Forefront Business Solutions

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Protractor Software Tips

NAPA and Activant’s ePartExpert Integration

NAPA has made their product lines available in the ePartExpert catalog that is produced by Activant. This can provide NAPA customers who use Protractor a much more seamless experience and tighter integration between the two systems.
By default, Protractor uses the ePartExpert catalog to populate the vehicle cards with the year, make, model and engine information. The ePartExpert also provides Protractor with the built in VIN decoder that you also find in the vehicle card.

One of the biggest challenges when using multiple catalogs is that there are no standards in the industry for year, make and model information. Well, that isn’t exactly true. There is a standard called ACES but few adhere to the standard at this time. Until that changes, integration with multiple catalogs can be a challenge. If you are currently using the NAPA catalog, you are familiar with the following screen picture where the first time you use the catalog on a vehicle, you have to match up the vehicle you created in Protractor with the vehicle table that the NAPA catalog uses.

Further to the vehicle matching, if you use multiple catalogs you will find yourself answering vehicle conditions like air conditioning, power steering, four wheel disk brakes, etc., for each catalog you use. This is because each catalog has its own vehicle card.

Another challenge is configuring your service packages to query the catalogs automatically. One of the most powerful features in Protractor is the ability to program parts and labor searches in the service packages.
Protractor supports automated search programming for both the ePartExpert and the NAPA catalogs as depicted to the left. Unfortunately each catalog has its own unique key words. A key word search in one catalog may not work in another.
By using the default ePartExpert to access NAPA products, this eliminates having to confirm vehicles, answer vehicle condition questions multiple times, and insure all your programmed automated searches work. Because the ePartExpert also contains an integrated Mitchell Labor Guide, this also holds true for all labor queries, not just parts. You are essentially combining 3 catalogs into one. The ePartExpert, the Mitchell Labor Guide, and the NAPA catalog. This provides a very tight integration.