Automatically sending shipment confirmation email upon order fulfillment

[tsanstef2]

Hi,

I am working with a 3rd party fulfillment service which updates the status and the info on the received orders via API calls. Most notably, they would set my order to fulfilled and add a tracking number. As soon as this happens, namely the order fulfillment via API calls, I would like to send a Shipping Confirmation email (the same one for which an email template can be configured under Notifications->Customer Notifications). Note that I cannot influence the 3rd party API calls, cannot be changed - hence the capability must come from Shopify.

I found a way to send an email when "Automatically fulfill the order‘s line items" is enabled under Order Processing: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/checkout-settings/order-processing (there is an option there to 'Notify customers of their shipment'). Unfortunately, this approach does not work for me as:

1) It is plain wrong - my fulfillment partner shall be doing this. After all, there could be issues preventing the fulfillment (e.g. problematic address).

2) It will send the email before the 3rd party attempts to fulfill the order and provide the tracking id. A Shipping confirmation email without a tracking id has NO value whatsoever. Also, how do I communicate the tracking ID afterwards? My fulfillment provider will not alter the API calls to theoretically indicate to Shopify that such email shall be sent in addition to say updating the fulfillment information of the order.

I tried the Flow app, but there is no action to send confirmation emails to customers. I think this is a very common scenario and super weird that Shopify does not have a straightforward solution here.

So I am looking for a solution that will allow me to send Shipping Confirmation emails once an external party fulfills the order via API call. Thank you!

[RobZone]

When the fulfillment service calls the API to create the fulfillment, they need to set the notify customer boolean to true in order to send the Shopify shipping confirmation email.  This should be a configuration option with your 3P fulfillment service.

[tsanstef2]

Thank you, but as mentioned this is not possible yet. I am looking for ideas to do it locally in Shopify. I was thinking of creating an extension that acts as an Action in Flows, and create a workflow triggered by the order fulfillment. The trigger works fine (tested it), not sure about the action (the extension).

[JoesIdeas]

You can't override this, it's the responsibility of the person / app / service that creates the fulfillment. Your fulfillment service is the one that can do this.

Share with them this document: https://shopify.dev/docs/api/admin-rest/2024-04/resources/fulfillment#post-fulfillments and ask them to set notify_customer to true when they fulfill your items.

If they will not, ask them why and tell them your situation. I would think they would customize for you if they have some reason why they don't do that.

If they will not change that, couple of options:

a) Ask them to email your team the tracking number, so you can update it. Not ideal but would be a temporary workaround until you found an automated solution

b) Edit the tracking, this would trigger a shipment update notification. You could experiment with changing the carrier maybe. Not sure how this would look for the customer, so test on an order where you are the customer first.

c) If your fulfillment service partner is not willing to make this change for you, that will help your business and is an obvious part of fulfillment logistics, consider switching to a new fulfillment service partner (if you need some recommendations just ask and include your needs and I'll update this post with my recommendations from companies I or my clients have used).

[tsanstef2]

Thank you. I am already doing a) and b). I have an automatic order fulfillment set up in Order Processing settings. So customers get a fulfillment confirmation as soon as they pay. Then, once the order is confirmed, I am Editing the tracking number only and selecting the Notify Customer option in the popup. This way the customer gets a 3rd email with the tracking id. It is not ideal, required manual effort but it somehow works. I am looking for ways to improve this further.