Track overview
Welcome to Sorted Track! Here you'll find a brief overview of Track's component parts and what you can do with them.
If you just want to get started with the system, check out the Quick Start guide.
Introduction to Track
Track aggregates all your tracking information in one place and one format, no matter where your shipments are going or what carrier they're shipping with. Once you register your shipments and give Track permission to access tracking data from your carriers, Track automatically watches out for updates and keeps all your shipment records up to date.
This standardised tracking data enables you to build API-driven tracking pages on your sites, use webhooks to set up automated delivery alerts to your consumers or customer service teams, and monitor shipment performance via Track's user interface dashboard.
How Track works
Track is based around three fundamental concepts: shipments, tracking events, and events.
- A shipment is a singly-tracked consignment of goods that are being shipped together from a single origin location to a single destination location.
- A tracking event is a shipment progress update received from a carrier. Track converts carrier updates into a standard form, meaning that tracking events are always consistent no matter which carrier you ship with.
- A Track event gives details of a shipment property change. For example, an address change to a particular shipment would be represented as an event. Events can be triggered by tracking events.
The shipment lifecycle
A typical Track shipment lifecycle might look something like this:
A shipment is registered for in Track. You can register shipments via either the Register Shipments API endpoint or Track's SFTP upload service.
Note
For more information on registering shipments, see the Registering Shipments page.
Track continually checks its carrier data for new tracking events relating to the shipment. You'll need to set up carrier connectors via the Settings > Carrier Connectors UI page to give Track access to your tracking information.
Where Track finds new tracking information, it analyses the tracking event sent by the carrier and uses it to determine the shipment's current state.
Track uses internal, standardised shipment states for all carriers. For example, our analysis has shown that DPD UK’s tracking events with a status of Collected and Yodel tracking events with a status of Parcel Picked Up mean the same thing. As such, Track converts both of these statuses to an internal Track shipment state of Collected By Carrier, making it easier to track and manage your shipments no matter which carrier they're with. This process takes place for every tracking event received from Track's supported carriers.
You can also customise the names used for Track shipment states via the UI’s Settings > Custom State Labels page. For example. you could rename the Collected By Carrier Track shipment state to With Our Providers. State labels enable you to communicate tracking information to your customers in your brand's tone of voice or in an alternative language. Track state labels support up to 8 locales.
Note
For a full list of available Track shipment states, see the Shipment States page.
Track converts the contents of the carrier's tracking update into a standardised Track tracking event, and associates the contents of that event with the relevant shipment, based on the shipment's carrier tracking reference. If two or more shipments have the same carrier tracking reference, then Track associates the tracking event with all relevant shipments.
Note
For information on the structure of Track's tracking events, see the Get Tracking Events API reference.
If a shipment's properties need to be updated as a result of the tracking event (for example, because the shipment's state or promised date have changed), then Track creates an internal event and updates the shipment's details accordingly.
Note
For more information on the structure of Track's Event objects, see the Get Event API reference.
If the change in shipment properties has triggered any of your webhooks (for example, because you have a webhook set up to listen out for failed deliveries and the shipment's state has changed to Delivery Failed Card Left), then Track sends the shipment's data to you.
Note
For more information on setting up webhooks, see the Managing Webhooks page.
You can use the webhook data Track sends to drive services that send automated email, SMS, push, or social media notifications to your customers.
You can also use Track's webhook data to build services that automatically escalate issues to your carriers or create tickets for your customer service team to manage.
You can use the data from Track's APIs to drive embedded delivery tracking from your own website, without the need to pass customers off to a carrier portal.
Note
For more information on retrieving tracking data from Track, see the Retrieving Shipment and Event Data page.
Track components
Track is designed to be flexible, enabling you to manage and track shipments in a variety of ways. You can interact with Track via:
- APIs - Track's APIs let you register and maintain your shipment data, and retrieve tracking information.
- Webhooks - Track uses webhooks to notify you of shipping events proactively. Whenever a shipment enters a selected state, Track will send that shipment's data to you.
- User Interface - The Track dashboard gives you advanced shipment monitoring features, and enables administrators to configure the system.
- SFTP - If required, you can upload shipment details to Track via file transfer instead of the API.
Integrate with Track
Track offers the following API endpoints, enabling you to offer advanced shipment tracking and management features through your own website or apps:
| Endpoint | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Register Shipments | Register shipments for tracking |
| Get Shipment by Shipment ID | Retrieve shipment details by Track Shipment ID |
| Get Shipments | Retrieve shipment details by tracking or custom reference |
| Update Shipment | Update shipment details |
| Delete Shipment | Delete a shipment |
| Get Tracking Events by Shipment ID | Retrieve all shipment tracking events for a specified shipment |
| Get Event | Retrieve events by Track Event ID |
| Get Shipment Events | Retrieve events by date range, references and carrier |
| Get Shipment Events by Shipment ID | Retrieve event details by Track Shipment ID |
| Get Shipment States History | Retrieve a shipment's shipment state history |
To query any of the APIs, you'll need an API key. You can create one from the Settings > API Keys tab in the Track UI. You'll also need to make sure your accept and content-type headers are set to application/json, as Track only works with JSON data.
Note
- For full request and response details for each endpoint, see the API Reference.
- For information on how to register shipment details via API and SFTP, see the Registering Shipments page.
- For information on retrieving shipment, event, and tracking information via API, see the Retrieving Shipment and Event Data page.
- For information on updating shipment details via API, see the Updating Shipments page.
- For information on the error codes that Track's APIs can return, see the Error Codes page.
Webhooks and shipment filters
Track's webhooks enable you to build services that respond to shipping events proactively. During the webhook setup process, you associate a particular webhook with a set of conditions. When an event puts a particular shipment into one of those conditions, Track sends details of the event and its associated shipment to a URL of your choice. You can then feed this data into whatever application you choose.
Webhooks can be configured from the Settings > Webhooks tab on the Track Dashboard. The settings you select on this page depend on the service that is to receive the webhook data. You'll need to know:
- The URL to send the data to.
- Whether the webhook needs to send using a
POSTorPUTmethod. - The authentication details for the service that will receive the webhook.
- Whether the request should use any additional headers.
In Track, webhooks are triggered by shipment filters. A shipment filter is a list of shipment states, tags, and calculated events that acts as a webhook trigger. When a shipment meets any of these criteria, any webhooks configured for that filter will deploy. Each webhook can be triggered by multiple shipment filters, and each shipment filter can be associated with multiple webhooks.
You can create shipment filters from the Settings > Shipment Filters tab on the Track Dashboard.
Note
For more information on creating and maintaining Shipment Filters and webhooks, see the Managing Webhooks page.
User interface
The UI gives Track admins an intuitive set of tools with which to monitor shipments and configure system operation. It has three main functions - Reporting, Configuration, and User Management.
You can access the Track UI here.
Note
The Track UI is compatible with the latest versions of Microsoft Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Opera.
Reporting
Track's dashboards can be found under the UI's Dashboard tab. They give you a filterable overview of your registered shipments and system connectivity.
- Shipment States - Shows how many of your shipments are in red, amber, or green status at any given time, and enables you to plot those shipments on a map. Where required, you can drill down to view information on individual shipments or shipment states.
- Performance - Shows statistics on shipment performance by country.
Note
For more information on monitoring shipments in the UI, see the Monitoring Shipments page.
Configuration
The UI's Settings tab enables you to configure Track to receive carrier tracking information, set up webhooks and API keys, and configure connectivity to third-party products.
- API Keys - Enables you to set up new API keys and revoke existing keys where required.
- Shipment State Labels - Enables you to set up custom labels for Track shipment states. Setting up custom labels helps you to communicate shipment updates to your customers using your own brand tone of voice.
- Carrier Connectors - Enables you to manage your existing carrier connectors and set up new ones where required. When you set up a connector for a particular carrier, you give Track permission to receive tracking events from that carrier on your behalf.
- Shipment Filters - Enables you to manage your existing shipment filters and set up new ones where required.
- Webhooks - Enables you to manage authentication and payload details for your existing webhooks, associate webhooks with shipment filters, and set up new webhooks where required.
Note
For more information on configuring Track in the UI, see the Settings page.
User management
Administrators can manage the Track users in their team from the Add Member page, accessed from the user menu icon.
From this screen, as an Administrator, you can:
- Add team members. You'll need to give a name and email address. Once you send the invite, Track sends an email to the user containing a link that can be used to activate the account and set up a password.
- View details of existing Track users in your team, as well as people you have invited but who have not yet signed up.
- Re-send invitation emails to pending users.
- Delete existing and pending users.
Note
For more information on managing users in the UI, see the User Management page.
Next steps
Learn more about Track: