As a business owner in development projects, there are days where I just wonder if I’m doing the right thing and being a good businessperson.  I recently had a project which just was one bad thing after another happening, and while it wasn’t really anything I caused, the customer was very upset.  It led me to think about why things go wrong in web projects and what can I do to prevent them?

The simple fact is that Web Projects are very much like kids.  They each need to be raised, educated, and disciplined in pretty much the same way.  However, like kids, not all Web Projects are ever exactly the same since there are always different players involved, new technologies to explore, and plenty of kicking, screaming and crying when things don’t go exactly the way they are supposed to.

I get where my clients are coming from, and you always want to focus on the positive and not the negative for a new project, which is why in my contracts I put a “bugs” clause which basically says that the web is a huge place filled with plenty of facets and the slightest blemish in one of those facets can cause the entire project to be delayed, not function properly, etc.  However, I think it’s fair to say that even when I’ve been forced to sign a “sh*t happens” document when going to the doctors, it doesn’t make it any better if things go wrong.

So what can we do?  Do we play Scotty from Star Trek and just over-exaggerate the timelines so when things do go smoothly we’re heroes?  But that can limit the clients who need things done quickly and also force them into unneeded delays for their business as well.  Do we tell them about all the things that can go wrong and hope they sit back and say, “Wow thanks for letting me know all hell could break loose so I can prepare for it?”….not likely.  How about just giving up web development and just taking up selling pet rocks at a carnival…those people have it made!

But what happens when the google eyes fall off that night from the rock?  Or the little feet bend and snap and now looks like something out of a horror movie?  Do you get less upset because its a pet rock?  Or do you still get upset just a bit because money was spent and things didn’t go exactly as expected.

I guess the revelation here is that things go wrong in any business no matter what that business is.  I’m sure some engineers can weigh in here about how their project got completely screwed up, or even a restaurant owner who unfortunately had a shell from an egg make it into a food critic’s dish.

I think the key here is how you handle those issues as both a consumer and a vendor. If you are a vendor…do what you can to make things right by understanding the customer’s frustration.  If you are a customer…if you see someone trying to make an effort to right a wrong (whether its themselves or just in general) work with them to get to the other side.  I’ve had great relationships made by hanging in there with a vendor and seeing just how good they do in a crisis situation to make everything turn out right.

So….just like kids….there will be good days and bad days….but it will never change your love or understanding towards them.  I think we as a society get too wrapped up in the “me” and really need to step back sometimes and not allows ourselves to take out our frustrations for other aspects of our life on these situations when they present themselves.

Hopefully this will help you as a customer reading this to know we will always work with you as a client to make things right if something should go wrong, or if you are a business owner…know that you are not alone and things can and do go wrong at times.  Try your best to rectify the situation and hopefully your customer will see your efforts.

Doug

Before I throw them under the bus completely, let me first point out the positives about PayPal.  First, it is a great way for new businesses who are maybe testing out the waters of their business model and don’t want to get locked into all of the hassle of setting up a merchant account through their banks.  Second, they do provide a great number of applications that do cater to many of the different scnenarios many online businesses need such as Recurring Payments, Calculation of Shipping based on Area, and plenty more.  So for the most part, PayPal is a “good” option for many online businesses.

Why PayPal Needs a Quality Assurance Wakeup Call

I spent literally 4 whole days going back and forth from blog to blog, developer forum to developer forum looking for the answer to this seemingly simple scenario.  Create a recurring payment and charge a single payment for items in the same transaction.  According to PayPal, this is a piece of cake.  Not so young Skywalker.

I started by going to PayPal’s website and discovered their old Express Checkout site had changed quite a bit and some of the familiar code snippets they had available before to perform tasks such as this were gone.  I wasn’t that concerned and proceeded to their Express Checkout area which, again according to PayPal, was an easy and great way to perform the tasks I wanted to complete.

PayPal’s Code Wizard…Merlin’s Red-Headed Step Child

Ok so here’s the point of the blog post.  This code wizard of PayPal.  Now most wizards are pretty friendly.  They are supposed to walk you through the basic features of what you’re trying to accomplish and give you a base to start from so you can then maybe go into the advanced features and adjust your code accordingly.   Theirs is completely a mind-screw and you’ll just love what I found out.

Help for You Fellow Coders in ASP.net

If you found this article because you got the “Token is Invalid”, or “Timeout Error”, or “Amount is Undefined”, dude…I feel your frustration.  You also probably spotted a few articles where these other devs said, all you have to do is call the SetExpressCheckout, change your version to 42 or higher, etc. What they failed to mention was in the PayPal’s own generated code wizard, the version number is not a NVP (Name-Value-Pair) you put into your code…it’s in the .CS code itself way down at the bottom of the friggin’ class.

How I Solved the Issue

Go into the PayPalFunctions.cs the wizard generates for you and scroll down to the  buildCredentialsNVPString().  Change the following code from:

codec["VERSION"] = “2.6″;

to:

codec["VERSION"] = “54.0″;

You can see they were off by just a few versions.  Now while I understand that the wizard is not made for recurring payments, it would have been nice for them to mention that in maybe the final screen.  I would also imagine that this change of version will work for the Express Checkout regardless of whether you’re doing recurring payments or not, but maybe not.

Other Items I Had to Solve

Other things they don’t really point out to you are the things you should include in the NVP for the SetExpressCheckout:

NVPCodec encoder = new NVPCodec();
encoder["METHOD"] = “SetExpressCheckout”;
encoder["AMT"] = “45.00″; //amt;
encoder["RETURNURL"] = returnURL;
encoder["CANCELURL"] = cancelURL;
encoder["PAYMENTACTION"] = “Sale”;
encoder["L_DESC0"] = “12 Month Subscription to Your Store”; // THIS MUST MATCH THE BILLING AGREEMENTDESCRIPTION
encoder["L_BILLINGTYPE0"] = “RecurringPayments”;
encoder["L_BILLINGAGREEMENTDESCRIPTION0"] = “12 Month Subscription to Your Store”;  // THIS MUST MATCH YOUR L_DESCn FIELD…IN MY EXAMPLE THE L_DESC0
encoder["L_NAME1"] = “Item Number 1″;
encoder["L_NUMBER1"] = “XY1238″;
encoder["L_DESC1"] = “Some Description”;
encoder["L_AMT1"] = “15.00″;
encoder["L_QTY1"] = “3″;

You’ll notice there’s a few things they exclude in their version that is code generated and such.  Now in a separate function I called DoRecurring, I have the following NVP:

NVPCodec encoder = new NVPCodec();
encoder["METHOD"] = “CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile”;
encoder["TOKEN"] = token;
encoder["DESC"] = “12 Month Subscription to Your Store”; //YEP ADD THIS AGAIN
encoder["PROFILESTARTDATE"] = “2009-03-16T13:00:00Z”; //MAKE SURE THIS IS GMT FORMAT
encoder["BILLINGPERIOD"] = “Month”;  //Month, Year, etc.
encoder["BILLINGFREQUENCY"] = “1″;  // This is the “cycle” so each month the customer will be billed once
encoder["AMT"] = “25.00″;
encoder["L_BILLINGTYPE0"] = “RecurringPayments”; //Has to be this for recurring to work
encoder["L_BILLINGAGREEMENTDESCRIPTION0"] = “12 Month Subscription to Your Store”;  //YEP HAS TO MATCH

So there ya go.  Now if you’re still a bit confused at the way PayPal’s Code Wizard said things like insert this on your billing and confirmation pages, etc.  Don’t let that bother you.  Here’s a simple version to do what I was trying to accomplish.  Hopefully this helps make it a bit clearer for you:

• Take the image they put in a form and make it an Image Button.
• On click of this image, in your code behind, insert the SetExpressCheckout code to setup your transaction and send the user to paypal to either enter their credit card or log into their PP account.
• After they do this they will be returned to a return URL you specified in the Wizard.  Create something called checkout.aspx and in the .cs file in the page load save the token and payerid into session variables.
• Put another button on this page and say something like “Finalize Payment”.  (Above this you’d put something like a list of the items or subscriptions they’ll be purchasing….just so they’re really sure about purchasing.
• On the click of that button put in the call to the CreateRecurringProfile function by copying the call as the FinalizeCheckout does.

Hopefully that helps you out a bit.  If you have any questions please email me at info[-at-]justicesolutionsllc.com or simply comment below.  I’ll really try to respond and help as much as I can because this was really frustrating.  I hope a PayPal developer reads this and rather than criticizing the hell out of my code which may not be perfect, really takes this back to PayPal and does a real QA on their code wizard and their manuals.  Because there are critical pieces and better explanations needed.

Ok, how many of you have been out at the store at the last minute getting those flowers for Valentine’s Day, grabbed the box of chocolates, and then suddenly remembered that you needed a card as well?  To top it all off you were running late in getting back to your house for that special V-Day dinner?  Arrggh….panic is starting to set in.

So you quickly run down to the greeting card aisle, quickly survey the demilitarized zone of Valentine’s Day cards, find one that looks nice and has words that seem appropriate and zip over to the checkout counter.  Ok, we’re nearly complete…but wait….we need to write something inside of the card and sign it….oh no!

So we look frantically through the glove compartment box, flip the sun visors, look in the change drawer, the middle console, under the seat, all in the hopes of finding that single writing implement that is most likely missing a cap, has a glob of ink dangling from the tip and has been severely chewed on the end so much that you could dislodge a penny from the ashtray by using it as a chisel.

This is usually the moment where for some strange reason you’ve luckily managed to hit all of the green lights for a change and are actually hoping for a red light for that mere 30 seconds you need to write those unending words of love and compassion that will sweep your honey right off of her feet. 

Ok so you get a red light finally and then warped pen in hand you stroke those loving words on the open side of the card right on the steering wheel.  However you then push too hard on the Love…Me….which of course beeps the horn at the car in front of you and awards you the friendly one finger wave from the driver ahead of you.

So you get back to the house in time to go out to dinner, you calmly stroll on into the house, flowers, chocolates, and your novelette of a Valentine’s Day card in hand, and proudly give the items of your affection to your sweetheart.

She gasps for a moment, just so happy she has married a man who still likes to make Valentine’s Day special…grabs the flowers, the chocolates and the card sets them down to give a very welcomed and very earned Valentine’s Day smooch.

Finally without another word, she sniffs the elegant scent of the roses, mouth waters over the chocolate treats she’ll be enjoying later tonight, and then opens the card…which magically says on the front….

“This Valentine’s Day I wanted to say Something Special…”

and on the inside…

“You’ll Do.”

Funny enough…I don’t think she ever read the other side of the card I wrote on.  Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone!