Tags and Stickers Concept

In fulfillmenttools there is the possibility to map very individual processes and to customize entities according to special needs. One way to impose a certain customization to your processes are Tags and Stickers.

Tags can be attached on several entities at fulfillmenttools like orders, order lines, pickjobs, packjobs, handoverjobs, etc. Please refer to our OpenAPI Specification. The usage of Tags is indicated by the field tags, the usage of stickers is indicated by the attribute stickers. Usually both Tags and Stickers are added by Services that supply data to the platform (external services, a middleware or connectors).

Tags

Tags consist of a Tag-Reference plus allowed values for said Tag. Tags need to be known before first usage - and using unknown Tags or unknown values of Tags will result in fulfillmenttools rejecting the request.

Tags are predominantly used to create specific behavior within fulfillmenttools and can be used for example to

  • create routing rules on it with our DOMS Toolkit

  • define a picking method

  • define which external documents are offered for printing during picking and packing

  • configure the behaviour of the scanner on our mobile devices per line item.

Creation and management of Tags

The fulfillmenttools platform offers the endpoint /api/tags in order to request currently available Tags in the system:

Tags are comparable to enumerations - each id (identifying a Tag) has allowedValues to it.

Be aware: A tag is only "progressing forward": Once you introduced an allowed Value to a Tag you cannot remove it anymore.

Once created a tag can be modified in a way to receive additional allowed values, e.g.

curl -sSL -X PATCH 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/tags/Contents' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data-raw '{
    "version": 1,
    "actions": [
        {
            "action": "AddAllowedValueToTag",
            "allowedValue": "acid"
        }
    ]
}'

200 OK
{
    "id": "Contents",
    "allowedValues": [
        "toxic",
        "explosives",
        "acid"
    ],
    "version": 2,
    "created": "2023-06-27T15:01:30.666Z",
    "lastModified": "2023-09-11T13:50:13.641Z"
}

From now on the value "acid" could be used wherever tags are part of an entity.

The intended use of Tags is to steer the built in functionality of fulfillmenttools to a certain direction. For example it could be used to create routing rules on them using the DOMS Toolkit or to create and display external documents.

Stickers

Stickers are, similar to tags, addable to various entities. Their intended use is to show helpful information to a user during the processing of an order or within the backoffice.

There is one mayor difference between Stickers and Tags: Stickers do not have to be known to fulfillmenttools before using them.

Consider the following request:

curl -sSL -X POST 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/orders' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data-raw '{
    "tags": [
        {
            "id": "Storage",
            "value": "frozen"
        }
    ],
    "stickers" : [
        {
            "key":"information",
            "priority": 100,
            "nameLocalized": {
                "de_DE": "Wichtig",
                "en_EN": "Important"
            }
        }
    ],
    ...
}'

nameLocalized: Dictionary of possible translations, min 1 entry, max 14 characters per description

While the used sticker "information" does not need to be present the Tag "Storage" needs to be known in the system beforehand.

Stickers can also be created automatically by a configuration based on Tags. Please see the following example on how to do that:

How to use sticker in the network order overview

If you want to sticker an order in our network order overview you have two options.

The first option is to attach a sticker directly to an order. If this order reaches fulfillmenttools it will for example be displayed in the backoffice application and an additional filter will allow you to filter orders based on those stickers.

Such an order could look like this:

{
  ...
  "stickers": [
    {
      "key": "customercategory",
      "priority": 100,
      "nameLocalized": {
        "de_DE": "A-Kunde",
        "en_US": "A-Customer",
      },
      "name": "A-Kunde",
      "color": "#19b6b5"
    }
  ],
  "tenantOrderId": "4711"
}

This information will stick to the order - that's why it is called a sticker.

The second option is to attach a tag to an order and configure the sticker configuration so that the sticker is being added to the order automatically upon entering the system.

In this example we consider all the used Tags to be present in the system such as:

curl -sSL 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/tags/Channel' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>'

200 OK
{
    "id": "Channel",
    "allowedValues": [
        "B2B",
        "B2C"
    ],
    "version": 1,
    "created": "2023-04-03T09:28:59.336Z",
    "lastModified": "2023-04-03T09:28:59.336Z"
}

Now we need to attach a configuration, that adds Stickers based on tags for Orders. Consider the following configuration:

curl -sSL 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/tags/order' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>'

200 OK
{
    "version": 2,
    "created": "2023-04-03T09:28:59.336Z",
    "lastModified": "2023-04-03T09:28:59.336Z",
    "stickerConfiguration": {
      "offeredStickersByTag": [
        {
          "tagRef": "Channel",
          "matchingValues": [
            "B2B"
          ],
          "stickers": [
            {
              "key": "CustomerType",
              "priority": 100,
              "nameLocalized": {
                "de_DE": "Firmenkunde",
                "en_US": "Business Customer",
              },
              "name": "Firmenkunde",
              "color": "#9919b6"
            }
          ]
        },
        ...
      ]
    }
  ...
}

Now consider the following order to be created:

curl -sSL -X POST 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/orders' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data-raw '{
    "tags": [
        {
            "id": "Channel",
            "value": "B2B"
        }
    ],
    "stickers" : [
        {
            "key":"information",
            "priority": 100,
            "nameLocalized": {
                "de_DE": "Wichtig",
                "en_EN": "Important"
            }
        }
    ],
    ...
}'

201 Created
{
    "tags": [
        {
            "id": "Channel",
            "value": "B2B"
        }
    ],
    "stickers": [
        {
            "key": "information",
            "priority": 100,
            "nameLocalized": {
                "de_DE": "Wichtig",
                "en_EN": "Important"
            },
            "name": "Wichtig"
        },
        {
             "key": "CustomerType",
             "priority": 100,
             "nameLocalized": {
               "de_DE": "Firmenkunde",
               "en_US": "Business Customer",
             },
             "name": "Firmenkunde",
             "color": "#9919b6"
        }
    ],
    ...
}

You can observe two things:

  1. The introduced tag configuration for orders added the Sticker "CustomerType" to the order without it being present in the call towards the Order endpoint.

  2. An order can - of course - contain both options a direct sticker or a tag which will be displayed by a sticker.

Is it possible to add tags to a listing? If yes, will the other entities inherit them?

Yes, that is possible and yes, the other entities (picking line items, packing line items and handover line items) will inherit those tags. So when a listing is tagged, it is not necessary to add tags to those entities as well.

If tags are attached to the listing and the line items, they are merged. Multiple tags with the same ID are merged into one tag.

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