Why Integrate a Source?
Integrating a source provides an automated way to perform important processes/operations, such as:
- Retrieving latest inventory/product data
- Submitting fulfillment requests/fulfillment orders(FR/FOs)
- Retrieving shipments for submitted FR/FOs
What Processes Can You Integrate?
Specifically, integrating a source provides access to the following processes.
Connections
Connection Settings
When configuring connections for any of the source integrations in Flxpoint, the required fields will be shown in the main section while optional fields will be underneath in an Advanced Settings section.
Get Inventory [Primary]
This process allows you to retrieve both:
- Product Content: includes things like variation structure
- Price, Quantity, Status (PQS) data: costs, MSRP, MAP, quantity, etc
Get Inventory [Secondary]
This process allows you to retrieve:
- Price, Quantity, Status (PQS) data: costs, MSRP, MAP, quantity, etc
To perform this operation, a source variant SKU is required to be provided via the integration so the inventory can be associated to a specific variant when being retrieved.
Info
If inventory data is provided alongside product content via Get Inventory [Primary], this process is not required. Get Inventory [Secondary] is only required when retrieving PQS fields must be done separately.
However, if you are using Get Inventory [Secondary] for the same source, you can map product content via Get Inventory [Primary] and PQS data via Get Inventory [Secondary].
Doing so allows you to run Get Inventory [Secondary] frequently (as it processes much more quickly than Get Inventory [Primary]) and run Get Inventory [Primary] less frequently as product content data does not change as often.
You may run both processes simultaneously and do not need to stagger the start times.
Send Fulfillment Requests/Fulfillment Orders
This process submits FR/FOs to a source for fulfillment.
FR/FOs are sent with the intention of being shipped out. FR/FOs eligible to send must be in a state. After fulfillment requests/fulfillment orders have been sent, they enter a PROCESSED state.
If the source provides an immediate acknowledgement, FR/FOs may skip straight to straight to ACKNOWLDEGED
For more information around this life-cycle, see Fulfillment Requests/Fulfillment Orders.
Get FR/FO Acknowledgements
This process retrieves fulfillment request/fulfillment orders acknowledgments.
If the source provides a separate file or process to acknowledge that a FR/FOs has been accepted, this process can be used to capture this acknowledgement.
Often times when FR/FOs are submitted via API or some other real-time mechanism, acknowledgements can be immediate and this operation may not be necessary.
Get Shipments
This process retrieves shipments for FR/FOs that have been processed and are waiting shipments.
Once these shipments are received, they will be flagged to be synced to the channel unless they are suppressed.
For more information, see Shipments.
Get Source Invoices
This process retrieves source invoices for FR/FOs that were processed to a specific source.
For more information, see Source Invoice.
Get Inventory Images
This process retrieves images from an FTP or ZIP file if they have a standard naming convention. This operation requires the following:
- Image locations must be mapped in via Get Inventory [Primary]
- The Get Inventory Images operation runs and tries to parse these locations
Example
There is a "Zip" file at https://example.com/images.zip
Inside of this file, images are stored in the following convention
/images/SKU123-1.png
/images/SKU123-2.png
/images/SKU123-3.png
In the Get Inventory [Primary] mapping templates, the "image 1", "image 2", and "image 3" fields should have a rule to create:
[SKU] prefix with "/images/"
then postfix with (image 1) : "-1.png", (image 2) : "-2.png", (image 3) : "-3.png"
Now, once Get Inventory [Primary] runs, it will stage these image locations (i.e. "/images/[SKU]-1.png")
Finally, when the Get Inventory Images operation runs, it will:
1) Download the .zip file
2) Extract the zip file
3) Search for images with the patterns configured above
4) Associate those images to parents and variants.