UltraCart (eCommerce)

UltraCart is a full-featured eCommerce solution.

Aligni’s native UltraCart integration helps you coordinate your eCommerce activities with your Aligni item master and inventory.

Functionality

This integration provides two inventory synchronization features:

  1. UltraCart Inventory → Aligni Inventory Synchronization: When configured, UltraCart will update your Aligni inventory when an order ships. Aligni inventory will be adjusted according to these updates so that your finished goods inventory is always up to date and consistent with your online store.
  2. Aligni Inventory → UltraCart Inventory Synchronization: When configured, Aligni will update your UltraCart inventory when inventory is received or adjusted within specified warehouse zones.

Presently, the integration requires two separate mechanisms for these two synchronization processes.

UltraCart Inventory → Aligni Inventory Synchronization

This integration enables Aligni to receive updates from UltraCart when an order is shipped. These updates can be used to make adjustments to inventory in Aligni, assuring that your inventory records are consistent as orders are shipped.

When an order is shipped, UltraCart will make a request to Aligni that includes several key pieces of information about the order being shipped. Using this information, Aligni will find the corresponding item(s) in your item master and update inventory counts based on the selection criteria you configure in the integration.

If any errors are encountered, an email is sent to your organization’s administrator. Aligni keeps a temporary log of recent UltraCart interactions to help identify and debug any issues.

Aligni Configuration

Configure the UltraCart integration through the API & Integrations menu on your organization’s settings pages. The following options are available:

  • Inventory Warehouse – When specified, Aligni will only make inventory updates to inventory in this location.
  • Inventory Zone – When specified, Aligni will only make inventory updates to inventory in this sublocation.
  • Inventory Unit Selection – This option determines how Aligni chooses inventory units to be updated when a request is received.

UltraCart Configuration

Once you have set up the integration in Aligni, you will have a Target URL assigned. This URL is provided to UltraCart in the following steps:

  1. Visit your UltraCart portal and select Configuration → Development → Webhooks
  2. Create a new webhook.
  3. Copy the URL from Aligni to the Target URL setting in UltraCart.
  4. Under Event Subscriptions, select Order / Order Ship.
  5. Under Expansion Options, add “item”.
  6. Save the new webhook.

Aligni Inventory → UltraCart Inventory Synchronization

This integration requires an OAuth connection with UltraCart. Within the integration settings page in Aligni, click to connect to UltraCart. This will require you to authenticate with UltraCart and will establish persistent access for Aligni.

Once the OAuth connection has been established, you will be able to configure some settings that determine how the integration operates:

  • Refresh Distribution Centers – Click this to refresh the list of UltraCart warehouses. You will need to do this any time your warehouse configuration within UltraCart changes.
  • Refresh Item Master – Click this to synchronize your UltraCart item master to the Aligni item master. Aligni will fetch the list of UltraCart items and uses the “Manufacturer SKU” to match to Aligni part numbers. These must match exactly for the integration to work.
  • Export CSV Item List – Click this to export the UltraCart item master list to confirm that the matching has worked and see which warehouses and zones will be synchronized.

For each UltraCart warehouse, you will then be able to match an Aligni warehouse and (optional) warehouse zone to perform the synchronization. Only operations within this warehouse / zone combination will be synchronized to UltraCart.

The synchronization is triggered whenever a matching item within the warehouse (and optional zone restriction) experiences a change in inventory. This includes, but is not limited to, one of the following inventory transactions:

  1. Receiving inventory to the specified warehouse / zone from a purchase order.
  2. Receiving inventory to the specified warehouse / zone from a material transfer.
  3. Finalizing a build and moving finished goods to the specified warehouse / zone.
  4. Manually moving inventory to or from the specified warehouse / zone.

Any of the above operations will queue an update to be performed. The system executes these updates every 15 minutes. When Aligni performs a synchronization, it counts all inventory units within the warehouse / zone combination and makes an absolute (not relative) adjustment to the inventory on UltraCart. In this way, Aligni is established as the single source of truth and UltraCart inventory follows.

Enabling Synchronization in UltraCart

After you have authenticated OAuth for use with Aligni, you will need to authorize the application to send updates to UltraCart:

Configuration → Checkout → Shipping → Distribution Center → EDIT → Transmission Mechanism → Check to “Allow Fulfillment REST API Access”

In addition to this global configuration, each item that Aligni needs to update will also need some configuration (Item → Shipping → Inventory Control and Distribution):

  • The item’s “track inventory” option must be enabled.
  • The “Handles Product”option must be enabled for the item.

Test Mode

If you enable test mode, no operations will be sent to UltraCart. Instead, an email will be sent to organization owners with a list of the updates that would be performed. You can use this mode to observe and confirm correct operation until you’re ready to enable the integration by switching to production mode.

Synchronize Now

By clicking Synchronize Now, Aligni is instructed to perform updates on all recent inventory changes. This does not perform a comprehensive update on all items — only those which have changed since the previous successful synchronization event.

Event Logging

Recent events are logged in Aligni and are visible from the integration configuration page. Each log entry includes the full request payload received from UltraCart.

Error Handling

Emails are sent to the organization system administrator if any of the following errors occur. Generally, these are errors that represent some inconsistency in configuration between UltraCart and Aligni and should be resolved as soon as possible to prevent data loss. It is not possible to “re-run” a transaction, so manual updates may be required to resolve these issues.

Unknown Item

When UltraCart posts an item that cannot be found in your Aligni item master, Aligni will send an email with the missing item code. You will need to add this item to your item master to prevent these messages.

Insufficient Inventory

If an UltraCart request requires more inventory to be consumed than is available, Aligni is unable to satisfy the request completely so an error message is sent. A partial consumption of this item may have already been processed.