Using Delivery and Pickup Options
Using delivery options enables you to offer you customers a choice of delivery slots. This section explains how to get delivery and pickup options for a consignment, and how to generate consignments and orders from the options a customer selects.
Note
Access to PRO's delivery and pickup option endpoints requires a SortedHERO license. This component is sold separately to the main SortedPRO product.
What Is a Delivery Option?
In the context of SortedPRO, a "delivery option" for a consignment is a delivery date and time window that that consignment could potentially be delivered on, and a carrier service that could meet that delivery promise. When you request delivery options, you give PRO the details of an as-yet uncreated consignment. PRO then checks its carrier services and returns a list of available delivery slots and their associated carriers, enabling you to present these options to your customer at checkout.
PRO always returns a single carrier service for each timeslot. This is generally the cheapest service, unless using the cheapest service would conflict with existing business rules.
For example, suppose that you use the Delivery Options endpoint to request delivery options for a particular consignment, and the response indicates the following:
- Carrier X could deliver the consignment on Monday between 9 and 5 or Tuesday between 9 and 12
- Carrier Y could deliver the consignment on Monday between 9 and 12 or Tuesday between 9 and 12
- Carrier Z could deliver the consignment on Monday between 9 and 1 or Monday between 1 and 5
In this case, PRO would return five delivery options:
- Carrier X Monday 9-5
- Carrier Y Monday 9-12
- Carrier Z Monday 9-1
- Carrier Z Monday 1-5
- The cheapest option between Carrier X Tuesday 9-12 and Carrier Y Tuesday 9-12
What Is a Pickup Option?
Pickup options are similar to delivery options, except they are used to enable PUDO (pick up / drop off) services rather than home delivery.
As with delivery options, when you request pickup options, you give PRO the details of an as-yet uncreated consignment. PRO then returns a list of each pickup location that consignment could potentially be delivered to. In turn, each location contains a list of delivery options, generated using the same rules as "standard" home delivery options. This enables you to create workflows whereby your customer selects a pickup location and then either selects or is presented with a pickup date/time
Section Contents
- Getting Delivery Options - Explains how to generate delivery options for a consignment
- Getting Pickup Options - Explains how to generate pickup options for a consignment
- Selecting Options - Explains how to generate either a consignment or and order from a specific option
Note
All of the URLs and examples given in this documentation relate to PRO's live production environment. To call APIs in the sandbox environment, substitute the api.electioapp.com portion of the API's base URL with apisandbox.electioapp.com. Don't forget to use your sandbox API key (as opposed to your production API key) when making the call.
For more information on PRO's sandbox, see Using the Sandbox Environment.