Carrier configuration

For handling ship from store orders, a carrier comes in handy. In this part of our tutorial, we'll learn how to add and configure them.

What is a carrier?

Inside the fulfillmenttools platform, a carrier is the entity enabling you to connect Courier, Express and Parcel services (in short CEP services). Here you can find a list containing the CEP service providers the platform has integrated. If your favorite provider is not yet listed, talk to your sales or professional services representative to find a solution to get it listed.

Adding the first carrier

LU.XY uses two carriers for fulfilling orders. For orders inside of Germany, the CEP service provider DHL is used. For other orders, they use UPS. Let's add DHL as a first carrier to the tenant. To make it simple, we'll assume that usually the parcels have a weight of 2 kilograms.

With an API call to the carrier endpoint, a new CEP partner can be added:

curl --location 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/carriers' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data '{
  "key": "DHL_V2",
  "name": "LU.XY services DHL account",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "defaultParcelWeightInGram": 2000,
  "credentials": {
    "key": "DHL_V2",
    "apiKey": "myApiKey",
    "fallback": {
      "key": "DHL_V2",
      "billingNumber": "123456",
      "retoureBillingNumber": "optional123345",
      "dhlBusinessPassword": "mycoolandsecretpw",
      "dhlBusinessUsername": "mycreativeusername"
    }
  }
}'

The key property defines which carrier to add, see this list to check which key to use for which carrier. The name can be defined freely. The status can either be ACTIVE or INACTIVE. When creating the CEP partner as an ACTIVE one, it can immediately be used after creation. When setting the defaultParcelWeightInGram to 2000, labels are created with that weight. The credentials are received by the CEP partner.

When everything was correct in your request, you'll receive a 201 CREATED response. In this response you'll find the ID of that carrier.

After successful creating DHL, let's create UPS as a carrier. Here, the same API endpoint is used, only the payload differs a bit:

curl --location 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/carriers' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data '{
    "key": "UPS",
    "name": "LU.XY UPS account",
    "status": "ACTIVE",
    "credentials": {
                "key": "UPS",
                "user": "VCE_worldwide_username",
                "password": "VCE_password"
    }
}'

You might have noticed that this looks similar to the DHL creation, but that the username and password have a prefix called "VCE". This is our technology partner enabling us to faster provide some of the CEP service providers. The credentials for this technology partner will be provided by your professional services representative.

Connect a facility to a CEP partner

After we created the carriers in the fulfillmenttools platform, we need to create a connection between the facility and the carrier. This might have several reasons, for example some contract topics or the issue that some CEP is not supported in a country. Therefore you first need to create a connection between a carrier and a facility.

This is done by an easy API call to the endpoint for facility carrier connections. In our case, an empty JSON for the payload is good here:

curl --location 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/facilities/<YOUR-FACILITY-ID>/carriers/<YOUR-CARRIER-ID>' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data '{ }'

For the connection we need the ID of the carrier which we created above and the facility ID from the creation of the facility. When the connection was made successfully, the response should be 200 OK with a payload like this:

{
    "version": 1,
    "name": "UPS",
    "status": "INACTIVE",
    "cutoffTime": {
        "hour": 12,
        "minute": 0
    },
    "carrierRef": "77214fbf-415c-407b-a682-0fa901ed7848",
    "key": "UPS",
    "deliveryType": "DELIVERY",
    "deliveryAreas": [],
    "facilityRef": "946f17d0-2d14-48f0-a912-d358f2c70e8f",
    "id": "946f17d0-2d14-48f0-a912-d358f2c70e8f_77214fbf-415c-407b-a682-0fa901ed7848",
    "created": "2024-01-24T09:19:44.048Z",
    "lastModified": "2024-01-24T09:19:44.048Z"
}

Now we just need to activate that connection, the endpoint stays the same, only the verb changes from POST to PUT:

curl --location --request PUT 'https://your.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/facilities/<YOUR-FACILITY-ID>/carriers/<YOUR-CARRIER-ID>' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>' \
--data '{
    "version": 1,
    "status": "ACTIVE",
    "name": "UPS"
}
'

You might have noticed, that w used version 1 for the call here. It is crucial to use the same version the carrier has in the payload you received. Again, the response ist a 200 OK like that:

{
    "version": 3,
    "name": "UPS",
    "status": "ACTIVE",
    "cutoffTime": {
        "hour": 12,
        "minute": 0
    },
    "carrierRef": "77214fbf-415c-407b-a682-0fa901ed7848",
    "key": "UPS",
    "deliveryType": "DELIVERY",
    "deliveryAreas": [],
    "facilityRef": "946f17d0-2d14-48f0-a912-d358f2c70e8f",
    "id": "946f17d0-2d14-48f0-a912-d358f2c70e8f_77214fbf-415c-407b-a682-0fa901ed7848",
    "configuration": null,
    "parcelLabelClassifications": null,
    "tags": null,
    "created": "2024-01-24T09:19:44.048Z",
    "lastModified": "2024-01-24T13:47:48.324Z"
}

Now that we have made the first connection between a carrier and a facility, we need to do that with the other ones as well.