Important announcement about DHL shipping

[nebojsa]

Ok people, here is a very important announcement about DHL shipping module!

We had the problem with DHL shipping module and contacted DHL in our country.
Current module is for US only and is connected to airborne.com
DHL bought Airborne company few years ago.
They also said that the current server and script will no longer be in use.

In DHL gave us a very large documentation about XML integration which covers the whole world (and includes Asia, Africa, Europe, Canada, Australia, US ...).
It is called XML PI toolkit and it is new standard in DHL.

Since these are partly-confidential documents, I will send them only to those people who are willing to try to integrate this with VM.

I must say that there is LOT of work to do. So, don't ask for this if you are not experienced enough in XML, PHP and VM in general.

Here are some basic information from toolkit introduction doucument:

DHL offers XML based online integration platform that provides Product Availability, Transit time and Rating, Shipment Booking, Courier Pickup Booking and Tracking services for DHL Express customers globally from over 140 countries.

Here is how XML services can help DHL customers and vendor partners:
• They can use their shipping and warehouse management systems and still provide
access to complete set of DHL shipping services
• They can provide DHL capabilities from their internal shipping sites, Shopping carts and Commerce web sites
• No DHL hardware or software deployed on their site and they can still get visibility to DHL’s latest products and service offerings
• They have a standard (XML) and secured (HTTPS and User Authentication) platform
to integrate with DHL and they can control the implementation timelines

Below are list of available services or operations:
• Capability Service – Provides list of available product and services for given
shipment criteria along with Booking cut-off, Pickup cut-off and Transit times
• Quote Service – Provides total cost along with breakdown of charges for requested product and service combinations
• Routing Service - Validates the origin and destination city and postcodes. Note that these validations are now better performed in Capability Service and hence we recommend users to stop using Routing Service and instead use Capability Service.
• Shipment Validation - Validates shipment data and return Waybill, License Plate and data for label printing
• PDF Label Image utility – Generates DHL compliant label image using the XML
response from Shipment Validation
• Pickup Booking – Can request, modify or delete courier pick-up
• Tracking - Obtain shipment details and event visibility filtered by Waybill, License Plate, or Reference Number and Account Number

Here is the process of implementing XML integration with DHL
1. Download: Download the DHL provided toolkit (Type: Zip File). Make sure that you have the programming resources experienced with Web Services and XML to work
with this toolkit
2. Test Environment Access: Contact DHL Sales to request access to Testing and
Certification environment
3. Development: Complete development and XML integration work
4. Certification: Contact DHL to request certification by providing Label image and Request and Response XML messages as recommended in Test Plan in the toolkit.
These are validated by the DHL eCommerce team and then customer is certified as
production-ready.
5. Go-Live: After passing certification you will receive access to production
environment and then can start using DHL Web Services
6. Production Support: Contact DHL Technical Support team for production support
7. For installing or renewing certicate for XML PI, please refer to Reference_Data.xls - XML PI Certificate tabsheet.

XML PI is available in three Regions and is slightly customized for each Region. All three Regions are supported by a central application and accessible by same web server address.
• AP-EM Region - Supports countries in Asia, Africa, Australia and Pacific.
• EU Region - Supports countries in Europe.
• AM Region - Supports USA and other countries in North and South Americas.

[lowmips]

Thanks for that information! If/when I find time, I'll definitely look into creating a module that takes advantage of this new system.

[nebojsa]

This is not the only problem we are dealing with.
DOMIT, which is XML parser for current DHL module is no longer supported in Jommla 1.6 and also not supported by author anymore.
There is completely lack of documentation for DOMIT on the net.

Please read:
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=80878.msg266734#msg266734

So, the new script should be made for some new XML parser.

Hell of a work ...
If somebody wants to go in this adventure, please call me, I'll be glad to send documentation.

[CavySpirit]

Is there any progress with this? We're not able to use Fedex to ship internationally and are looking for a solution. DHL sent me that API document, but it is way over my head.

Would love to talk to anyone current on DHL, especially doing international shipping. We are US-based and have a strong demand for shipping overseas.

[MikeUK]

If this is business-critical, you might be better looking at commercial support (the Commercial Jobs thread may help). Community support forums are not the best / most efficient way of solving problems if time is of the essence, or their is a risk of lost business.