PromoPilot - Blog #Integration

Integrating Rupt into Company Stores with Order Desk

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 09:34:16 -0600

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 Download
You'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 Numbers
Enable 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 Classification
Set 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 Workflow
Set 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 Files
Upload 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 Fields
Because 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:

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. 😊

Get Started With Order Desk

Breaking Down Data Silos: Unlock the Full Potential of Your Promotional Products Business

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 14:18:04 -0600

Every day, distributors and suppliers in the promotional products industry generate massive amounts of data. From customer orders and e-commerce transactions to inventory tracking and fulfillment operations, data holds the key to improving efficiency and driving more sales. But there’s one big problem: that data is often scattered across different systems, departments, and platforms, making it difficult to access and use effectively. This challenge is known as a data silo.

What Are Data Silos, and Why Do They Matter?

A data silo happens when information is stored in one place but isn’t easily accessible to the rest of the organization. Imagine a distributor where the sales team manages customer quotes and purchase history in one system, marketing tracks email campaigns in another, and fulfillment relies on separate software for order processing. If these systems don’t talk to each other, employees waste valuable time hunting down information instead of using it to serve customers and grow revenue.

😬 Data silos cost employees over 9 hours of productivity per week. 😬

A McKinsey report found that employees spend an average of 1.8 hours per day—or 9.3 hours per week—searching for and gathering information. That’s over a full workday each week lost to inefficiency. Worse, when employees rely on incomplete or outdated data, mistakes can happen, leading to costly errors and frustrated customers.

The Importance of Breaking Down Data Silos

Without access to the right data at the right time, businesses struggle to operate efficiently. Data silos can lead to:

Poor decision-making – If teams rely on incomplete information, they might not see the full picture when forecasting demand, pricing products, or managing inventory.
Wasted time and resources – Employees spend too much time tracking down data instead of focusing on serving customers and closing deals.
Inconsistent reporting – Different teams might work with different sets of data, leading to discrepancies in order records, financials, and customer communications.

How to Overcome Data Silos

The good news is that distributors can break down data silos and unlock the full potential of their information. Here are some practical steps to get started:

1. Centralize Your Data

One of the most effective ways to eliminate silos is to store all business data in a centralized location. This could mean using a cloud-based system where sales, marketing, and fulfillment teams can access the same real-time data, ensuring everyone is on the same page.

However, unless you're using a full-fledged enterprise ERP, your team likely relies on multiple applications for different tasks. That means data may still be scattered across platforms. If that's the case, integrating your systems to sync data across applications is the next best step. See our next recommendation for how to do this effectively.

2. Use Business Intelligence (BI) Tools

BI tools help integrate, analyze, and visualize data from different sources in one place. Solutions like Zoho Analytics allow distributors and suppliers to pull data from multiple systems, organize it into meaningful reports, and create dashboards that provide insights at a glance. This reduces the time employees spend searching for data and ensures everyone works with the same, up-to-date information to make smarter business decisions.

Zoho Analytics is a robust BI application that connects to your apps.

You can even use Zoho Analytics to blend your data, create custom reports, and develop client-facing dashboards – a huge value add service.

3. Foster a Data-Sharing Culture

Technology alone won’t solve the problem—companies must also encourage a culture where data is shared across departments. This means:

Encouraging sales, marketing, and fulfillment teams to document and share data openly.
Implementing policies that promote collaboration between distributors and suppliers.
Making sure leadership supports transparency and cross-team communication.

4. Automate Data Integration

Manually updating and transferring data between systems is time-consuming and error-prone. Automation tools can help streamline this process by syncing data across platforms. For example, workflow automation tools can connect e-commerce platforms, CRM systems, and order fulfillment software so that data flows seamlessly without human intervention.

The Bottom Line

Data is one of the most valuable and proprietary assets a promotional products business has—but only if it’s accessible, accurate, and easy to use. Breaking down data silos can lead to better decision-making, greater efficiency, and a more unified approach to business strategy. By centralizing data, using BI tools like Zoho Analytics, fostering a data-sharing culture, and automating processes, businesses can spend less time hunting for information and more time serving customers and growing revenue.

Are data silos holding your business back? Start implementing these strategies today and unlock the full power of your data.

Integrate Liftoff and Safsira for Premium POD with Order Desk

Sat, 19 Oct 2024 17:05:54 -0600

A couple of months ago we introduced Aviators (that's you) to the order management power of Order Desk, followed by a tutorial demonstrating how to use Order Desk to send print-on-demand orders. Since then we've seen Order Desk gain some traction with our distributor friends. Meanwhile, a new automated solution for both 1-piece POD and bulk orders has been pinging our radar.

Safsira is a comprehensive platform that enables businesses to seamlessly integrate swag and promotional products into their offerings. By providing a unified API, Safsira connects users to top suppliers in both print-on-demand and bulk merchandise, including premium brands like North Face, Nike, Stanley, and Sony.

Its advanced software automates artwork preparation, pricing validation, order routing, and the entire decoration and fulfillment process, allowing companies to efficiently offer customized products without significant upfront costs.

Safsira launched with a Shopify app that makes it easy to incorporate it into your Shopify programs. Now, with the recent release of their Order Desk integration, Safsira can be integrated into many more programs whether their shopping cart is Liftoff, Order My Gear, Bright Stores, or any of Order Desk's many integrated platforms.

In this tutorial we're going to cover how to configure products in Liftoff and set up your Safsira Order Desk integration so that, when ordered, are automatically sent to Safsira for production and fulfillment. If you don't use Liftoff, that's okay – the concepts below will apply to most e-commerce platforms. If you're new to Liftoff or Order Desk and get stuck, PromoPilot is happy to lend a hand.

Video Tutorial

If you get stuck or just prefer to see someone go through the steps, a video tutorial is available at our YouTube channel.

Creating Products in Safsira

Before we start setting up our product in Liftoff and wiring things together in Order Desk, we need to set up the product in Safsira. If you're following along, now would be the time to sign up for an account at the Safsira website. After setting up your account, click on the main nav icon at the top-right of the page and click on My Products.

You'll be taken to a page with the products you've set up in Safsira. If this is a fresh account there won't be any. To add a new product, click the little Catalog icon in the top-right corner of this page.

You'll be presented with Safsira's selection of premium merch and apparel. For the purpose of this tutorial, we're going to select a wearable item that comes in multiple color ways and sizes.

Once you've found the product you wish to configure, click the blue Start Designing button to be taken to the product designer.

1. Select Color

The first step in configuring your Safsira product is to select your color. As you click on each color swatch note the color name (it'll be important later). When you select a color, you'll be informed if that color has inventory available and you may notice the available sizes change between colors. This should inform your product selection and configuration in Liftoff. You don't want to configure colors or sizes that are not available.

When you've got the color selected, click on the blue Start Designing button.

2. Upload and Select Artwork

On this screen you will select the imprint location that you want to configure as well as the decoration method. You'll notice that the imprintable area is displayed on the product image to the left.

You'll then need to upload your artwork. In general I recommend that your artwork be created to size. In our example the imprint method is Digital Print and so we'll simply upload a high-resolution PNG. Safsira will show you the artwork that you've uploaded previously, filtered to only show you artwork files that are compatible with your selected imprint method.

Once you've selected your artwork, it will appear in the imprint area of the product image. If you've used a product designer before, you'll be familiar with the tools on the left, which you can use to manipulate your placed artwork. When you've got the artwork placed, click the blue Next button.

3. Finalize Design

On this last screen you can give the product a new name and tags. By tagging products, you'll be able to filter your products on the My Products page as your catalog of configured products grows. Click the blue Finish Design button.

You will be taken to your new product's detail page. Now that your product has been finalized, you will find it listed under My Products.

On this page you need to note a few things before we continue:

Product ID: This ID will be used to set up our product in Liftoff.
Color Name: Mouse over the color swatch to reveal the color name. We'll need to use it exactly as it appears here in Liftoff.
Available Sizes: These are the sizes we'll configure in Liftoff. We must use the same size abbreviations as seen in Safsira.

Set Up in Liftoff

Now we're ready to do some setup in Liftoff. If you're using another e-commerce platform, I still recommend you skim this section, especially when it comes to metadata. Remember, we're going to add some extra information in Liftoff so that we can avoid needing to add it to Order Desk.

Set Up Vendor and Fulfillment Workflow for Safsira

Log into the Liftoff admin interface and navigate to Products > Vendors and add a new vendor. You can name it "Safsira". For more information on vendor creation and settings, refer to Liftoff's documentation on Vendors. You do not need to configure an integration for this new vendor.

Now that the Safsira vendor is created, let's assign them to a Fulfillment Workflow by navigating to Products > Fulfillment Workflows. You can name the workflow "Safsira" and then select your new Safsira 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 to store admins for the types of products that need them. Create a new product classification for Safsira products by navigating to Products > Product Classifications.

Next, navigate to Products > Custom Fields and choose your Safsira product classification from the dropdown. Now add a new custom field with "print_sku" as the field name. This is our first bit of metadata for Order Desk. 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 wearable for PromoPilot. We'll set this product up like most other products, but we'll point out the important parts for our project below:

Product Classification
Set the product classification to the one we set up for Safsira 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 Workflow
Set the fulfillment workflow for this item to Safsira, 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.

SKU Options
We're setting up a wearable product and so there will be Color and Size SKU options set up in Liftoff. You were probably going to do it anyway but for the purposes of this demo, make sure to set these option names as "Color" and "SKU" and set the values to match the color name and size abbreviations seen in Safsira.

Custom Fields
Because we set our product classification for this item to the Safsira classification that we configured earlier, we're now able to enter a Product ID into our print_sku field. Note: Each colorway of the product will have it's own Safsira Product ID and so, in Liftoff, you'll need to set the print_sku of each variant of the product to the matching color's Product ID. For example, all Bright Lime variants will have one product ID and all Navy variants will have another Product ID.

Holy smokes, you guys! We're almost done. If you were to place an order for this item and import it into Order Desk, here's what it would look like.

You'll notice in the image above some familiar and important values, including the value for our custom print_sku field, the color, and size of the item. We'll next use this metadata to build our rules so that the next time this item is ordered, Order Desk will automatically send it to Safsira.

Order Desk Core Concepts

If this is your first outing with Order Desk, there is a lot to learn. Thankfully their extensive knowledge base provides plenty of helpful information. Although we won't cover everything 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 to note before we begin.

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 as Inventory Items to help automate workflows and sync with fulfillment providers. I try to avoid having to manage product data in more than one location, so we won't use Inventory Items in this integration. But 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. In our case this includes the Safsira product ID (in the print_sku field), size, color, and vendor name. Using metadata ensures that all necessary details are included when an order is sent to a fulfillment provider, Safsira in this case.

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.

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 Download
You'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 Numbers
Enable this if you want tracking numbers from Safsira 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 Safsira Integration

Configuring the Safsira integration in Order Desk could not be easier. In Order Desk, simply navigate to Manage Integrations in the left side navigation bar and search for Safsira.

Next, click on the gray Enable button. When you do, you'll be prompted to connect to your Safsira account. When you do, look out for a pop-up that displays the Safsira login page. Log in with your credentials and you'll be taken to the Safsira integration settings page in Order Desk.

The Safsira settings page in Order Desk could not be more simple. One of the cool things about Safsira is that you can set up multiple Accounts within Safsira and you can use this to organize your programs. If you're just getting started, you likely have only one account and it will be selected for you. Similarly, Safsira can support multiple payment methods. These payment methods are invoiced and charged when a new order is placed.

With your Account and Payment Method selected, you can choose which folders you're Order Desk orders will be placed in upon import into Order Desk and upon shipment.

There are additional fields for Product Code Match settings. In most cases, you can leave these blank, but if you're curious about what they do you can read about them here.

3. Set Up Order Desk Rules

Order Desk's rules engine allows you 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 Safsira knows which of our configured Safsira products to order, in what color, and in what size.

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 "Safsira". 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 Safsira as the value. The rule will only trigger if the item is identified as coming from Safsira.

Our Item rule now needs three actions – we have the print_sku, color, and size values in the Liftoff metadata. Those field names look like "liftoff_print_sku". Note the "liftoff_" prefix. When we pass here values to Safsira we'll need those values to be passed in fields without the "liftoff_" prefix. This is easily accomplished by using Set Order Item Metadata actions with field names for "print_sku", "color", and "size". To set those values we refer to the existing metadata like so:

and

Your completed rule should look like the image below.

Set Up Order Rule

Our final rule will simply send the order for the product to Safsira for production and fulfillment. If you're planning on introducing POD to your own Liftoff program, you would likely want to create a rule to split the order based on the line item's vendor or other factors, which Order Desk is totally capable of. But for this demonstration, we'll simply assume that all orders are for Safsira, and so our rule set puts all the item data in the right place and sends the order on to Safsira. Here's how we do it.

Create a new Order Rule beneath the item rule you just created. Rules are run in the order that they appear in the Rules Builder. Set the order to trigger when the order is imported. For the action, choose Submit Order to Safsira from the dropdown. Give the rule a name and save. Your Order Rule should look like the image below.

Turn your rules on and...

4. Place A Test Order!

Note: At time of writing, there is no way to cancel orders sent to Safsira. The Safsira team has advised that this capability is on its way. In the meantime, you may want to coordinate your test with the Safsira team so that test orders are not put into production.

Run over to Liftoff and order your Safsira item! Then skip over to Order Desk and find your order. It may already appear in the Prepared folder, which, if you kept the default values when configuring your Safsira integration, it is placed into automatically after being sent to Safsira. If it isn't you can either wait for the order to be imported or navigate to the Appointments page (in the left navigation bar) where you can force the import to run.

Once the rules have run, if you navigate to the order details page and expand the item metadata under the Safsira, you will see three new metadata fields, print_sku, color, and size. These are the result 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 Safsira. That is the work of the Order Rule that we set up. In a few minutes, if you refresh the page, you will see that Safsira has received the order.

Conclusion

We hope you've found this tutorial to be helpful and that it has inspired you to check out Order Desk and Safsira for yourself! If you run into any hiccups following these instructions, feel free to reach out.

Visit Order Desk

Visit Safsira

Integrating Liftoff with Spoke Custom for Print-On-Demand Using Order Desk

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 05:00:00 -0600

In our previous article, we introduced Order Desk, a powerful order management tool. Today, we'll show you how to integrate Liftoff Commerce with Spoke Custom using Order Desk. With this powerful combo, we'll add a print-on-demand mug to our store, which, upon order, will be automatically fulfilled by Spoke Custom.

Note: Order Desk supports numerous print-on-demand suppliers right out of the box. We chose Spoke Custom because of their strong association with PCNA. I toured Spoke Custom about seven years ago, and they’re truly a great team to work with. If you wish to follow along and set up Spoke Custom in Order Desk for yourself, you'll need an account with Spoke Custom – get started here. If you already have a login to their Partner Portal, that won't be enough. Reach out to your contact to inquire about API credentials.

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 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 first before we begin.

Orders go into folders.

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. While we won't use Inventory Items in this integration to avoid managing product data in multiple places, they can be valuable for other print-on-demand projects.

Item metadata is crucial.

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.

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 Download
You'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 Numbers
Enable this if you want tracking numbers from Spoke Custom 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 Spoke Custom Integration

To integrate Spoke Custom, navigate to Manage Integrations, search for Spoke, and click Enable. Enter your Spoke Custom API credentials (contact Spoke Custom for these). Copy the URL at the top and send it to your contact at Spoke for tracking information.

There are quite a bit more configuration settings available for Spoke Custom. 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, and consult with Spoke Custom and/or Order Desk if you have any questions about them.

3. Set Up Vendor and Product in Liftoff

With Liftoff and Spoke Custom integrated 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 Spoke Custom

Log into the Liftoff admin interface and navigate to Products > Vendors and add a new vendor. You can name it "Spoke Custom". For more information on vendor creation and settings, refer to Liftoff's documentation on Vendors. You do not need to configure an integration for this new vendor.

Now that the Spoke Custom vendor is created, let's assign them to a Fulfillment Workflow by navigating to Products > Fulfillment Workflows. You can name the workflow "Spoke Custom" and then select your new Spoke Custom 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 Spoke Custom products by navigating to Products > Product Classifications.

Next, navigate to Products > Custom Fields and choose your Spoke 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 mug 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 Classification
Set the product classification to the one we set up for Spoke 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 Workflow
Set the fulfillment workflow for this item to Spoke Custom, 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 Files
Upload your production-ready artwork file here. Be sure to work with your Spoke Custom contact to make sure your artwork is setup correctly.

Custom Fields
Because we set our product classification for this item to the Spoke Custom classification that we configured earlier, we're now able to enter a SKU into our product_sku field. Spoke Custom has a wide variety of POD products available. For this example, we're choosing the 15oz white mug, SKU SP20002, which we'll enter into this field.

Holy smokes, you guys! We're almost done. If you were to place an order for this mug and import it into Order Desk, here's what it would look like.

Story Time! – As I was beginning my exploration of Order Desk and their Liftoff integration, many of the data above were not included in imported orders. But if they were, then we could fully automate POD orders without needing to set up the same products in Order Desk's inventory.

So I reached out to their support team to ask if that would be possible. You guys! – they added support for all of the above in just a few days! Their support team was responsive, knew exactly what I was trying to do, and were quick to recognize the value and release a new version of the Liftoff integration that had exactly what we need to do this.

I was so juiced about this, I emailed a new contact over there to gush over how excellent the experience had been. I hope you can experience the same. 😃

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 Spoke knows which 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 "Spoke Custom". 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 Spoke Custom as the value. The rule will only trigger if the item is identified as a Spoke Custom item.

Our Item rule now needs a couple of actions, the first of which will tell Spoke 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 Spoke 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 upgraded their Liftoff integration to also bring 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'] }}

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 for the mug to Spoke Custom for fulfillment. If you are planning on introducing POD to your own Liftoff program, you would likely want to create a rule to split the order based on the line item's vendor or other factors, which Order Desk is totally capable of. But for this demonstration, we'll simply assume that all orders are for Spoke, and so our rule set puts all the item data in the right place and sends the order on to Spoke. Here's how we do it.

Create a new Order Rule beneath the item rule you just created. Orders are run in the order that they appear in the Rules Builder. Set the order to trigger when the order is imported. For the action, choose Submit Order to Spoke Custom 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 mug! Then skip over to Order Desk. Your order may already appear in the Prepared folder, which, if you kept the default values when configuring your Spoke Custom integration, it is placed into automatically after being sent to Spoke.

Now scroll down to view the Order History. You should see that the order has been submitted to Spoke Custom. That is the work of the Order Rule that we set up. In a few minutes, if you refresh the page, you will see that Spoke Custom has received the order.

At this point, you may want to cancel the order you just placed so that Spoke doesn't charge you for the item. Serendipitously, as we were creating this content, Spoke and Order Desk released an update to their integration. This update adds a black button on the order page, allowing you to cancel the order with Spoke if it has not yet gone to production. Very cool!

Conclusion

Phew! This was the longest write up I've done so far at PromoPilot. But it was worth it. I've had an absolute blast getting to know Order Desk over the last few weeks, and I've barely scratched the surface. Order Desk has many more powerful and time-saving features. We're hoping to share more of that with you in the future.

In the meantime, I hope you found this tutorial to be helpful or that it inspired you to check out Order Desk for yourself. If you do, please let them know PromoPilot sent you. 😊

Get Started With Order Desk

Unleashing the Power of Email Hooks: Integrate Apps Without Native Support

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 14:14:08 -0600

No-code automation solutions are gaining traction due to their accessibility. But what can you do if your favorite app doesn't offer a Zapier integration or support webhooks? Email hooks are a cool hack that captures and processes incoming information via email, which can then help you automate a range of tasks without requiring complex coding skills. Let's explore how email hooks can empower no-code automators and streamline their workflows that include apps that don't otherwise integrate.

What's a webhook? – A webhook is like a digital messenger that automatically notifies one system when something specific happens in another system. It allows different applications or services to communicate and share information in real-time without constant manual checking. Very handy to have, but sometimes an email hook is the only option.

Understanding Email-Hooks

Like webhooks, email hooks can act as notifications that something has occurred in a specific app. You won't be surprised to learn that the method for that communication is pretty familiar to you – email! Email hooks work by receiving emails sent to a specific address, pulling out the valuable data, and triggering actions based on the extracted information.

How Email Hooks Work

Receiving Emails: An email is sent to a designated address that is monitored by your automation platform.
Parsing Content: Next, you need to parse the email's content, identifying and extracting relevant information such as sender details, subject, body text, and attachments.
Triggering Actions: The extracted data initiates automated actions within your chosen no-code automation platform.

The Benefits of Email Hooks

Email-hooks share many of the same benefits as webhooks.

Increased Efficiency: Automating routine tasks like data entry and updates reduces the time spent on manual processes and minimizes human error.
Real-Time Processing: Actions are triggered as soon as an email is received, ensuring timely responses and updates.
Seamless Integration: Email hooks can be set up in a multitude of no-code platforms like Zapier, Make, or Zoho Flow, enabling integration with various applications.

Practical Applications for Print and Promo Distributors

Customer Support: Automatically create and manage support tickets from incoming emails, ensuring customer issues are promptly addressed.
Sales and CRM: Parse email inquiries to update your CRM system with new leads, contact details, and follow-up tasks.
E-commerce: Process order confirmations, update inventory records, and send shipping notifications without manual intervention.
Project Management: Convert emailed task requests into project management tasks, assign them to team members, and set due dates.

Getting Started with Email Hooks and Zapier

Select a Parsing Tool: For simple email parsing, you might be able to use Zapier's Email Parsing app. However, you'll likely want something with a bit more sophistication – I've always been happy with MailParser for extracting data from emails or DocParser if you're extracting data from attachments like PDFs. Both options are supported by Zapier.
Set Up an Email Address: In your parsing tool of choice, configure a specific email address to receive the emails you want to extract data from.
Define Parsing Rules: Also in your parsing app, you'll need to establish rules to extract the necessary data from your emails. This can take some time if you're working with complex emails or attached documents. The fine folks at DocParser can even set this up for you, for a small setup fee.
Integrate with No-Code Tools: Now that you have the email's data parsed, you can use it in your Zapier workflow.

Pro-Tips When Using Email Hooks

While handy, email hooks are often a last resort due to the potential for inconsistent email content and lack of structured data. Parsing works best when the content being parsed is predictable. For this reason, we recommend these tips to heed when working with email hooks:

Consider how your apps send emails – a user might trigger an email when sending a quote, you might have automated email notifications, often an app will send regularly scheduled reports via email. In each of these cases, an email hook can be configured.
Emails or attached documents should be formatted predictably to match your parsing rules.
Definitely consider having DocParser or another professional build your parsing rules. They'll know all the tricks for getting clean data consistently.
Industry tools like ESP, commonsku, SAGE, and others may have a feature to BCC an email address when a document like a presentation, quote, or sales order is sent to a customer. If you can configure that BCC field to automatically include your email hook address, consider doing so. That way your sales team doesn't have to remember a funny looking email address.

Industry Use Cases

Interested in using email hooks with apps like commonsku, ESP, or SAGE? Here are some ideas to get you started. If you run into a hiccup you're always welcome to reach out to PromoPilot for a hand.

When a Presentation is emailed to a client, create an opportunity in your CRM.
When a quote is sent to a client, upload the document to CRM.
Take it a step further – if the quote total is larger than $50,000, then alert your sales manager.
If an invoice is emailed to a client, and the total is greater than $10,000, post a message in Slack.
If an invoice is emailed to the client, and it's for an inventory purchase, alert your warehouse so they know to expect it.

Email hooks are useful hack that belongs in every automator's utility belt. By leveraging email hooks and other no-code automation tools, distributors can automate routine tasks, improve efficiency, and focus on strategic activities. Email hooks ensure that critical information can flow between systems, enabling timely responses and actions that enhance overall productivity.

As promotional product distributors adopt no-code automation, they can expect streamlined operations, enhanced customer service, and significant time savings—crucial for scaling their business effectively.

Need help getting started?

Supercharge Your Distributorship with No-Code Automation Using Zapier

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 13:35:31 -0600

As print and promo distributors, we know how complex any given order can be; efficiency is the key to maximizing profits. One way to achieve this is through no-code process automation. How can you leverage technology without a team of developers? The answer lies in no-code platforms like Zapier.

What is No-Code?

No-code platforms allow users to create applications and automate processes without writing a single line of code. These platforms use visual interfaces with drag-and-drop functionalities, making technology accessible to everyone, regardless of their technical skills.

You likely use no-code platforms today. Popular apps like Squarespace, Webflow, Formstack, MailChimp and others all fall within the no-code space. They help non-developers do things like create websites, complex webforms, and email flows without the need for code. Similarly, no-code workflow applications like Zapier, Make, and Zoho Flow democratize the power of business process automation (BPA) by making the development of automated workflows as easy as designing a flowchart.

Understanding Business Process Automation (BPA)

Business Process Automation (BPA) involves using technology to perform repetitive tasks or processes in a business where manual effort can be replaced. This not only saves time but also reduces the risk of human error, ensuring consistent results every time. BPA can be applied to various functions such as marketing, sales, customer service, and operations.

How Zapier Meets the Need

Zapier is a powerful no-code automation tool that connects your favorite apps and automates workflows. With over 6,000 integrations (and more added all the time), Zapier can help streamline your operations by automating tasks such as:

Email Marketing: Automatically add new customers to your email list.
Social Media: Post updates across multiple platforms simultaneously.
Customer Support: Create help desk tickets from form submissions.
Sales: Update CRM records when new deals are closed.

By using Zapier, you can create "Zaps," which are workflows that connect two or more apps to automate repetitive tasks. For example, you can set up a Zap to automatically send a welcome email to new customers who fill out a form on your website. Check out the supported integrations that Zapier has. Many of the apps you use today are likely listed.

Get Started with Zapier

Ready to dive into no-code automation? Visit Zapier's free Learning Center to explore tutorials, guides, and best practices. You'll find everything you need to start automating your business processes and reclaiming your time for more strategic activities.

No-code process automation will give you and your team super powers. It allows you to teach your SaaS apps new tricks, multiply your time, and focus on what truly matters—growing your business. If you need help getting started or want to explore advanced automation solutions, don't hesitate to reach out to us at PromoPilot. We're here to help you unlock the full potential of no-code tools like Zapier.

Contact PromoPilot

Incorporating Print Into Your Liftoff Store With BCSI

Sun, 19 May 2024 16:27:00 -0600

Print sales offer a fantastic opportunity for distributors to stand out, provide comprehensive services to their clients, and significantly boost their bottom line. Incorporating print into your online company store programs can broaden the product selection and attract a wider buying audience. The best online store programs are indispensable tools for clients, serving numerous departments and end-buyers who need posters, sales literature, business cards, folders, and forms. Adding a print category can transform a simple 'company store' into a robust marketing and operations resource center.

In this post, you'll learn how to include print in your company stores, why Liftoff is ideal for print programs, the role of suppliers like BCSI, and how to integrate Liftoff with BCSI for efficient, automated sales.

The Ways Print Exists in Stores

Print products can take a few forms in your programs. Each with their own benefits and drawbacks.

Pre-Printed Inventory: This is the most straightforward method for including print products in your program. Pre-printed items are produced in bulk and stored for later release by your fulfillment team, managed like any other promotional or apparel item.

Printing in large quantities typically results in the lowest price per piece. These items can be released in small quantities and quickly received by customers when needed urgently. Suitable products for inventory include presentation folders, posters, or any high-usage items with stable artwork.

While easy to introduce, pre-printed inventory has drawbacks. It requires upfront costs, may need to be discarded if there are design changes or rebranding, and requires storage, which can add additional costs.

Static Print-on-Demand: Here the term 'static' refers to the artwork of a printed item that does not include areas of customization. This can include almost any printed product – sales sheets, posters, door hangers, table tents, etc. By 'Print-on-Demand' we simply mean the item is not on the shelf and ready to ship, but rather, upon ordering, the product is produced, often with a minimum order quantity requirement.

Customers may prefer print-on-demand because it does not require upfront costs or storage, reducing the risk of wasted inventory. This method allows you to offer a broader product catalog without the need to stock every item. However, customers must meet MOQ requirements and pay more for smaller quantities. They will also experience longer wait times as items are printed and shipped. Additionally, you will need efficient back-office processes to manage and account for these orders.

Variable Data Print-on-Demand (VDP): These customizable items (e.g., business cards) are printed on demand, providing value through personalization. The pros and cons are similar to static print-on-demand but require an e-commerce platform capable of handling customization.

How Liftoff Helps Sell Print

There are two ways that Liftoff aids in building successful print programs. First, Liftoff supports Pageflex, which allows for the creation of customizable print designs. A Pageflex template lets customers personalize items online, generating the final production artwork for printing.

Liftoff can automatically send order details and artwork to integrated suppliers like BCSI, who handle printing, shipping, and updating the tracking in Liftoff.

Integrating Liftoff with BCSI

BCSI provides a range of printed products to distributors, including business cards, flyers, brochures, envelopes, and rack cards.

Assuming you’ve already worked with your client and BCSI to spec out and price a product, like a sales sheet, we will now guide you through configuring the BCSI integration in Liftoff. We will also demonstrate how to configure a product in Liftoff, using both a static design (non-customizable) and a VDP design (customizable) as examples.

Liftoff Vendor Setup

Liftoff allows you to set up vendors at the account (store) level or the subscriber level. This means the vendor is available either exclusively to the account you set it up under or globally, to all accounts. Which you set up is largely up to you and can be based on how your company and operations are structured. That said, whether you set up an account vendor or subscriber vendor, the process is largely the same. For this example, we'll set up an account-level vendor by navigating to our account and then Products > Vendors and clicking on the blue Add Vendor button.

This provides you with a brief form to fill out. Again, how you use Liftoff and operate your company will determine how much of this form you fill out. But at the very least, you must provide the vendor name and Address. What name you provide the vendor is up to you, but I like to include the vendor's name and then an indication of what account the vendor is servicing. Here's how I'd set up a BCSI integration for an account called Pilot Playground.

When you click the Save button, the page will reload with a number of new tabs. We won't go through each of these, but if you're curious, the Liftoff documentation is a helpful reference.

We will concern ourselves with the Locations tab, though. If you click it, you will find that the address you provided in the previous step has been used to create the vendor's first location. You can think of these locations as the vendor's distribution centers. Click the blue Edit button next to the location that has been set up already.

You will now see a new tab called Integration. It's important to remember that each location has its own discreet integration so if you're ever setting up a vendor with multiple locations, you should keep that in mind. For now, select cXML as your integration method. The page will populate with a bunch of new fields. Not all of these are required but Endpoint is particularly important. The endpoint is a supplier web address where the order information will be sent to when a product, configured with this vendor, is placed. At this point, you'll want to work with your BCSI rep to confirm the details for filling this form out, but you should expect to receive a URL for the Endpoint field at the very least.

By now, we're almost done with our initial setup. The last task is to set up a fulfillment workflow. Each product in Liftoff is assigned a fulfillment workflow. This workflow instructs Liftoff on how to handle the product once an order is placed for it. We want to create a workflow that, upon order, will send the order and product data to BCSI through our newly configured integration. Do this by navigating to Products > Fulfillment Workflows. Then click the green Add Workflow button. You are then asked to provide a name for your workflow. I like to name this in such a way that team members coming behind me can intuit what the workflow is for, in this case, printed items from BCSI.

The Workflow Code, used in future batch jobs, is defined for you. Select your new vendor as the default and click the blue Create Workflow button. Congratulations! Doing so will take you to a page where you can configure some additional options. For now, though, you can leave these at their defaults. You now have everything in place to start configuring products to send to BCSI for fulfillment.

Product Setup

Now that your vendor and fulfillment workflow is created, it's time to configure your sales sheets product. We won't go through the entire product setup, only the parts important to your integration. First, in your product's Fulfillment tab, select the BCSI fulfillment workflow that you created as your default fulfillment workflow.

The next and final step to integrating this product with BCSI depends on what type of print product it is. If the product is a VDP product like a business card, you'll need a Pageflex template developed. We'll talk more about Pageflex in another post, but assuming a template has already been created and uploaded to Liftoff, you'll select it on the product's Specs tab. By assigning a Pageflex template to this product, when the design is customized by the end-buyer, along with the product data, BCSI will receive the print file that Pageflex generates for the order.

On the other hand, if your product has a static design, then you can simply upload your print-ready artwork file to the product's Product Files on the same Specs tab. This file will be sent to BCSI when an order is placed for this product and is what will be printed. Setting up a product in this manner can be convenient for items who occasionally have their design changed. For example, if your client provides you with new artwork for this sales sheet, all you need to do is upload the new print file here and update the product's images to reflect the new design. No need to develop a new Pageflex template in this case.

Good news! Your vendor integration with BCSI and product configuration is complete. As you add additional print items to your account, you'll only need to set the fulfillment workflow and either upload a product file or set the product template. Before you make your new product available for purchase,, work with your BCSI rep to set up the product on their end and put a test order through.

By following these steps, you can efficiently integrate BCSI with Liftoff, enhancing your online company store programs with valuable print products.

Want to know more about BCSI and their products? Inquire about becoming a distributor . Not familiar with Liftoff? Schedule a demo .