Testing and going live with a warehouse
Lesson 5 of 28 7 min read
Run each flow by hand against the warehouse's test account, read the source and target data, then switch ids, schedules and filters over for live.
A warehouse integration touches real stock and real customers. A wrong carrier code or a missing client filter is cheap to find in testing and expensive to find after a pallet has gone to the wrong address. This lesson gives you a repeatable way to test each flow and a go-live checklist.
Control when the Integration runs
The Integration tile has three cards that decide whether and when anything moves:
| Activation | Whether the Integration can run at all. Disabled means no data is sent or received. |
|---|---|
| Schedule | Runs the Integration automatically every 30 minutes, or every 1, 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours. With no schedule you run it by hand. |
| Manual Operation | Run Send & Receive, Run Send or Run Receive immediately, outside the schedule. |
Test with no schedule
While testing, leave the schedule off and use Run Send or Run Receive. You decide exactly when each Document goes, and you can check the result before the next one.
Read what happened
Every Document keeps its source data (what arrived), the normalised Document, and its target data (what was sent). When a warehouse rejects an order or a shipment imports with odd quantities, start here: compare what Supply Lens sent with what the warehouse expected.
When you download source or target data, you get the version selected in the version list, and older versions have a timestamp in the file name.
A test plan per flow
- Orders out. Create one test order for each carrier service you use. Run Send and check the warehouse shows the right address, carrier, service, channel and client.
- Shipments back. Ask the warehouse to despatch a test order. Run Receive and check the tracking reaches the ERP and storefront, and that the shipment matched its order.
- Goods in. Send a test purchase order as a Goods Inbound, have the warehouse receive part of it, and check the received quantities on the receipt.
- Stock. Run Receive on Inventory and compare a handful of products against the warehouse's own screen.
Test ids are not live ids
Warehouses often give you a separate test account, and its ids differ from the live ones.
The Clarus WMS guide gives a concrete example: the warehouse might be 8 in test and 2 in
live, and the goods in and goods out bays differ too. Any setting holding a warehouse,
location, client, channel or carrier id needs checking at go-live.
Watch the import window at go-live
setupDate stops historical records being imported. If you tested against the live account
with real history, check it before you enable the schedule, so the first live run does not
pull in months of old shipments.
Northbank Botanicals' go-live morning
The 3PL confirms the live account is ready. Northbank's implementer:
- Swaps the test warehouse and client ids in the Warehouse Order and Goods Inbound settings for the live ones, and updates the Location and Party identifiers.
- Sets the client filter on every Receive Configuration to Northbank's live client id.
- Runs Receive on Inventory once by hand and spot-checks ten products.
- Sets the schedule to 30 minutes and watches the first two runs in the Documents list.
Recap
- Activation, Schedule and Manual Operation decide whether and when the Integration runs.
- Test with the schedule off, one flow at a time, using Run Send and Run Receive.
- Source and target data show exactly what arrived and what was sent.
- Test and live accounts usually have different ids, so every id setting needs checking at go-live.
- Check filters and the import window before switching the schedule on.
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