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OrderFlow Magento Integration Guide

OrderFlow Ltd.

Document Version: 4.2.4

Document Built: 2024-02-16

This document and its content is copyright of OrderFlow Ltd. All rights reserved.
You may not, except with our express written permission, distribute, publish or commercially exploit the content.
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Introduction

Introduction

Background

OrderFlow is a Warehouse Management and Order Processing System that specialises in eCommerce fulfilment.

OrderFlow helps retailers and fulfilment specialist performs key 'back office' functions, from managing their warehouses, to handling picking and packing processes,

In order to fulfil these roles OrderFlow needs to integrate with eCommerce systems. Magento is the world's leading Open Source Enterprise eCommerce Platform. This document covers OrderFlow's integration with Magento.

Integration Operations

There are four main operations that are covered in the integration between OrderFlow and Magento.

  • export of products from Magento to OrderFlow. Magento has a rich product model which makes it ideally suited to managing a retailer's product catalog. The product export operation allows products defined in Magento to be exported to OrderFlow.
  • export of orders from Magento to OrderFlow. Magento is a public facing application, the 'shopping cart' software that members of the public use to find and purchase products online. Orders received in this way need to be passed through to OrderFlow for fulfilment.
  • notification of inventory changes from OrderFlow to Magento. As the system responsible for stock management and fulfilment, OrderFlow needs to keep Magento up to date with changees to product inventory levels, to ensure that products are neither oversold nor undersold.
  • notification of shipments despatched from OrderFlow to Magento. When shipments have been despatched, OrderFlow needs to inform Magento to ensure that the appropriate orders are marked as complete, and to assist the retailer's customer services in keeping customers up to date with the delivery of their orders.

These operations are all covered in detail in this document.

OrderFlow Magento Extension

OrderFlow is a web based warehouse management and order processing environment specifically designed to support high volume B2C pack and despatch operations.

Our integration with Magento is a very important part of our strategy to provide the best fulfilment environment for merchants using this eCommerce platform. On the OrderFlow side, we make use of the Magento web services, On the Magento side, RealtimeDespatch provide a free and open source extension which can be installed in the Magento environment.

The OrderFlow Magento extension aims to provide a robust integration between OrderFlow and Magento that addresses known issues with an OrderFlow/Magento integration that relies solely on natively available Magento Web Services.

The extension has been developed by the Magento agency SixBySix, based in Glasgow, and wholly funded by OrderFlow. It is hosted on the GitHub realtimedespatch/orderflow-magento-module>` open source project repository.

The extension includes the following features:

  • Event based despatch of configured data from Magento to the OrderFlow API (including products, quantities, prices, shipping values, order id, discount codes etc).
  • Partial stock pushes from OrderFlow to Magento API.
  • Scheduled and on-demand pushes of product definitions from Magento to OrderFlow.
  • Requeue and retry of failed updates, with error notifications visible in the Magento administration console.
  • Context sensitive links in Magento Admin that allow users with the necessary rights to navigate directly to the OrderFlow environment to view the details of shipment or products within the warehouse environment.
  • Configurable schedules for product exports and order export retries in addition to general configuration settings.
  • Extensible, open codebase to allow further customisation for merchant specific requirements.

This document aims to cover everything that merchants and their agencies need to know about installing, using, configuring and receiving support for the OrderFlow Magento extension, both from the OrderFlow and the Magento administrator's perspective.

Licensing and Compatibility

The OrderFlow Magento extension is released under the Open Software Licence v3.0. The Licensor is OrderFlow Limited.

The module is compatible with the following Magento versions:

  • Magento CE 1.6, 1.6.1, 1.6.2, 1.7, 1.8, 1.8.1, 1.9, 1.9.1
  • Magento EE 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, 1.14