Tips, Tricks, and Glitches: Exploring the Hidden Treasures of Infoplus

[Matthew]

The goal for this Topic is to share tips, tricks, or fun little unexpected results in features within the Infoplus app.

Our KBs are chock-full of tips and suggestions that might make your fulfillment, data tracking, or inventory management way easier. Let’s talk about a few.

Okay, so we have talked about the Infoplus Keyboard Shortcuts. Loved that! (That post can be found HERE.) I want to talk a little about some of the other application features that do not get the play that they should.

One of my personal favorites and a fundamental tools for making sure the automated functions that I have built are working like they were meant to, is the Alert Table:

The Alert table holds all of the system notifications that pertain to the following features:

EDI Connection

Finance System Connection

Low Stock

Order Confirmations

Order Source Reservation

Scheduled Plan

Scheduled Report

Shopping Cart Connection

System Updates

Trigger

In the list above, items in Bold are used by a majority of our clients and can be difficult to diagnose without good documentation. The Alert table captures that information and provides you with a description of what happened and when it happened.

I want to take a look at a 3rd party application error we see often with our clients who use Shopify, WooCommerce, or any of the additional Shopping Cart Connection partners we connect to. Missing data happens a lot and we have built a way of tracking missing data that Infoplus requires to receive orders into the system.

In the example above, we see that we have had an issue with a Shopping Cart Connection transaction. This transaction ended up in an Error state because the order does not have a Billing Address attached. This order is sitting at the 3rd party site waiting to be brought into Infoplus. There is an order ID number provided by the 3rd party app that gives the client a way to go into the shopping cart site and find the order. This will allow the client to correct the issue or reach out to the customer for the missing data.

OK, that’s good information. But, “How did you know when to look in the Alert table to find out if you are having an issue?” Well, I’m glad you asked. Infoplus has a section on its Dashboard for the Alerts to populate so that you see it as soon as you hop onto the system.

We included the tools to manage Alerts right on the Dashboard. In the image above, you will see the icon on the right. Select that and see all the different options that you have to be alerted to issues found within the system. There is even an email option for business-critical alerts that might need additional attention. Okay, so there are a ton of things you can do with this feature. Search “Alert” in our Knowledge Base to see the articles that pertain to this feature.

Are you already using Alerts on your Infoplus site? We would love to hear how Alerts have made your Infoplus experience better.

[Konrad]

@Matthew Very key point you make here using Alerts. This is a must have on your dashboard!

We have a client that we were getting a lot of the no billing address alerts. To solve for this we went to the InfoPlus Pro Services team to write a script that basically says if there is not a billing address add default address. This default address is actually pulled from the customer order.

I admit I’m not a script expert which is why we use Pro Services, but these guys are the way to go.

As far as other Alerts go, they’re super helpful if inventory nomenclature isn’t aligned in their web store and on InfoPlus. Also if a client says, I see the order in Shopify but not in InfoPlus, you can pull the order in by Reposting Business Transactions by order number or date range or other criteria. The results will show you if the order is already imported or will be imported.

Great tool!

[mjohnson]

Hi Konrad!

I know that you said you aren’t a script expert but this is my favorite one for remembering to rerun a script:

try
{
console.log(adsfasdf);
}
catch(e)
{
/////////////////////////////////////
// create an alert for the problem //
/////////////////////////////////////
var alert = infoplusApi.constructModel("alert");
alert.type = "Trigger";
alert.level = "Error";
alert.message = "A script error occurred: " + e;
alert.lobId = 10008;
alert.linkText = "Script Name";
   alert.link = "https://yourWMS.infopluswms.com/infoplus-wms/scripts/script/1714";  // or whatever id
infoplusApi.add("alert", alert);
 
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// rethrow the error so we still get a script log record //
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
throw(e);
}

Basically it just implements a reminder to re-run a script by adding some code to your existing scripts.

You can add this to any script you’ve made in Infoplus. You just wrap any code in your script in a try/catch block. Something cool to try!

[Konrad]

Hey @mjohnson , thanks for this! That seems to be an easy one, I’ll give it a shot!

[Matthew]

Hey there Infoplusers! Time for the second installment of Tips, Tricks, and Glitches: Exploring the Hidden Treasures of Infoplus

Today, we are going to discuss TAGs and all the fun ways to Identify records within the Infoplus App. TAGs can be a game changer when grouping, identifying issues, and customizing records for sorting and reporting.

The TAG system works both automatically and by user input, but can also be activated by triggers and scripts based on events within the system. We will unpack how TAGs get added later, but first, let’s talk about the difference between the System-Generated TAGs and the User added TAGs.

System-Generated TAGs: These TAGs are added to a record when an event is acknowledged within the Infoplus System. A very common example is the “ipsys-parcel-address-type-check-failed” TAG. This TAG tells the user that the current “Ship To” address has failed the Residential / Commercial address check. This could mean that the address may be incorrect in some way and the user might want to confirm that address before continuing to the Fulfillment Process. However, this TAG will not stop you from running the Fulfillment Process. Also, all TAGs added to a record can only be removed by a user or script.

There are 9 System-Generated TAGs. However, to understand what they are telling you, we need to show you a roadmap that explains the logic behind the names.

Here is a breakdown example of the System-generated TAGs. We are going to use the ipsys-dnf-ua TAG to explain the logic. Ipsys-dnf-ua: ipsys- Infoplus System | dnf- Did Not Fulfill | ua- Un-Allocatable.

As we talk about the different System-generated TAGs below, we will skip the repetitive parts of the TAG and concentrate on the parts that are different.

ipsys-dnf-ua (Un-Allocatable)
This System Tag will appear on an Order that could not be fulfilled because the product is in a warehouse location that cannot be used for allocation.

ipsys-dnf-rr (Reserved Reservation)
This System Tag will appear on an Order that could not be fulfilled due to an order source reservation.

ipsys-dnf-sc (Ship Complete)
This System Tag will appear on an Order that could not be fulfilled because the “Ship Complete” field on the Order was set to True and one or more of the items is not available.

ipsys-scheduled-job
This System Tag will appear on a Fulfillment Process or a Replenishment Process that was created by a Scheduled Plan.

ipsys-dnf-override-receipts
This System Tag will appear on an Order that could not be fulfilled because it has “Overridden Item Receipts for Fulfillment” associated with it.

ipsys-dnf-no-lines-allocated
This System Tag will appear on an Order that could not be fulfilled because none of its line items had any inventory available to be allocated.

ipsys-user-confirmed-short-pick
This System Tag will appear on a Work record if the worker performing the pick hits the Short Ticket button and confirms that they were doing a short pick.

ipsys-subbox-dk-fail (Dynamic Kit)
This System Tag will appear on an Order Line, if a Subscription Box Recipe is run against it, and the Dynamic Kit for the subscription box cannot be created.

ipsys-parcel-address-type-check-failed
This System Tag will appear on an Order when it cannot be determined if the Ship To address is considered residential or commercial for parcel rates.

User-Added TAGs: Building custom TAGs in the Infoplus system is easy and flexible. On the selected record, Click the(tablet and pen) icon. The following screen with pop up.

In the box, you will have the option to select one of the existing TAGs by clicking the drop-down arrow, or if the existing TAGs are not adequate for what you need, type the desired TAG name in the blank field (omitting spaces) and then tap “enter” on your keyboard. The new TAG has been created and you can click “OK”.

Custom TAGing, like in the ASN example below, “MustBeFrozen” can be used to identify a SKU or set of SKUs that need to be placed in a frozen location. In this case, this TAG was added to the record with a trigger.

A smart filter was looking for a set of SKUs that required being frozen. In this case, the two SKUs that were received needed freezing. The trigger was able to add the TAG to the ASN as a reminder that these items need to be placed in a location within the Freezer area. I could have received these one at a time, but I knew that both needed to be frozen.

TAGs have many functions. One thing that makes them a powerful tool is they can be added by a Trigger or Script, as well as activate Triggers and Scripts to perform other functions. In the example above, If I needed to search out all the items that required being in a freezer, without the TAGs on the records, it would take me much longer to sort through each SKU or location to find the same information.

TAGs are a powerful way of adding additional info to a record. We would love to know how you use TAGs in Infoplus.