Routing Groups

What Are Routing Groups?

A routing group represents a group of routing priorities, eligible sources, and decisions if an order cannot be routed.

Routing groups are applied to orders at the time of generating fulfillment requests/fulfillment orders. This allows the system to determine how it should properly generate FR/FOs for specific orders.

Example:

Having an "International" routing group dedicated to handling orders outside the US.

Having an "East" or "West" Coast routing group dedicated for orders originating from specific states (i.e. disabling west coast suppliers for orders needing to be shipped to the east coast).

Having "Split Order" or "Cross Dock" routing groups to determine how to handle orders that must be fulfilled from multiple locations.


Instructions & Guided Exercise

Create a Routing Group

Navigate to Settings → Order → Routing 

You will first need to create a default group. Creating multiple groups will allow you to apply those different routing groups to various situations, but there must be a default routing group created to fall-back on if no rules apply.


Configure Routing Group

  • Describe this routing group with a name
  • Drag and drop your routing priorities in order of preference for this group
  • Drag and drop your preferred source(s) in order of preference for this group
  • Enable or disable specific sources eligible for fulfillment for this group (optional)
  • Override a shipping address if the order is routed to a source in this routing group (optional)
  • Suppress tracking for specific sources in this routing group (optional)

Flxpoint Pro Tip: Suppress Tracking

Suppress tracking means that shipments added will not be passed back to the channel.

This is generally used during a cross docking process, where an order may be shipped twice—once to an internal warehouse and again to the customer.

This setting allows you to suppress tracking, so the user isn't notified of this shipment until you are prepared to send their order (i.e. from your warehouse).


How to Override a Routing Group

Aside from a default routing group, you may want to create distinct groups that are better suited for certain situations. To do this, you create multiple routing groups and use a workflow to configure rules to use specific routing groups in certain situations.

The following example illustrates this:


Routing Completed Workflow (Manage Split Orders)

After one or more fulfillment requests/fulfillment orders are generated as a result of this routing group, you can optionally run a workflow to evaluate these and determine if a different routing group should be used based on the results. This will be configured inside a Routing Group under "Routing Completed Workflow".

Workflow Tip:

If a new routing group is chosen through this workflow, the Routing Completed Workflow will not run for the newly chosen routing group. This process will only run for the first routing group chosen during the routing process.

The Routing Completed Workflow allows you to create conditional rules that will run after the order routing has been completed. You will have the majority of the standard conditions to select from, plus order routing solutions such as:

  • FR/FO count
  • Split order
  • Total estimated cost
  • Total estimated dropship fee
  • Total estimated shipping cost
Use Case

A new order comes in with two line items:

  • SKU111
  • SKU999

By default, the most prioritized solution may be to send the order to two separate Sources, making this a split order.

If you would like to handle split orders differently, such as use your "Cross-Dock Routing Group," you can choose to use a different routing group by configuring a rule such as:

  • If Split Order→ use Cross Dock Routing Group

This "Cross Docking Routing Group" could be configured for cross docking situations, such as:

  • Overriding shipping address to an internal warehouse instead
  • Enabling Suppress Tracking