At IU, what options does my department have for selling items from its web site, and whom do we contact about support issues?

If your Indiana University department is interested in selling university-related goods and services on the web, the following descriptions will give you an idea of the various options for establishing a departmental electronic store and the support you can expect from the Office of the Treasurer's e-Business team. For more complete information about electronic commerce at IU, see the University e-Business page.

You can also visit Tools for IU Information Providers, provided by the IU Webmaster, and the Ecommerce team web site.

The following information pertains to several possible e-commerce scenarios:

Note: In the scenarios below, www.indiana.edu is provided as an example; however, these scenarios apply equally to pages on www.iun.edu, www.iuk.edu, and www.iupui.edu as well.

• I run a non-secure (http, non-SSL) web server and have my own storefront software.

  The Office of the Treasurer requires that you run a secure (https, SSL) web server to conduct e-Business; see At IU, how do I obtain an SSL certificate for my web server? For more help and information, see the IU Webmaster page or contact the Ecommerce team at  bl-ecom-operationalteam@exchange.iu.edu .

• I run my own secure web server and have my own storefront software.

  The Office of the Treasurer offers you the options of either integrating the IPAS (Internet Payment Authorization System) Application Programming Interface (API) with your storefront software, or using the IUPayPlus web payment interface. The e-Business team provides support only for the IPAS API and for IUPayPlus.

• My web site is on www.indiana.edu, and I am willing to use the secure servers there. I don't have any storefront software and would like to use some provided by the university.

  The Office of the Treasurer offers you the option of using the storefront software developed by UITS, called E-Store@IU. You can customize the appearance and behavior of E-Store to suit your needs. E-Store can even operate in a mode that only outputs pre-printed forms that the customer prints and mails or faxes back to you. WebTech will provide consultation in the use of E-Store@IU. This service is described in the E-Store@IU Shopping Cart Merchant Guide.

• My web site is on www.indiana.edu, and I am willing to use the secure servers there. However, I don't want to use the university's storefront software, E-Store@IU. I want to install and use my own storefront software within my Information Provider account.

  The Office of the Treasurer offers you the option of integrating the IPAS API or the IUPayPlus web payment interface with your storefront software. The e-Business team can only provide consultation in the use of the IPAS API or the IUPayPlus web payment interface, and cannot provide in-depth support for the installation of any other storefront software. You must choose a storefront product that does not require any modification to the web server in any way. The storefront software must also allow for the integration of the IPAS API (ipasagent.cgi) functionality or the IUPayPlus web payment interface.

• My web site is on www.indiana.edu, and I have been using Transform with the secure central web servers to collect credit card payment information. I would like to continue to use Transform for my e-commerce.

  The Ecommerce team incorporates the IPAS API functionality into Transform using a variant called TransformEP (Electronic Payment). Many merchants are currently collecting credit card numbers using Transform as a payment method. The Ecommerce team has also interfaced Transform with IUPayPlus. IUPayPlus provides enhanced security and support for a redirect url that can return shoppers back to the merchant's server.

  Note: The Office of the Treasurer will not permit you to use any credit card payment collection method not approved by the IU Treasurer.

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