I am with you there! I was surprised to see they had not realeased some options for control of the lever. Do they usually supply the versa 8 for that price point or is it just on the consumer to figure it out?

to cable routing;
Are you using the alfine currently? What kind of a set up do you have? I used some after market cable clamps sized for the gore-pro cable housing on the DT (they were kind of silly.expensive for a hunk of metal and I found myself once again thinking I need to buy a few old three speeds and strip them for hardware) and good old zip ties to run the housing below the rear drive side drop out stay.
I did find it very odd that the hub had its cable entrance (wrong term for sure but I dont know what to call the hole the housing goes into haha) set up to run under the drop out stay. My last couple bikes have had runs over the top, but I'm not sure how universal braze on location is.
I ran mine with no break in the housing from the exit point in the shifter all the way to the hub. I figured the less exposure and the fewer chances I had to mess up the cable or have it pull through my braze ons the better. I should also say I didn't actually attach the cables. I ran the housing but couldnt figure out how to get the cable in the shifter so that magic was done by the LBS free of charge.

I am with you! For that price point you should be getting a pretty intuitive system or some help haha
my lbs walked me through the whole process of it for free. They are good peoples.