Connect

Connect your post-purchase with your wider-systems landscape to ensure a seamless movement of data between highly connected solutions.

Overview

Connect is part of the parcelLab Platform product suite and as part of the core platform helps to underpin the capabilities of all parcelLab products to ensure your customers get the latest status updates on their orders.

Our knowledge enables us to implement the best integration option for you, including API, webhooks, and file-based transfers. No matter which systems and tools you are using, we will manage the integration and create a seamless collaboration.

What's Included?

Free integration hub

Standard third-party integrations

In-app/chatbot integration

Ability to include add-ons

Industry leading carrier integrations

Benefits

Simple connections to a wide range of tools

Choose how to keep your customers updated on their orders

Future-proofed and highly connected solutions

What Do I Need to Know?

To help you get started integrating with parcelLab to send and receive data, see our FAQs below.

If you have any further questions relating to the available integration options, please contact your parcelLab representative or fill in our contact form and we’ll get back to you.

How do I send order and tracking data to parcelLab?

For us to track your deliveries, you need to send us the tracking information for every shipment and parcel via API (with the order endpoint), file-based transfers, or including us on BCC of your emails.

If order details are available to you before the actual tracking information, you can submit the order details in advance to enable parcelLab to monitor the lead time between order creation and dispatch and trigger actions, such as alerts or delay emails. You can then send the courier and tracking number data when it’s available to help connect future trackings to the order.

For further information on sending tracking and order information, see our flexible integration options.

How do I integrate my carriers?

To set up a carrier integration, an interface method is required in order for us to get the relevant data from the respective carriers via API, webhooks, or file-based transfers. We recommend requesting the interface credentials form the carrier so parcelLab can use your direct account with the carrier to retrieve the data and provide detailed information about the shipment status.

For further information on carrier interface methods, see our carrier integration guide.

What happens when I send an update for a tracking record?

Our system adds the new piece of data as a field to the database as a record update (as opposed to a re-write). This means that the original tracking record data is not deleted but supplemented by the additional data that is sent.

For further information on updating orders, see our API documentation.

How can I retrieve the delivery date of a tracking?

You can get delivery dates for a tracking, such as estimated delivery dates and actual delivery dates via our API (order endpoint) as well as webhooks.

For further information on retrieving tracking details, see our API documentation.

Can I use the parcelLab API to generate an API token?

Yes, we have an API (via the tokens endpoint) you can call to create, revoke, and retrieve API tokens.

For further information on managing API access, see our API documentation.

How can I test and validate data sent via API to the parcelLab system?

There are two ways to test the parcelLab system.

1. Test your credentials for calling the parcelLab API. You can use our mock endpoints (that is: /order/mock or /track/mock) to validate your authentication and payload. When using the mock endpoints, our system does not process the data in the payload, and simply returns a 202 response if the production endpoint would have accepted the payload. This is useful if you are waiting for your developers to set up, to ensure that the credentials are ready to use in implementation.

2. Test the parcelLab system end-to-end. For more thorough testing, you can use the production endpoints and submit your test payloads according to our Data Model. The client field should be used to segment data into different test environments. This will process your test trackings and data, which you can review in the parcelLab App using your test account. For more information on end-to-end testing, please contact your Implementation Manager.

Learn more about Connect

View the following topics for more in-depth information on using Connect:

Data Integration

Learn about the data integration methods that can be used to send and receive order and tracking data with parcelLab.

Carrier Integrations

See how to set up carrier integrations with parcelLab.

Event Bus Integration

Find out how you can integrate your event bus system so parcelLab can connect and receive order and tracking data with ease.

Marketplace Tracking

Learn how you can simply track all marketplace shipments with parcelLab.

App Store

Find details of platform integrations you can use with parcelLab, such as Shopify.

Data Model

Learn about the foundational data elements used in the parcelLab system.

Status Model

Find out about the different status codes that are mapped to each tracking update in the parcelLab system.

parcelLab API

See our full collection of APIs.