This flow is meant to be a suggested best practice for Customers who have Shopify shops and have built custom integrations into Whiplash, and are ready to make the cutover to Whiplash Production.

Every Customer and situation may vary slightly, so please note that some tweaks or adjustments may need to be made to ensure a smooth transition. 

Sandbox Environment

The Whiplash Sandbox environment exists for customers to use as a testbed for development and flows as you are building out your custom integration with Whiplash.

Production Environment

Our Whiplash Production environment is where the finished, tested, user-ready integration will be deployed. 

Pre-Cutover

There are a few things that we need to ensure are in place before and during the transition from Sandbox to Production. These will need to be completed manually and be in place before you drop your first live orders into Production:

• Rules - Packing and Routing Rules will need to be set up in Production to mimic what is in the Sandbox. If you have rules in place in the Sandbox that you rely on for proper packing or routing of orders, items, and flows, you will need to create the same ones in Production as well.
• Packing Slips/Custom Inserts Templates - You will need to create any custom templates for packing slips or order inserts to ensure these get printed and included in orders as expected.
• Packaging Items - Make sure all Packaging products are created and configured correctly.
• Web Hooks - You will need to subscribe to any necessary web hooks and ensure the endpoint you provide to receive the web hook body is accurate and valid.
• Shipping Methods - Any custom mapping to shipping methods that you have done and tested within the Sandbox will need to be created and mapped in Production. The main callout here is the shipping method ids are different in Sandbox and Production.

  Note:

  • If you are using the API and relying on shipping_method_id to denote which shipping method should be used for the order, the Sandbox and Production have different shipping method ids for each method. In order to pull the list of all the shipping methods in Production via the API, you can do a GET to this endpoint: {{base_url}}/api/v{{api_version}}/shipping_methods. The results are paginated, so you will need to request pages, for example: {{base_url}}/api/v{{api_version}}/shipping_methods?page=2
    

• Let Shopify know your go-live date and ask for a temporary increased rate limit from their side to ensure the high volume of requests will not be throttled during the sync.
• Confirm all settings are updated to sync products "Never" and "Process Orders" OFF. 
• Ensure all products are uploaded from Shopify to Whiplash.
• Update all orders before set cutover to "Shipped Externally" in Whiplash.
• Contingency - Pull an export of Whiplash inventory before cutover in the worst case scenario where we must upload directly into Shopify.

Cutover

1. The Customer logs in to Shopify and changes the location name and address to the current location. Do not create another location.
   • Change the name to remove your current 3PL, but do not change the name to include Whiplash in the title. For example, utilize a name such as "customer_name 3PL partner" or similar.
   • Change the address to the Whiplash warehouse address.
2. In "Preferences" under the "General" tab, keep "Automatically Sync Inventory levels" set to "Never". Change the setting to make sure "Process Orders" toggles on when we receive inventory.
   
   
   
3. Re-Initialize the store in Whiplash from the "Shops" tab.
   
4. Bulk action "Process Orders" is to be ON for the items that we have in inventory. This will allow us to start fulfilling orders for the items that have inventory for.
5. The sync is monitored to ensure orders are switching from "Pre-Order" to "Processing".

After All Goods Are Received into Whiplash

• The Customer confirms they are ready for Whiplash inventory to overwrite Shopify.
• The Whiplash sync setting is changed to where "Process Orders" is ON.
• The Bulk Sync Inventory action is triggered.

Related Questions:

How do I transition from the sandbox to production?

What is the link to the Whiplash Sandbox?

Where can I build out and test a custom integration? 

How does a customer with a Shopify shop cutover to Whiplash Production?