While we strive to get away from the "old fashioned" quote request form where the customer is responsible for filling in all the product data, and the form is typically lacking in clarity, there is still a need to pull in requests for custom item, or just for items that may not yet be in your catalog.
Essentially you can utilize a product in BC with product options to capture the additional information you require. Our quote process will take care of capturing customer information, validation, etc.
A huge benefit to having these requests pulled in this way is that these "forms" will now flow straight into Quote Ninja and allow you to utilize your standard quote process.
This article is not meant to be an exact guide, but it is more or less an explanation / overview on how to get we've helped other customers solve this issue.
Video Overview & Sample
Setup
Create A Product in BigCommerce
This will generally be named something like "Request a custom size _______" or "Submit your RFQ List" etc.
Build/Add Variants or Options (depends on your BC catalog setup) to be used on the product.
BC has the following types of product options / variants:
Checkbox, Date Field, File Upload Field, Multi-line text field, Multiple choice, Numbers only text field, Product Pick List, Swatch, Text Field
Remove Purchasability of the Product
The easiest way is to just set this product as not purchasable
A more advanced method is to hide the add to cart button via a custom product template, or custom script. (This is not essential, but there may be good reason to do this depending on how complex this custom product is, and if you're using options to calculate pricing, and want shipping and tax to be able to be properly calculated based on the items attributes.)
Depending on your theme, a small investment in a custom product page template for these custom request can go a long way to making them look less like a product, and more like a form. Hiding things like the price, reviews, related products, etc. Ref the first section of this document for details on BC's custom product page templates.
Limitation of BigCommerce file uploads
We will parse these, and pull them into QN, and allow you to download them from the line item.
We do not however have the ability to send files via a product option back into the cart, or even upload to a quote.
You will need to use the file upload option to send a quote back out with additional attachments.
What a new request looks like in Quote Ninja
Quoting these items
You may want to create a custom product that is purchasable, or make this product purchasable, and hide the add to cart button so that you can use the weight and dimensions tax settings, etc. from BC just as you would on a normal purchasable BC item.
Tip!
You can also create hidden custom products (set as not visible in BC) to use custom products on quotes for items that you might quote regularly
ie: You sell custom standing mats, and you sometimes need to sell custom sizes. You would create a Custom Standing Mat product, and give it a width and length input option. Within QN, you could fetch this product using the exact SKU.
Note that while it will usually work, we do not guarantee advanced pricing rules will work on hidden products with options. It is up to you to test, as we are technically stepping outside the bounds of what a normal use case of BC would be.