There are two ways in which you can create a new order status, within the order details page or within the order status system email. Both methods are similar and in this example, we will show you how to create a new order status via the order itself.
The first step is to open a customer order, this can be done by searching for an order via the Customers > Orders or by clicking the on a order found on the live feed. Once you open the customer order, you will see the option to Edit the order, click this button. When you click edit button on the order, you can choose the status for that order, you can add your own status by clicking on the small box next to the status dropdown.
The new window will then come up where you can click Add New to add the new status or you can click on the name of the existing statuses to change their name or delete them. The new status you add here will become available to the whole site and not just this order.
To change the default status for your orders, which is the status that is automatically applied to an order when the new one is created, you need to go to any order attached to any of the contacts, click on Edit button on the bottom of the window and click on the small box next to the status dropdown.
You should now see the small window with order available order statuses. The next step is to click on the name of the status you wish to make into a default status, tick Default checkbox and click Save button.
Your order status should now have (Default) next to it.
Please note that you can add new order statuses on this screen and remove the unwanted statuses.
You have the option to send out an automated system email to a customer whenever a site administrator updates the order status for an order. To do this, you will first need to enable this option for order statuses you want the customer to be notified of. Open a customer order by searching for the order via the Customers > Orders or by clicking the on a order found on the live feed. Once you open the customer order, you will see the option to Edit the order, click this button. When you click edit button on the order, you will see the small box next to the status dropdown which you will then need to click.
You will be provided with a new window, select the checkbox next to the statuses you wish to notify customers about. Once you are done, close this window.
Each order status can have its own customized notification triggered to a customer once this status has been set for an order. To customize the order status email template, go to Admin > Customize System Emails > Order Status Changed. From here you will see a drop-down option with all the existing Status options, you also have the option to create a new status or enable/disable the notification for each status by clicking on the icon next to this drop down.
Select the order status you would like to customize from the drop-down. The fields that can be customized are as below:
You can also edit the Order Status Emails using FTP. To do this, connect to your site using an FTP client and navigate to the /Layouts/OutboundEmails/OrderStatusChanged/ folder. Within this folder, you will see all the available order statuses available, for example:
Download the Order Status email you would like to update, make the necessary changes and re-upload the file. Ensure you do not change the file name as this will not update correctly.
| {tag_orderstatusold} | Old order status |
| {tag_orderstatusnew} | New order status |
| {tag_trackingurl} | This will render the URL that has been entered in the 'Tracking URL' field of the order. |
| {tag_awbnumber} | This will render the number/id that has been entered in the 'AWB Number' field of the order. |
The other available tags for the order status emails are the same tags available for the invoice email layout found here.
Site administrators can print packing slips and labels, in order to do this you will need to customize the layouts for these items. Ther are two ways in which you can customize these layouts:
Navigate to the Admin > More Customization Options > Shipping Layouts screen. You will be presented with the following options:
Click on one of the layouts to start customizing. Using the Tag-insert drop down, you can completely customize these layouts by dynamically adding customer and order information.
To customize these layouts using FTP, you will first need to connect to your site using an FTP client. Once you have connected, navigate to the /Layouts/Shipping folder. Within this folder you will see the packagelabel.html and packingslip.html pages, download the layout you would like to update, make the necessary changes and re-upload the file. Ensure you do not change the file name as this will not update correctly. The tags available for this layout can be found inside a Tag Insert dropdown under Admin -> More Customization Options -> Shipping Layouts.
Site administrators have the ability to add a tracking number and tracking URL to each individual order, this process is described here. This allows customers to view and track the shipping status of an order directly via a integrated shipping provider or other external vendor. The tracking number and URL can be added to the order status change emails which are triggered to customers when the status of an order is updated. This is done by adding the below tags to these emails found via the Admin > Customize System Emails screen:
| {tag_awbnumber} | This is the tracking number entered in the AWB number field in the order |
| {tag_trackingurl,Your Text} | This will generate a link to the URL entered in the Tracking URL field entered in the order. This can be customized with your own text |
As well as being able to add the tracking information to the system emails, this can also be displayed to a customer behind a secure zone. For further details on displaying customer orders within a secure zone, refer to this article.
Copyright 2004 - 2011 Business Catalyst