Easy link to the contact form. You can launch the Contact Manager form from a Contact Us button in the category column, in the nav bar or elsewhere within Merchant or from a static page. You can also easily use a http link format for launching the Contact Manager form from static pages or within Merchant.

Assign the inquiry. The Contact Manager allows you to assign the contact record to a specific technician or department with ease. That technician can then find their active contacts easily.

User interface look and feel. The Contact Manager form characteristics are controlled from the module's admin configuration screen. At the admin level you can change category column button text, optional category column button image, email subject, email to address, contact screen title, customer email prompt, customer inquiry prompt, background color, font face, font size, font color, message for the submission form, send button text, and optional send button image. Even for the html novice, the form's characteristics are easily altered in admin. In Merchant 5.x you can go a step farther if you are familiar with the store morph technology (SMT) and page template editing by fully customizing every aspect of the form. With the Merchant 5.x built in SMT you can make changes to the page and even rollback changes if you don't like what you see.

Customer can choose department. The module allows the customer to select the target to send the inquiry to with a select list option. This expedites the delivery to the specific technician/department's email address. As with the uncompiled version, the email addresses are hidden from email harvesting spammers.

Field inclusion and validation. Department codes, descriptions and email addresses are configured through admin. The standard collection fields are name, email, subject, department, and inquiry. However, you can also have an unlimited number of extra fields in the form. These extra fields can be required or optional. If required and the customer does not provide a response, the form will validate and redisplay so the missing info can be supplied. What extra fields you create and use is dependant on how you will use this contact form; e.g. requests for info, pricing, availability, product details, billing, shipping, or even for customer surveys prior to checkout.

Autoresponse receipt verification. When the customer submits their inquiry, the module can optionally send them an autoresponse that you have received their inquiry and how soon you will get back to them. That autoresponse email is composed and customized by you through the admin panel. You can also include the contact tracking number in the subject of the contact emails and responses, e.g. [EP #925]: How do I.....

Searchable contact records. The admin section allows you to search one one or more criteria to find messages you are interested in. You can then edit the status and/or respond to the sender.

The module currently fully supports the mivasql configuration of MIVA Merchant 5. It also supports MySQL as long as load balancing has the data stored on the single MySQL server and permissions are set correctly on the data directories. This would be the case in most of the server setups. If you are using Merchant 5.x and your host is web.com, you will not be able to use this module due to the way they configure their servers. There are no known issues with other hosts.