Managing Customer Notifications

The Customer Notifies page allows you to set up automatic email notifications for your customers when certain events take place in 3PL Warehouse Manager. This article reviews the general guidelines for configuring customer notifications and editing notification templates.

Skip Ahead: Use the following links to skip to the relevant guideline sections below.

• Understand each event
• Set up customer notifies
• Edit notification templates
  • Use substitution fields
  • Add a subject
  • Add images
  • Add tracking information
  • Save and test

Understand each event

Each type of event and the action which triggers the notification for that event are as follows:

• Item Create/Update: When an item is created or updated
• Advance Shipping Notice (ASN): When a receipt is created and you have "Receive Against ASN" enabled in a customer's setup
• Receive on Dock: When a receipt is first created via SmartScan or the Find Receipts/Create Receipt pages
• Received: When a receipt is confirmed into inventory
• Order Created by Customer: When a new order is created by a customer user and marked as 'Complete'
• Order Created by Warehouse: When a new order is created by a warehouse user and marked as 'Complete'
• Orders Created through FTP: When an order is created through an FTP connection
• Order Updated: When an order is updated
• Order Loaded Complete: When an order achieves a status of 'Loaded Complete' (used with Classic Mobile's Load Out functionality)
• Order Loaded Incomplete: When an order achieves a status of 'Loaded Incomplete' (used with Classic Mobile's Load Out functionality)
• Order Shipped – Notify Customer: When an order is shipped and closed
• Order Shipped – Notify Ship-to: When an order has shipped and contains a ship-to email address
• FTP Order Import Failed: When an order imported through an FTP connection fails
• Stock Status Report Failed: When an inventory report file scheduled to post to an FTP connection fails
• Custom Report Failed: When a custom report file scheduled to post to an FTP connection fails
• FTP Receiver Import Failed: When a receiver file scheduled to import to an FTP connection fails
• 944–945 Confirmation Not Received: When an order's ASN is sent but no ASN confirmation is received back
• Batch Packed Complete Notify: When a set of batched orders are completely packed and ready to ship
• Item Import Failed: When an item import fails
• Adjustment: When an inventory adjustment is made
• Invoice Delivered: When an invoice is delivered using the 'Notify' button on the Manage Invoices page or the 'Send Final' button on the Monthly Invoicing page
• Invoice Preview: When an invoice preview is delivered using the 'Send Preview' button on the Monthly Invoicing page
• Item Minimum Reached: When an item has fallen below its minimum value—triggers once daily at midnight (defined in an item's setup under Items > Inventory Options as 'Min on Hand')
• Location Minimum Reached: When a SKU at a location has fallen below its minimum value—triggers once daily at midnight (defined in a location's setup under 'Capabilities' as 'Min Quantity')
• Product Expiration Threshold Reached: When a product is at its expiration threshold value
• Inventory Placed on Hold: When an item is placed on hold
• Inventory Released from Hold: When an item is released from hold

Set up customer notifies

The general instructions to set up customer notifications are as follows.

It is important to note that if either the "From" address or a specified email recipient utilizes free email services, this could negatively impact the reliability of the notifications to reach those email addresses. This is because of a server-level change Google and other email providers have made which flags constant emails as Spam before they ever reach your inbox. Please try to only utilize email addresses where you, an IT department, or a reliable representative have access to your DNS record.

1. Navigate to Customers > Customer Notifies in 3PL Warehouse Manager.
   
2. From the drop-down menu, 'Choose a Customer' and click Select.
3. If you'd like to use a different email address than what is listed under 'Manage Company Info' as the sender of the email notifications, enter it in the '"From" Email' field.
   
   Do not add this email address as a recipient for any notification event. The "From" address should be an address that does not need these notifications delivered to them.
4. Under the 'Email Recipients' column, enter one or more email addresses next to each event you'd like the recipient to be notified of. If using multiple recipients for one event, separate them with semicolons.
   
5. To change the default email notification for each event, click Change this cust. for that particular customer or click Change master next to an event to change the email template for all of your customers.
   
   Customer templates are used by default. If you want to instead utilize the master template, you must erase all content from the customer-specific template. For a better understanding of these email templates, see Edit notification templates below.
6. To include an attachment (of the event details or attached files) in the notification, note the following options—available in the 'Export File' column next to the relevant event.
   
   • Select an available Export Format.
     • Tab-delim: Text file with limited transaction details
     • Tab-detailed: Text file with full transaction details
     • XMLv2: XML file with limited transaction details
     • EDI (947): EDI file with limited transaction details
     • Detail Tab-Delimited: text file with limited transaction details
   • Click the selection box next to Email Attached Docs to include files attached to the transaction. Note that you must have 'Attach Files to Customer Notifies' enabled for your database under Admin > Settings.
   • Enter one or more Email Recipients, using semicolons to separate multiple email addresses.
     Please note that if you list a recipient here, you must also include the same email address under the 'Email Recipients' column.
   • Specifying an FTP URL here is no longer supported. To set up customer notifies via EDI, please contact edi@3plcentral.com.
7. Click Save.

Repeat Steps 2–7 for each customer, as needed.

Edit notification templates

Step 5 above refers to the email notification template for an event, which contains the message you want to send when that event occurs. Each email template allows you to tailor email notifications your customers receive by adding or removing relevant fields or text to the notification.

In general, HTML logic/language is recommended for editing the notification template. Continue reading below for additional information.

Use substitution fields

Each template can contain substitution fields, which are replaced with information from the relevant transaction or item record, as well as your company record. These fields are found in the bottom-right section of the Customer Notifies page.

There are two types of substitution fields—regular fields and list fields. When adding either of these substitution fields to a template, you must enclose the field names in curly braces.

1. Regular fields, as seen in the top text box above, are used for single-entry points of data. These fields are usually pulled straight from a single source of information and are not available to pull more than one entry at a time. You can freely type a field name (enclosed in curly braces) in the template, or you can select a field from the text box and click Paste selected regular field into template.
2. List fields, as seen in the bottom text box above, allow you to pull in lists of data associated with the labels. These lists populate as tables in the notification using the following formatting:
   {list FieldFromList:ColumnHeader,FieldFromList:ColumnHeader, ...}
   For example: {list SKU:Item,Qty:Quantity,SerialNumber:Serial #,LotNumber:Lot #}
   

   

   Do not add any text listed before the period in a list field—e.g., use Available instead of OrderItem.Available.

Add a subject

You can add a subject for your notifications by entering Subject: at the very top of the template, followed by your desired subject content. You can also add regular fields here to include specific information in the subject line.

Add images

You can also add images to your notifications if the image is hosted on an existing website. (We review how to retrieve image URLs in Step 3A on our Creating Packing Slip Templates article.)

Add an image to your notifications using the following syntax:

<img src="Image URL here"/>

Once added to an event's template, this image is sent with every notification.

Add tracking information

If you wish to add tracking information to your notifications, you can do so with the following logic:

{if TrackingInfo.TrackingNumber}Your custom text here:
<a href="https://www.google.com/search?en&q={TrackingInfo.TrackingNumber}" target="_blank"> {TrackingInfo.TrackingNumber}</a>{else}Shipping tracking reference not available.{endif}

Save and test

Once you're finished editing the notification template, click Save to apply your changes. When configuring email notifications for the first time, we recommend you send a test email to an accessible address before adding your customer as an email recipient.

Below is the notification that sends based on the content outlined in the examples above for the 'Order Shipped - Notify Customer' event.

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