Getting Started, Step 3: Customize your Fulfillment Flow

Step 3: Customize your fulfillment flow

DropStream’s automation runs on Business Rules. A rule fires on a specific event — a new order coming in from your Store, a shipment notification coming back from your Warehouse, a return, a purchase order, or an invoice export — and can transform, filter, or enrich the data as it passes through.

Most accounts need at least one rule before orders can ship: a Shipping Rule that maps the shipping descriptions used by your Store (e.g. “Free Shipping”, “Expedited”) to the carrier codes used by your Warehouse. Different warehouses use different carrier codes, and DropStream needs to know which codes apply to your account.

Open Business Rules

In the left navigation, expand Automation and click Rules.

Rules are grouped by Merchant and then by Store, so you can see at a glance which Stores have rules and which don’t.

Create a Shipping Rule

1. In the top-right of the Business Rules page, click New Rule.

2. Under Store, pick the Store this rule will run on. Under Hook, choose Order Import — the event that fires when DropStream pulls a new order from the Store. Click Continue to editor.

   

3. The visual rule editor opens with an empty canvas. Click Start Building, then in the Add Statement dialog choose the Shipping Rule template and click Add Statement.

   The template drops a WHEN / THEN scaffold onto the canvas: a condition that matches an order’s external shipping description, and a shipping_transformation action that sets the warehouse carrier code.

   

4. Click the WHEN node to open its Configuration panel on the right. Set the Field to external_shipping_description, the Operator to is, and the value to the exact shipping description that comes from your Store (for example, Free Shipping). The text must match the way the description appears in your Store, character-for-character.

5. Click the shipping_transformation node under THEN. In its Configuration panel, choose the warehouse shipping method to use when the condition matches.

6. Give the rule a name (click the pencil icon next to New Rule at the top), then click Save in the top-right. New rules are created Inactive — open the rule’s More actions menu and activate it when you’re ready for it to run.

To handle additional shipping descriptions, repeat steps 4–5 inside the same rule (each WHEN block matches a different description), or create a separate rule per Store as needed.

Tip: Once you have orders flowing into DropStream, you can find the exact shipping descriptions on the order’s detail page under Sales Orders → Orders.

The Shipping Rule is the only rule most accounts strictly need. The rules engine also supports filtering, data enrichment, branching flow control, and custom code, all from the same visual editor.