1. What is an API and how can it help me?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. An API integration is the connection between two or more applications, a bridge allowing systems to connect and exchange data. API integrations connect those processes in a business that: keep data in sync; enhance productivity; and thus drive revenue. APIs allow merchants to integrate seamlessly with external systems, providing real-time access to their data for insights; instant reporting; and the syncing of CRM systems.
APIS create consistency across applications and provide a greater deal of visibility, with the knock-on effect of reducing operational overheads. Having the right and latest APIs is crucial to an online business’s operational efficiencies.
2. What is Shopify’s Fulfilment Orders API Upgrade?
Shopify have recently upgraded their Fulfilment Orders API to provide a better fulfilment experience for merchants and their customers. In a recent article, Shopify explain their API upgrade as follows:
‘Whether a merchant is fulfilling orders on their own with Shopify, with an app, outsourcing to a third-party fulfilment service, or a combination of these things, there is one truth that remains consistent: merchants want visibility and control of their inventory and fulfilment, no matter where it's stored. That is why we’ve created a better fulfilment model for our partners to build on, known as the Shopify Fulfilment Orders API.’
The upgraded API tracks the lifecycle of fulfilment work, including open, in-progress, closed, cancelled or incomplete orders, giving merchants a granular and more complete view of their order data. It also pinpoints the exact items that need to be fulfilled in a location for a given order, improving the accuracy of order fulfilment.
If you use Shopify APIs including FulfilmentAPI, Fulfilment Services API, Inventory API, or Orders API then migration to their new Fulfilment Orders API is recommended as soon as possible and before the deadline date of 30 June 2023. For more on this, see this article by Shopify here. If you are an existing client of Mosaic Fulfilment Solutions, however, we will have done this for you – see point 4 below.
3. What are the main benefits offered by the new API?
These are:
- Facilitates multi-location warehouse fulfilment ie you can see the assigned location of a given group of unfulfilled line items in order to determine optimal fulfilment location.
- Enables multi-location and drop-ship fulfilment. You no longer need to match SKUs or filter out the items on an order that don’t apply to you before you can determine which items you need to fulfil.
- Enables personalisation features that can be enacted during the fulfilment process ie merchants and apps can add notes to requests to improve communication throughout the fulfilment process.
- Facilitates self-serve or outsourced customer service functions, formalising the process of making fulfilment and cancellation requests.
You can read more here.
4. If you are an existing client of Mosaic Fulfilment Solutions, what action is needed now to ensure you have migrated to the latest version of Shopify’s Fulfilment Orders API?
The good news is that no action is needed if you are our client. We have already taken care of this for you. We have updated and fully tested our real-time APIs in advance of the changes to Shopify’s Fulfilment Orders API, one of our many seamless integrations with client web platforms. This will allow for a painless upgrade experience with no intervention or effort required by our clients and no downtime for their websites.
5. If you are not an existing client of Mosaic Fulfilment Solutions, what’s the deadline for migrating and how is this achieved?
The deadline for migrating to the latest Shopify Fulfilment Orders API has been extended to 30 June 2023. Shopify’s migration guide is explained in these two articles:
https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/fulfillment/migrate and https://community.shopify.com/c/announcements/action-required-migrate-to-fulfillment-orders-api-by-june-30/td-p/1920389
Alastair Fell, Commercial Director at Mosaic Fulfilment Solutions, said:
‘We have taken care of the API migration for our clients, giving them one thing less to worry about. We remain focused on continual investment and innovation in our technical solutions that enable our clients to focus on growing their business and giving their customers the best possible experience.’
