needs.

The extensions are presented in order starting with the latest, with the most features, to older versions with less features:

• Use Breezing Forms Custom Fields for VirtueMart if you have Joomla 2.5 and VirtueMart 2, and want to:
  
  • Embed a custom form into your product details page
  • Require customers to fill out the form and choose responses before adding the product to their cart
  • Adjust or override VM2 product pricing based on form responses
  • Include the form responses as part of the product information in the VM2 cart and order

Is Breezing Forms Custom Fields for VirtueMart the extension you need?  Buy it here.

 

• Use VirtueMart Breezing Forms Plugin PRO if you have Joomla 2.5 and VirtueMart 2 and want to:
  
  • Add a custom form to your checkout process
  • Collect form responses once for an entire order based on the product(s) selected
  • Include the form responses in the VM2 order (shown as part of the product information)
  • Do NOT need to adjust pricing based on form responses

Is VirtueMart Breezing Forms Plugin PRO the extension you need?  Buy it here.

• Use one of the free older versions of VirtueMart Breezing Forms plugin if you use Joomla 1.5 with VirtueMart 1.1, or Joomla 2.5 and VM2, and need to:
  
  • Trigger a form during checkout based on the product(s) selected
  • Just get the form filled in for use later by other applications or reporting - the responses are NOT brought into the cart or order view with the older plugins
  • Don't need to have the exact order tracked to the exact form responses, and generally only care about gathering form responses by customer

Try one of the older community versions (limited features)  - Download here.

Still not sure which extension you need? We'll be glad to help! 

Just open a presales support ticket with us and describe what you are trying to do in your store. We'll help you figure out which Breezing Form and VirtueMart integration extension best fits your particular requirements.

What field types are available?

Question: What field types can I use in my VirtueMart 2 product page using the Breezing Forms Custom Fields extension?

Answer: Breezing Forms by Crosstec supports a lot of different data elements. You can use any of these in your VirtueMart product page to collect the data you want to pass back to VM.

Here are some helpful links to see what's possible:

Example of all data elements

Forms Demos

Can I adjust product weight using this extension?

I want to adjust the weight of the product based on the answers in the form. Can I do that?

Answer:

The problem is that VirtueMart 2.0.x doesn't support weight modification for custom fields or custom field plugins, at least not last we checked. A while back we chatted with Max and he said they won't support it for custom fields until VirtueMart 2.2. If you can wait for that version, it's supposed to be out in Q4 2013.

Also - this will require hacking all your shipping plugins that need the weight adjusted. As described below, the solution will only adjust weight for the shipping calculation. If there are other places where you want / need the adjusted weight to be utilized, or the new weight total to be displayed, this solution would require additional customizations to achieve that. If the end goal is just to be able to control the shipping weight behind the scenes, based on the options chosen by the shopper, then this will work.

Here's the basic idea behind this solution.

1) Enhance our existing extension code to add a new field to adjust weight in the custom form of the product page.
2) Weight adjustment format would be "value|+price|+weight" (for example: "yes|+5.00|1.00" so it would add $5.00 and 1 kg or 1 pound or whatever, depending on your VirtueMart configuration).
3) Store that adjusted weight value in a variable when the shopper submits the form
4) Hack the shipping plugins to pick up that stored weight variable, and add it to the weight for that item, before it calculates the shipping cost.

The hardest part is modifying the various shipping plugins to support the weight as each one is different in how they process weight. The project cost would be a factor of the additional parameter work, which shipping plugins you are using, and how many plugins, and a few other factors.

Interested in this custom enhancement? Contact us and let's chat about your project!

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