In a previous article, we introduced Order Desk, a powerful order management tool. Today, we'll show you how to instantly submit orders to Rupt with Order Desk. With this powerful combo, we'll add a Rupt product to our store, which, upon order, will be automatically fulfilled by Rupt.
Note: We'll use Liftoff Commerce in this tutorial, but the same principals for submitting POD orders with Order Desk apply no matter what store platform you are using. Order Desk has integrations with many mainstream e-comm softwares as well as ones familiar to the print and promo industry like BrightStores, Order My Gear, and InkSoft.
Prerequisites
There is a lot to learn about Order Desk, but their extensive knowledge base provides plenty of helpful information. Although we won't cover everything there is to know about Order Desk in this post, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) and follow along.
There are a few Order Desk concepts that I want to note before beginning.
Orders go into folders.
In Order Desk, every order is categorized into folders. By default, you'll find folders for New, Prepared, Closed, Canceled, and All orders. Think of folders as digital trays for organizing job jackets.
Rules power the automation.
Rules in Order Desk are crucial for automating order management and fulfillment. They allow you to define actions based on specific events and filters, offering a high level of customization.
Inventory Items are cool but optional.
Order Desk can store your product details to help automate workflows and sync with fulfillment providers. In this tutorial we are going to use another technique that allows us to store all the needed data in Liftoff. That way we don't need to keep two separate product data sets. While we won't use Inventory Items in this tutorial, they can be valuable for other print-on-demand projects.
Item metadata is crucial.
Item metadata in Order Desk functions like tags, adding crucial details to your products. This includes artwork links, print instructions, UPC codes, and vendor names. Using metadata ensures that all necessary details are included when an order is sent to a fulfillment provider like Rupt.
1. Configure Your Liftoff Integration
To add the Liftoff integration to your Order Desk account, follow these steps: In the left navigation, click on Manage Integrations, search for Liftoff, and click the Enable button.
You'll be asked for your Liftoff Account Code and API Key. Every store in Liftoff has an account code; to find it, in the left navigation click on All Accounts. You can find your admin user's API key by clicking on your name in the top navigation of Liftoff, navigating to your Profile, and then clicking on API settings.
Once connected, you'll be able to configure some integration settings. Most of these settings are self-explanatory, but we'll call your attention to a few:
Orders to DownloadYou'll likely want to set this to In Process. That way, orders don't flow into Order Desk until they are actually submitted by the customer.Sync Tracking NumbersEnable this if you want tracking numbers from Rupt to automatically be pushed back up to Liftoff, triggering your shipping notification emails to your customers.
At this point, you can import Liftoff orders if you'd like to see how they will appear in Order Desk. But we'll take a deeper look at this when we set up our Order Desk rules later in this post.
2. Configure Your Rupt Integration
To connect to Rupt, navigate to Manage Integrations, search for Rupt, and click Enable. Enter your Rupt Partner ID and API Key (you'll need to get these from Rupt before continuing).
You'll now see a screen of additional Rupt settings. For demonstration, we'll leave these at their defaults. If you decide to use this integration for a live store, definitely review what each of these do here.
3. Set Up Vendor and Product in Liftoff
With Liftoff and Rupt set up in Order Desk, the next step is configuring settings in Liftoff. Our goal is to avoid duplicating product data in Order Desk by leveraging Liftoff's capabilities.
Set Up Vendor and Fulfillment Workflow for Rupt
Log into the Liftoff admin interface and navigate to Products > Vendors and add a new vendor. You can name it "Rupt". For more information on vendor creation and settings, refer to Liftoff's documentation on Vendors. Note: After saving the new vendor you may notice an Integrations tab show up in Liftoff. You do not need to configure an integration for this new vendor.
Now that the Rupt vendor is created, let's assign them to a Fulfillment Workflow by navigating to Products > Fulfillment Workflows. You can name the workflow "Rupt" and then select your new Rupt vendor as the Default Workflow Vendor.
Set Up Product Classification and Custom Product Fields
Product classifications provide a means for establishing different types of products in Liftoff. One benefit that product classifications provide is they can be configured to show custom product fields for the types of products that need them. Create a new product classification for Rupt products by navigating to Products > Product Classifications.
Next, navigate to Products > Custom Fields and choose your Rupt product classification from the dropdown. Now add a new custom field with "print_sku" as the field name. When setting up POD products in Order Desk, the print_sku identifies the product that your POD vendor will be fulfilling.
Set Up Your Product
In this demonstration, we're going to set up a Jouncer 80w Speaker for PromoPilot. You'll set this product up like most other products, but we'll point out the important parts for our project below:
Product ClassificationSet the product classification to the one we set up for Rupt products earlier. This will make it so that when we add our custom field values, the print_sku field will be visible to us.Fulfillment WorkflowSet the fulfillment workflow for this item to Rupt – the fulfillment workflow that we set up earlier. This is important because, in Order Desk, we'll create a rule based on this product coming from this vendor.Product FilesUpload your production-ready artwork file here. Be sure to work with your Rupt contact to make sure your artwork is setup correctly.
Personalize with Pageflex – One of Liftoff's unique features is its support for Pageflex. Pageflex is a personalization engine that allows customers to customize and view an instant online proof, right on your storefront. On the back-end, a production art file is created for the customer's order.
If you want the product to be customizable for the user, rather than upload a static art file as described above, you can work with the Liftoff team to build a Pageflex template that will allow personalization – then upload the template to Liftoff. The URL for the Pageflex generated production file will be available in Order Desk just like the static art file will be in later steps.
Note: Pageflex templates, by default, output PDF files but Rupt requires a PNG, to physical imprint dimensions (with bleed for tech items and to safe area for non-tech items), at 300dpi. You may need to work with Liftoff or your template developer to ensure this is possible. If it is not, do not worry – reach out to PromoPilot and we can talk options.
Custom FieldsBecause we set our product classification for this item to Rupt, we're now able to enter a SKU into our product_sku field. For this example, we're choosing the Jouncer 80w Speaker SKU JOUNC-uv, which we'll enter into this field. Note: You'll need to work with your rep at Rupt to get a list of valid SKU values.
If you were to place an order for this product and import it into Order Desk, here's what it would look like.
You'll note in the image above some familiar and important values, including the value for our custom field, the name of the art file, and the item's origin name (vendor). Let's use this metadata to build our rules so that the next time an order for this mug is placed, Order Desk will automatically route it to Rupt.
Using Pageflex-generated files – If you have a Pageflex template assigned to your product you will see two file URLs output in the line item metadata. Rather than mapping the static file to the print_url metadata field as seen below, you could simply grab the production file URL. Note: Make sure your template's output conforms to what Rupt requires.
4. Set Up Order Desk Rules
Order Desk's powerful rules engine allows us to create two types of rules: Item Rules, which act on specific line items, and Order Rules, which act on the entire order. Our first rule needs to set some item metadata so that Rupt knows where the print file for the product can be downloaded, and what SKU to print the artwork on to.
Set Up Item Rule
In Order Desk navigate to the Rules Builder and add a new rule. Select Item Rule and choose Order Is Imported as the trigger. Next, we want to add a filter to this rule so that it only triggers when a line item's vendor (also known as origin name), is "Rupt". To do that choose Item Metadata from the dropdown, then enter the metadata's field name, liftoff_origin_name, choose Equals from the next dropdown menu, and finally enter Rupt as the value. The rule will only trigger if the item is identified as a Rupt item.
Our Item rule now needs a couple of actions, the first of which will tell Rupt where our artwork file is. Order Desk has a standardized method for working with its POD partners that you can learn more about here. To tell Rupt where our artwork file is, we need to define a new item metadata field called "print_url".
To do this, create a new action and choose Set Order Item Metadata from the dropdown. For the field name enter print_url.
The field's value needs to be set to the complete URL to our artwork file at Liftoff. But we don't have a full URL; all we have is the file name. Fortunately, Order Desk's Liftoff integration brings in our Liftoff store's primary URL as order metadata. We can combine the two values into one proper URL by entering the following into the Field Name field:
{{ "https://" ~ order.order_metadata['liftoff_account_domain'] ~ "/files/products/" ~ metadata['liftoff_product_variant_file_1'] }}
This funny looking bit of text is a technology called Twig that Order Desk uses for its templating engine. It can also be used to combine values. If you look closely, you might begin to see how this formula combines all of the parts of the URL we need, including the Liftoff account's primary URL and the name of the file we uploaded to this product in Liftoff.
Now we need to create a new print_sku metadata field for the line item. Yes, we already have that value from Liftoff. All we need to do is create another action to Set Order Item Metadata for field name print_sku with the value below:
{{ metadata['liftoff_print_sku'] }}
Your completed rule should look like the image below.
Give your rule a name and click save.
Set Up Order Rule
Our final rule will simply send the order to Rupt for fulfillment. If you're planning on introducing POD to your own Liftoff program, you would likely want to create additional rules and folders for your order management. But for the sake of demonstration, we'll simply send the order to Rupt now that the metadata is prepared. Here's how we do it.
Create a new Order Rule beneath the item rule you just created. Set the rule to trigger when the order is imported. For the action, choose Submit Order to Rupt from the dropdown. Give the rule a name and save. Done. Your Order Rule should look like the image below.
Turn your rules on and brace yourself for something... magical. ✨
5. Place A Test Order!
Run over to Liftoff and order your speaker! Then hop over to Order Desk. Your order may already appear in the Prepared folder, which, if you kept the default values when configuring your Rupt integration, it is placed into automatically after being sent to Rupt.
Let's look at a couple of things to help you understand how this works. First, expand the item metadata under the mug and you will see two new metadata fields, print_url and print_sku. These are the fruits of the Item Rule that we set up.
Now scroll down to view the Order History. You should see that the order has been submitted to Rupt. That is the work of the Order Rule that we set up.
At this point, you may want to cancel the order you just placed so that Rupt doesn't charge you for the item – do that by reaching out to your Rupt rep.
Conclusion
That's it! 👏 In this tutorial we learned about how to leverage Order Desk to send orders to Rupt by using the Rule Builder. How you implement Rupt in your own company store programs may inform your own set of rules in Order Desk, but I hope that this post has provided you with a solid foundation. Vendor integrations are just one way distributors use Order Desk to manage their company stores. If you decide to give Order Desk a try, please let them know PromoPilot sent you. 😊
