Extensible Order Routing

Extensible Order Routing allows an Admin user to select which custom product, location, customer and order attributes can be filtered for in Order Routing. This provides the power and flexibility to set up order routing rules best suited to your unique business needs and determine the most optimum locations to fulfill the orders from.

Use Cases

The following sections describe example scenarios in which extensible order routing may be useful with custom product, location, order, or customer attributes. Note that this is only used with physical items (not digital or services). 

Product Attributes

Using order routing to route products to a certain set of locations based on custom product attributes that you have defined may be useful in scenarios such as:

• Products that need warm weather packaging, based on a true/false attribute called "Perishable"
• Products that need two people to lift the package, based on a true/false attribute called "Two Person Lift Required"
• Products of a particular brand, based on a text attribute with options for "Brand"

Product attributes can also be used with the Reserve Inventory in Cart feature.

Location Attributes

Using order routing to route products to a certain set of locations based on custom location attributes that you have defined may be useful in scenarios such as:

• Not routing shipments to an area with a weather event, based on a true/false attribute called "Weather Events"
• Not routing shipments to locations where the capacity is less than 50%, based on a number attribute called "Capacity" 
• Routing shipments to a location with the lowest cost of fulfillment, based on a number attribute called "Cost to Fulfill"
• Routing shipments to warehouses with a two-person forklift, based on a "Lifts" string attribute with options for one, two, or six person forklifts

Location attributes can also be used with the Reserve Inventory in Cart feature.

Order Attributes

Using order routing to route products to a certain set of locations based on custom order attributes that you have defined may be useful in scenarios such as:

• Routing orders with a BOPIS pickup time of 2:00 PM, based on a text attribute called "Pickup Time"

Customer Attributes

Using order routing to route products to a certain set of locations based on custom customer attributes that you have defined may be useful in scenarios such as:

• Routing shipments specially for Platinum customers, based on a text attribute called "tier" with options of "Platinum," "Gold," or "Silver"

Customer attributes can also be used with the Reserve Inventory in Cart feature.

Multiple Attributes

You can also route shipments based on a combination of attributes from the above topics. For instance, you could reference both product and location attributes in the following scenario:

• Perishable candy being routed to locations that offer insulated packaging, based on the true/false "Perishable" product attribute and the true/false "Insulated Packaging"

Enable Attributes for Order Routing

You must make the attribute available to Order Routing in the attribute configurations in order to use the attribute in routing filter logic. For more information about creating and configuring attributes in general, see the following documentation:

• Order Attributes
• Customer Attributes
• Product Property Attributes
• Location Attributes

In the settings of each attribute type, locate and toggle on the Available as Order Routing Filter and click Save. The below example shows the option for a product attribute.

This example shows the option for a location attribute:

The example below shows the option for an order attribute.

This example shows the option for a customer attribute:

Create Attribute Filters in Order Routing

Once enabled, you will be able to select the attribute in routing filters. When configuring a filter, you will be able to define logic based on that attribute by selecting the filter type "Custom Value."

These sections can be expanded to display the out-of-the-box attributes as well as your custom attributes for each topic:

The possible logic conditions will change depending on the data type of the attribute you selected. For logic conditions that support multiple values, such "or" and "any of," you will be able to select multiple values from the dropdown. For logic conditions that support only single conditions, like "equals" or "not equals," you will only be able to select one value.

If you select a list filter type, it will support the "in" or "not in" logic conditions. For example, if your filter attribute was Material then you could use "in" to compare it against the Iron, Steel, and Aluminum custom values. If the item matches any one of those values, it will attempt assignment.