Increff Omni Standard APIs FAQs

Masters APIs

What happens on duplicate Create requests with the same master data and sku attribute? (Applicable to all type of masters, SKU Attributes)

The calls made for creation of product masters are idempotent meaning that if duplicate requests are sent, no change will be made. Therefore, if the product master data was successfully saved after the first call, subsequent duplicate calls will have no impact on the data. Each duplicate call will result in a 200-OK response.

What happens on duplicate Requests with the same master data and different sku attribute? (Applicable to all type of masters,SKU Attributes)

If different attribute data is passed for a specific product master using the create-article-master API endpoint, the SKU attributes will not be updated to the latest passed value.

However, when using the add-or-update-SKU-attributes API endpoint, the SKU Attribute Data from the latest successful call will be saved for the specified product master, i.e. the SKU attributes will be updated.

What if ERP is not able to send Tax code?

Increff WMS is a WMS module, hence Clients should never rely on Increff WMS to compute accurate taxation. This is ERP’s responsibility. So in case ERP is not able to send correct tax code for each sku, it can use a default value GIVEN that in such case Increff Omni tax computation will never be used.

What if ERP is capable of sending the tax breakup ?

During packing, the Increff Omni system can fetch the tax breakup from Order Source.

What if ERP is not able to send the Image URL?

The image URL is not a mandatory field and it may be left blank.
If the image URL is absent or incorrect, the image of the product won’t be displayed on WMS screens. This will affect picking, packing and all QC related operations.
Image URLS can also be updated using the product data updation API or from Increff OMS UI.

Note: The image URL must be a string under 255 characters

How to update an existing SKU master?

The SKU Masters can be updated using the updateArticleMaster endpoint (assuming that the listing for that product is present). OR Product master can also be updated from Increff OMS UI.

Can ERP create marketplace listing/mapping using OmniMagic2?

No, this feature is not available at the moment.

Technology

Are there any rate limiting applicable for AssureMagic2 APIs?

Yes, all Increff standard Apis supports rate limiting.

Does AssureMagic2 support FTP?

No, only REST APIs

Can AssureMagic2 refresh the Client’s API credentials?

No, AssureMagic2 cannot refresh a client's API credentials. It only supports static credentials for authentication.

Order Interface

Create Outward Order

What is the difference between Order with and without Partner Codes?

All B2B orders along with vendor/customer codes are placed through Order with Partner Code API, whereas all the B2C orders are placed through Order without Partner Codes API.

What are the unique fields(Primary Keys) for order creation?Check OMS, CIMS

Location code and same channel order Id are unique for one set of external credentials ( indicating the Marketplace / ERP).

What is the difference between OrderItem Code and ChannelSKU Code?

Channel SKU Code is the unique identifier for an SKU the Marketplace / ERP whereas, OrderItem Code is the unique identifier for an order line item.

Note: Two order line items can have the same ChannelSKU Code, but no two line items can have the same Order Item Code.

Can we pass EAN in the channelSkuCode/orderItemCode field when creating order?

EAN can be passed in the ChannelSKU code field during order creation if and only if both are the same, and were mapped as the same during the Article Master Creation process in Assure.

EAN can be passed as the Order Item Code during order creation if and only if there is only one order line item (with ‘n’ quantity) of the same EAN in the order. This will ensure no two order line items have the same Order Item Code.

What are the fields we can update for existing orders?

Channel Order Status, Required By Time, Start Processing Time and On Hold(updating to false only) property of an existing outward order can be updated.

Can we cancel/update an existing Inward order?

Cancellation / Updation of an Inward order once placed is not allowed.

What if the same call for order cancellation / creation / update order properties is made twice to AssureMagic2?

Success will be returned with no action performed in ASSURE.

What if a different request with duplicate channelOrderIds is made?

Success will be returned as Order with the same channel Order Id would have been already existing in ASSURE and duplicate order will not be created in ASSURE.

Can line Items be appended once the order is created in the system?

No.

What is the purpose of on-hold and Start Processing Time fields of an order in ASSURE?

An order with on hold value as true will be created in ASSURE but will not be moved to ASSURE WMS for processing.

An order will be moved to ASSURE WMS for processing once the real time exceeds or equals the Start Processing Time of the order and order is not on hold.

Can we set the value of on-hold as TRUE after the order is placed?

No.

What does Order with QC status : Fail mean?

Order with QC status Fail indicates that only the inventory marked as QC Fail in ASSURE will be allocated to the order. Generally QC fail orders are used for liquidation of QC fail inventory from the warehouse. All marketplace outward orders are QC pass only.

What if Marketplace doesn't support Seller Cancellation?

Upon doing seller cancellations from OMS UI, an error will be thrown indicating the channel does not support seller cancellation.

What enums are applicable for inward / outward orders during order creation ?

Enums	Inward Order	Outward Order
PO	Purchase Order	Not Applicable
RTV	Not Applicable	Return To Vendor
SO	Not Applicable	Customer Sales Order
RO	B2B Customer Return Order	Not Applicable(Currently RO/RTV are interchangeably used)
RPO	Not Applicable	Replacement Order
STO	Stock Transfer Order	Stock Transfer Order

How B2B return, RTV , STO is created and which APIs and Enums to use?

Refer to the above table.

Why is the order Ack call not instantaneous?

While sending an order, a 200 OK response means that we have received the order. So it is already instantaneous in that sense.

An ACK call back to you means we can process it. For this our system has to allocate inventory. Since we are designed for multi-channel order processing, we have to put orders in a queue and allocate inventory to them in FIFO order. This would obviously mean that it cannot be instantaneous"

Push Customer Cancellation

What fields Assure considers for partial customer cancellation?

Assure cancels the order line Item based on the Order Item Code. The cancelled quantity is passed in the order cancellation request to ASSURE against the Order Item Code.

ASSURE cancels the entire order if the cancelled quantity for all line items equal the ordered quantity.

Order Posting from Assure

What are the meanings of address(partner), billing(partnerLocation) and shipping address(partnerLocation) of partner and partner locations in B2B2C channels (Ajio/CT/Firstcry) in order posting from Assure?

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What are the triggers for order posting from Assure?

Order posting is triggered on the following events:

Order completion(When order is marked as handover)
Cancellation of order.
Creation of order(This will have both fulfillable and unfulfillable orders)

GRN Interface

What are the trigger points for GRN Posting Order Wise?

When the order is marked as completed then this GRN posting is triggered.

What are the trigger points for GRN Posting Gate Entry Wise?

When the gate entry is marked as completed then this GRN posting is triggered.

What are the trigger points for GRN notifications?

When item status is marked as GRN and associated with a bin post that depending on the frequency of GRN sync to ERP the updates are sent at an order level.

Is the frequency configurable for GRN notification?

GRN sync time frequency can be changed on request to Assure customer success team.

What is the max line Item in one GRN notification message?

At maximum the number of line items in GRN notification requests can be 5000.

Are the message Ids unique across postings or specifically for posting of one kind?

All message Ids shared across postings of all kinds are unique.

Shipment Interface

At what stage pack order call is triggered?

Pack call is triggered when items are on the packing desk in the warehouse.

What are the different mandatory APIs required to be implemented for B2B vs B2C orders?

In case of B2C invoice and shipping label APIs are mandatory. For B2B order both invoice and shipping label flows APIs are optional.

What If there is only one document for invoice and shipping label?

In this case the document URLs in both invoice and shipping label details API response will be the same. Assure Magic will call for documents only once.

What if the shipping label url is not present, especially in case of B2b order?

In the case of B2C order shipping, label flow is compulsory. For B2B orders shipping label flow is not compulsory.

What is the expected response when a manifest is called with the same and different payload?

In case a manifest is already created on the client side and Assure magic makes the same payload request again, then the manifest code already generated with success 200 HTTP status code should be sent in response. In case of different payloads a new manifest code should be generated corresponding to the new manifest.

When is the handover call triggered?

Handover call is triggered when shipments are being handed over to the courier partner in the warehouse. This is the last step in the forward order cycle.

Will the postings be sent for the OMS UI uploaded orders in ASSURE?

Order posting is only sent for orders created from Assure Magic or other channels and not for orders uploaded from OMS UI.

What will be the partnerCode and partnerLocation code for B2c orders?

In Assure there is a default customer that gets created against every client. The B2C orders for the client get created in Assure against this default customer.

Returns Order Interface

What is the trigger for return order posting?

When return processing is completed in Assure and return order status is completed then return sync to ERP is triggered.

During return process, we are creating new shipment per item. Ideally only one item should go in one return order. But there could be instances where customer raised return for two items and the courier picked but both against same return order. For shipment tracking we'll try to merge them at our end, but when it reaches the warehouse, will we receive two callbacks against individual forward order ID? or will we receive QC callback call for only one of them?

Order return order represents one or more items of one forward order getting returned.Omni system sends return notification on return order level.
if return order has multiple items, then once all items are processed, and return order is marked completed then system will trigger the notification. if some expected items is not received OPS can mark it QC fail, product missing.

In an erroneous situation where 2 return orders were created for the 2 items. Ideally they should have arrived with different AWBs. Since the courier guy picked up both of them together, they arrived at Warehouse with same AWB. Will it be differentiated at warehouse as different order? Or one item will be received properly and an issue will be raised for the other one ?

One item will be received properly and an issue will be raised for the other one.

Inventory Interface

In Inventory update call what is the difference between an error being thrown and Failure List ?

Failure list is used to convey that Inventory update for these many SKUs was not successful. This might occur when SKUs sent in the payload are not present in the client's system(Marketplace/ERP). But in case of Error, it could be Bad_Data or Internal Server Error.

In Inventory get calls how to use channelSkuCode and pageNumber fields ?

In this API call, we can accommodate Get requests for any number of channelSkuCodes. PageNumber field denotes the range in which these required channelSkuCode will be searched in. If pageNumber is 1 then 1 to 10,000 records of the inventory will be searched and matched inventory will come in the response body. If you want to search records from 10,000 to 20,000 SKU then pageNumber can be sent as 2 and so on. Response body has one field named as ‘hasMore’ which denotes if there are more pages in response or not. If you are searching for pageNumber 1 and few channelSkuCodes were found in the next 10,000 to 20,000 then hasMore will be TRUE.

Why is there a batching of calls? What scenario requires batching ?

It is an industry standard to use batching wherever possible.

This reduces no. of calls,
Improves scalability

We try to build things for scale. Imagine receiving 10000 orders per hour. If we sequentially respond to every single order, and one call takes 100 ms, then without batching it would take a long time to send acks for all orders.

This in turn can result in your order processing pipelines to get delayed (e.g. sending confirmation mails to customers, booking AWB nos. etc)

Companies like Amazon also follow the same mechanism for their EDI integrations and we've followed the best industry practice over here"

How to get available to sell inventory from Search Inventory calls

Why is the batch processing accumulated if one batch fails and why subsequent batches are not processed?

If we cannot trust a system for 1 batch then it cannot be trusted for other batches also. The simple reason is that there are no guarantees that subsequent batches won't fail. If one cannot give a guarantee, then effectively, we are asking a computer system to keep trying other batches and "hopefully" some of them will succeed.

Such a system would also be complex to develop. There would be many considerations to make:

What strategy would be used to retry the failed batch? Exponential backoff, fixed delay, fixed rate?
How long (hours, days) should the system keep retrying for a failed batch ?
What happens when there are too many failed batches? Because, eventually you would reach a point where you have too many failed batches, and those batches would themselves become a bottleneck for "good" batches. Because retrying for bad batches would delay good batches.
What happens if we stop retrying after 2-3 days, and then you fix the system at your end? How do you develop a mechanism to re-activate those batches? How do you develop a mechanism to authorize retries of such batches? Who will authorize it ? Client or Increff? How do you automate such a process?
How would you develop a "measure" of success of this mechanism? Is < 1% batch failure rate acceptable? 0.1% etc.