There are 3 main sections of the site you should visit.

Setup - Here you will control your account settings and users.
Orders - View orders received and mark them shipped when done. Production - View your production items, download files, print job sheets and mark items complete when done.

We’ll explore these areas in a moment. But first, here’s a few things you’ll see in the top right of your screen as you navigate that we should explain:

Site Tools

The account list

If you have more than one connect account (multiple sites for example) you can switch between them here, no need to log out and in again.

The global search

Click this to search the content you are currently viewing. If searching is not supporting on your current content, orders will be searched instead.

Your user account

Here you can change your personal user settings, change your view language and log out.

The barcode scanner

Visible on certain screens, you can enter a barcode here from one of our job sheets, or use a barcode scanner connected to your machine. If we recognise the barcode, we’ll navigate you to the appropriate item on your current page

Filters

Visible on certain screens, you can use this tool to filter the content on your screen to specific items you might be interested in. If you need a specific item, use the search tool.

Setup Section

Account Settings:

Use the General settings to configure how certain items will appear on the site, like date formats and measurements.

Most importantly, be sure to set your timezone and Default SLA correctly.

What Does this Do? When an order is received, we first check your timezone to calculate what day it is where you are, (a brand in Singapore sending to a producer in the USA may cross a day boundary) for example. If the order sent does not contain a due date we will then take the current day and add on the number of standard working days specified in “Default SLA Days”, using the result as the due date for the order.

EG. If your default SLA days is 2 and an order is received on Monday, its due date will be the Wednesday A similar order received on a Friday would be due on the following Tuesday.

Manage Users:

Here you can invite whatever users you need to your account, giving each a role that will affect their access.

Triggers / Templates

Triggers are a set of configurable communication points where Connect can send information to outside systems and people, templates are used to help set this information into a useful format.

Orders Section

Submission Errors

Any orders that were sent to your account but were not valid (bad data) will be listed here. This section allows the errors to be fixed and resubmitted if required. You can create a notification for submission errors in the Setup>Triggers section

All Orders

Here you will see a list of valid orders that have been set to your account.

Each order has: A status (see below for details) A number of shipments (collections of things to be shipped) A number of Line Items (things to be produced) A due date, calculated as detailed above.

Documentation on submitting orders can be found in the API Reference section.

Brands can send orders to your account by using your account name as the order “destination”. (your account name is shown at the top right of your screen).

The SLA counter at the top right of the screen shows how many despatches you are due to complete today and how far along that process you are.

What do the status column mean? Every order goes through a life cycle once received and this is indicated by the order Status:

Processing Statuses: Pending - A brand has submitted an order but has not cleared it for processing yet. At this time your SLA has not begun and the order cannot be processed. DataReady - Iindicates that we’ve received the order and are in the process of fetching the appropriate files. At this point, your SLA has not begun and the order cannot be processed.

Live Statuses: PrintReady - We have fetches all the files for the order and it is now ready to produce. At this time your SLA has begun and the order items will appear in your Production section Complete - All production items have been completed and the order can now be shipped.

Finished Statuses: Shipped - This order has been shipped and the Brand have been notified. Cancelled - Either you or the brand has cancelled the order. The date/person will be recorded in the orders logs on the details page

Exception Statuses: Error - There was a problem fetching the files associated with an order. See the order details for more information.

You can use the filters on this page to view orders by status as well as by the date they were submitted.

Clicking an order, or scanning a barcode while viewing the orders list will open the order details page.

Order Details

This page shows you the contents of a given order.

A panel on the right holds the details of the order itself, as well as a log of the actions on the order and all postbacks associated with this order as sent by triggers.

In the centre, each shipment for the order is displayed with a list of Line items within it. Shipments and line items can be expanded and collapsed to limit the data in view.

What are attributes? Attributes are a custom list of production details submitted by the brand for each item component. Typically these will describe the substrate, finish and perhaps binding of the product. You should agree with your brand what attributes and values you are going to use.

What can you do on this screen? Cancel the order (cancel button top right). Scan a barcode to identify a specific item in the order Download all production files associated with the order Print all Job sheets associated with the order. Ship a shipment (optionally enter a tracking number) Click the thumbnail of a file to open the file details modal

File Details Modal

Displays the details of a given file. (screenshot and explanation)

What do the File status mean? Fetching/refetching - We are still fetching this file. The order will have a status of “dataready” if one or more files in it have this status. Ready - This file is ready to print. If all files have this status the order will have a status of “printready” Error - Something has gone wrong with fetching this file (usually the file is not at the path specified), if it can be fixed they you can re-fetch it.

What can you do on this screen? Download the production file Refetch the file (will reset the status to “fetching”) Amend the file using PDF studio, our sister product that allows PDF modification.

Production Section

Live Jobs

Here you have a list of the Production jobs that you need to complete in order to fulfil your orders. Sorted in the order in which they are to be despatched.

The pill on the right shows when each job has to be completed and shipped by, the pill colours are as follows:

Green = More than 2hrs remaining to complete Orange = Less than 2hrs remaining to complete. Red = Overdue

A job represents one line item in an order, and will have the appropriate number of components, eg a book would be liable to have cover and a text components.

Clicking on an item will expand the components within it and give you access to the specific components, files and job sheets as well as allowing you to navigate to the correct shipment on the orders page.

What can you do on this screen? Selecting various items using the left hand toggles will allow you to : Download all files for selected items, Produce all job sheets for selected items Mark all selected items as complete.

Scanning a job sheet barcode on this screen will open a modal with the appropriate item selected, allowing the same functions to be undertaken for a single item

Completed Jobs

Here you can see a list of Jobs that you have completed. These are retained in case you need to action reprints of a Job. Controls remain the same as live jobs though order files will cease to be available after 30 days.

The status pills also have a different meaning here: Green = Completed with more than 2hrs remaining. Orange = Completed with less than 2hrs remaining. Red = Completed Later