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About Octopus Bridge

Octopus Bridge is an application that enables brick & mortar retailer to connect their POS/ERP system with their e-commerce website and online marketplaces.

The flowchart below shows Octopus Bridge linking POS data to online stores and marketplaces. It also shows the item information uploaded from POS/ERP to E-commerce and order quantity pushed back to POS from the e-commerce platform so that the stock can be in Sync.


Octopus-online-integration
 

After you sign-up with Octopus Bridge, you will be given the login details. Login details are your Username and Password. You can login to your account at http://gui.octopusbridge.com/octopus

Once you login to Octopus Bridge using your login details, you are automatically redirected to the Product Management tab where you will be able to see all the items uploaded from the POS.

Product Management

When POS items are uploaded into Octopus Bridge, they show up under My Products’ tab in the Product Management module. This is where a user can further modify the products before they are pushed to an E-commerce platform.

The top most item or the first item displayed in this page is the last item uploaded from the POS. Example shown below: The item with Product SKU number “7909510673809” is the last item uploaded from the POS.


My Products - Octopus









8. Archive Product: To archive a product, click on the product(s), you want to archive and click on the delete button below. 9. Select Item(s): To select one or multiple items, click on the checkbox in front of it.  

My Product 2






Edit Product

Clicking on Product SKU or Item Name will redirect you to ‘Edit product’ page. This is where you can edit products’ information that are linked from the POS to Octopus Bridge. You can perform the following actions in Edit Product page:

  1. Edit Product Name: You can create new product name to be displayed in your E-commerce platform. Make sure to click on the box to prevent over-writing Product Name from the POS.
  2. Create Parent SKU: Make sure to create a Parent SKU for creating matrix items.
  3. Create Product Description: If you want to create a new description to be displayed in your E-commerce platform, make sure to check this box to prevent POS description from over-writing description in your E-commerce platform.
  4. Matrix item attributes: If you are creating a matrix item, make sure to input Style Name and Style Value.
  5. Upload Product Images: You can upload up to five images per item in Octopus. Make sure to reload page after uploading image/s.


Octopus-edit-products

Publish Items to Shopping Cart/Marketplace

After you have updated an item under ‘Edit Item’ page, you can go ahead and publish this item to a specific Shopping cart or Marketplace. Under Product Management tab.

1. First you need to select which item/s you want to publish. The example below shows we are selecting three items.

2. Next, select which Shopping cart or Marketplace you want to publish the item. In the example below we are selecting Shopify as our shopping cart.

3. Then click on the Add icon on the right to publish. Once you are done, items can now be viewed under the Shopify 'bucket.

Publishing-Items-to-eCommerce-Octopus

Note: Only Shopping carts and Marketplaces that you signed up for, will be shown in My Products page.


Shopping Cart Module

Once you have selected and added your product items to a specific Shopping cart module or Marketplace module ‘bucket’, they will start appearing under the respective bucket. Images are shown below.

Marketplace Tab

Marketplaces

Shopping Carts tab

Shopping cart

Import Products

If you do have a point-of-sale system or want to quickly edit items by Exporting / Importing multiple items, Import Products is a great option.

1. Click Add New Template to start .

2. Click History to select a file previously uploaded on Octopus Bridge.

3. Click Import New to import a new template after it has been created.

4. Action:
  • Notify- you can type in your email to get notifications if modifications are being made in the file.
  • Modify- click to update files.
  • Delete- delete existing files from the list.
All-Import-Templates-Octopus

Add New Template:

You can view the past import activities in the channel by clicking on Import History.

1. File Type: Clicking this will create a drop-down box where you can select the File Type.

2. File Name: Type in the name of the file you wish to create.

3. Column Delimeter and Text Qualifier: Use only if file type is a text file.

4. Save file after choosing the file type and the file name.



Add-New-Templets-Octopus

POS Code Mapping

You can use POS code mapping if you want to map POS values to octopus bridge values. POS values are commonly in a coded format. For example, blk. You need to set blk into black which is more understandable for users viewing the website. You can also map multiple values at the same time using a spreadsheet format.

  1. POS Code Upload Format: You can download the excel format by clicking on the “POS Code Upload Format” link.
  2. Choose File: Once you have made changes in the excel format, select spreadsheet file to upload.
  3. Click on upload after selecting file.
  4. Select Field Name.
  5. Replace All Value: Click to replace value after selecting Field Name.
  6. Item per Page: Clicking this will create a drop-down box where you can select how many product items to be displayed per page.
  7. Search: You can search specific value using the search bar.
  8. Channel Value: Edit Channel value here.


POS-Code-Mapping

Order Management

Order management tab is where you can view all the order details downloaded from your E-commerce platform. Click on View Orders and you will be redirected to the order management page.



Order-Management-Octopus

Order Search

You can search for a specific order with the following search criteria:

  • Source of Order: You can select the shopping cart/marketplace from where the order was placed
  • Order Status: Ordered/Shipped/Declined
  • Order No: Specific order number of shopping cart/marketplace
  • Username/email address: Customer’s username or email address
  • Date Filters: Sort order on a specific date period
  • SKU: Item SKU Number

order 2

All Orders:

Order Date: The date and time when the order was downloaded

Channel Mgr Order #: Each order, when downloaded into Octopus, is given an Octopus order number. This number is also pushed to the point of sale system for reference.

Marketplace Order #: This is the order number received from your website or marketplace. The number is prefixed by the platform abbreviation for easy reference. This number is also downloaded into the point of sale system.

Customer Bill To and Customer Ship-To Details are received from the website.

Total: The total amount of the order.

Status: Depending on where the order is coming from, it would be either in Pending/Processing or Paid status. Orders coming from marketplaces are marked Paid as they are already paid for. Orders coming from websites built on Magneto/Woo/etc might be marked as Processing depending on how the website is set up.

Tracking: This feature is only applicable for Offline POSs, such as RetailPro, RMS etc. Octopus Plugin updates the Tracking Number on our system generated by the Shipping company of the Merchant. It also works for the merchants, who uses Ship Station and Ship Work integration with Octopus.

Action: When orders are downloaded from website into Octopus, all items must match with items uploaded from the POS. For example, if an ordered item has a different SKU than what was uploaded from POS, the order will NOT be downloaded. In such cases, Edit link will show. This allows you to Edit the order and fix the SKU number so that it matches with one of the existing items. After the SKU has been fixed, the order would download during the next sync cycle. Orders not showing Edit indicates that the orders have been downloaded into POS and cannot be edited.

Page Tab: You can navigate to a particular page by clicking on that particular page number.

order management

Downloading Orders

Orders are downloaded automatically from the E-commerce platform to Octopus on a scheduled basis. You can also manually download orders from a specific E-commerce platform. Just click on the orders tab in the Shopping cart module you selected then click on the ‘Download orders from Shopify’ button.

download orders

Order Details

In order details page, you can view all the order information downloaded from the e-commerce platform to Octopus.

Order Details: Order details section contains the following information:

  • Order No
  • Order Date
  • Current Order Status
  • Billing Address
  • Shipping Address
  • Customer Contact Details

Order Summary: Order summary section contains the following information:

  • SKU
  • Identification number
  • Seller SKU
  • Description
  • Quantity
  • Unit Price
  • Shipping Amount
  • Tax
  • Discount
  • Grand Total

Order details

Logs

You will be able to View all the Octopus Bridge activities and errors in the ‘Logs’ tab.

1. You can search logs on a specific date period or search using a keyword in the search tab at the top.

2. You can export logs to a CSV in your local drive.

3. You can view Log details by clicking on the ‘view’ button on the right-hand side of the screen.



All-Logs
Log Details is where you can view the log activities or the error details in the channel.

Logs Details

About Vend Integration

Vendhq is the web-based point-of-sale (POS) system that makes it simple to sell to your buyers and keep them coming back to your store again and again. This cloud-based POS system is widely used by brick-and-mortar retailers. It can be operated from any platform or device with the help of a web browser or by using Vend Register for iPad. It empowers merchants and other businesses to manage products, accept payments, track customers record, provide loyalty and run business analytics for real-time inputs into business performance. Merchants using Vendhq have access to a collection of more sophisticated tools that are powerful than the ERP systems used by retail giants, at a fraction of the cost.

Vend Setting Details

After logging into Octopus, please go to:

POS > Vend> Settings

The Settings tab is where you enter the Vend API details to connect Octopus to Vend.

Before starting integration with Octopus, first you need to create a Vend Personal Token and a Register ID.

Create Token:
Personal-Token

 

Register Id:

Vend Register

Once you have acquired the Token and ID, please go to Vend Settings page in Octopus and enter the following:

• API Base URL = Vend application URL, for example, abc.vendhq.com
• Vend login username
• Vend login password
• Personal Token and
• Register ID

Please select Sync Status as Enable to automatically pull Vend product data into Octopus.

Vend-Setting-Details-POS-1

Vend Custom Rules

After logging into Octopus, please go to:

POS > Vend> Custom Rules

Schedule Setting Panel:

You can set a schedule to automatically update or pull product data from Vend POS. Scheduler time is set by minutes. You also have the option to select all products to be imported into Octopus.

 

Vend-Custom-Rules

Field Lock Setting Panel

After the initial Vend product pull into Octopus, you can define which attributes of an item should NOT be overwritten in Octopus. This feature is useful if you are using Octopus to manage your items. Please see the image below:

Field-Lock-Setting-Panel-Vend

Vend Sync

After logging into Octopus, please go to:

POS > Vend> Sync

After all the Settings and Custom Rules have been applied, “Click on Start Synchronization”
This will start downloading (pulling) the inventory from Vend into Octopus.

Vend-Setting-POS

BigCommerce Preparation

Before syncing products from POS to your Big Commerce account, we need to obtain Big Commerce API credentials. Below are the steps to obtaining Big Commerce API credentials:

  • To obtain API credentials, login to your BigCommerce admin. Once you are logged in, click on Settings.
 
  • Next, click on API Accounts.
 
  • Then click on Create API Account.
 
  • In Token Type, select V2/V3 API Token.
  • In name, enter Octopus.
  • Select the API scopes.
  • Then click the Save button on the lower right-hand corner of the screen.

 
  • After clicking on the Save button, a text file will be saved in your system containing the following details:
  • BigCommerce Client ID
  • BigCommerce Client Secret
  • BigCommerce Store Name
  • BigCommerce Access Token
  • Save the text file on your computer for future reference.

Connect Octopus to BigCommerce

First you need to login at: https://gui.octopusbridge.com/

Login using your account details:

  • User Name
  • Password

Once you’ve logged in, go to Shopping Carts >> Big Commerce.

  • Click on Settings.
  • Type in the following information:


  • BigCommerce Client ID- Copy and paste the Bigcommerce Client ID from the text file.
  • BigCommerce Client Secret- Copy and paste the Bigcommerce Client Secret from the text file.
  • BigCommerce Base URL- In the Bigcommerce Base URL, enter https://api.bigcommerce.com/
  • BigCommerce Store Name- Open the text file and from API PATH, enter the name highlighted after stores.
  • BigCommerce Access Token- From the text file, copy and paste the Access Token.


  • Enable Pass-through: When setting up the configuration for the first time, this option should be set to No.
  • Setting No, means that any items uploaded from the POS to Octopus will remain at Channel level. These items will not be pushed to your BigCommerce platform unless it is done manually. This is the recommended setting while configuring the system for the first time.
  • You also may set this to No if you have set up your POS to upload All items into Octopus, but you do not want to send All items, automatically, to your eCommerce platform. Setting this to No gives you the opportunity to make items web ready before publishing them to your website.
  • Once you set it to Yes, any items uploaded from the POS will automatically be pushed to your BigCommerce platform. This is recommended only when the settings have been fully configured and tested.
  • Sync Status: Select Enable

BigCommerce Product Module


This screen shows items that have been enabled and scheduled to automatically sync with a Big Commerce website.

  • Select All Pages: Instead of waiting for the schedule to run and sync items with Big Commerce, you can also initiate a sync manually. To publish items manually,
  • Select All Pages and Publish. Select: You can also use the boxes to the right to select specific item to publish.
  • Product SKU: The icon besides the product SKU is an indicator if a product is successfully forwarded to the website. Green means successfully synced while red means it is not.
  • Big Commerce ID: When an item has been successfully set up to sync with Big Commerce, it shows its Big Commerce ID. If an ID is missing, it means the item is not yet synchronized with the website.
  • Add Product to Big Commerce: This button allows you to force sync products with Big Commerce Website.
  • Search tab: This tab allows you search a specific item by entering the product SKU or keyword. It also displays how many items are in a Big Commerce.
  • Item per Page: Clicking this will create a drop-down box where you can select how many product items to be displayed per page.


  • Product Sync status: Every time there is an update from POS, it will display In Process but changes to Complete when done syncing. Please note while ‘In Process’ is displaying, any new updates will be queued up.




Download Categories


Big Commerce has certain limitations with POS integration. One of which is the inability to create POS Department & Category structure in Big Commerce. In order for the integration to work, make sure to create your Department & Category structure in Big Commerce first. Once created, you can Download Category structure into the Channel.

To download Big Commerce Category:

  • First you need to click on the Download Category tab
  • Then click on the Download button
  • Once you download categories it will show how many categories that are downloaded successfully.


Map Categories

When items are uploaded from a POS into Octopus, they are uploaded with POS Department & Category structure. At the Octopus level, it’s called Source Categories.

POS Category structure may or may not be the same as Big Commerce Category structure. This option allows to ‘map’ POS category structure with Big Commerce Categories so that POS items are placed in the right category.

  1. The left-hand side shows the POS category structure.
  2. Department & Categories downloaded from Big Commerce are shown on the right-hand side with a drop-down box.
  3. The drop-down menu shows mapped and unmapped categories. To map additional categories, click unmapped categories from the drop-down menu, then select which category to map.Note: If it does not show your website categories, you may need to download them first. Please look at how to download categories section.
Map-Category-Bigcommerce

Note: If it does not show your website categories, you may need to download them first. Please look at how to download categories section.

Download Brands

Similar to category structure, if you intend to use Brands on your website, you need to create them in Big Commerce and download them into Octopus. Click on the Download Brands button to start downloading. Once Brands are downloaded in Octopus, they will show in Map Brands section.

BigCommerce-Download-Brands-Octopus

Map Brands

This option allows to ‘map’ POS Brand structure to Big Commerce Brands so that POS brand labels are placed in the right item when loaded into Big Commerce platform.

  1. The left-hand side shows the POS Brand structure.
  2. Downloaded website brands from Big Commerce platform are shown on the right hand side with a drop-down box.
  3. The drop-down menu shows mapped and unmapped brands. To map additional brands, click unmapped Brands from the drop-down menu, then select which brand to map.
Bigcommerce-Map-Brands-Octopus

Map Product Attributes

Merchants using various POS systems may use any of the fields within a POS while creating items. Map Fields option allows a merchant to map Big Commerce product fields with their own POS product fields.

For example, Big Commerce website Product Name (Title) can be mapped with any of the POS data fields provided in the pull-down menu. This also provides an option NOT to send certain POS data to the website.

Some fields, such as, SKU and Quantity are mandatory and are automatically updated in the website.

BigCommerce-Map-Fields-Octopus

Custom Rules

Under Custom Rules, Merchant can set various rules before publishing the product data into online store.

  • Custom Title: The Product Name can be edited and made Search Engine friendly.
  • Stock Rule: The quantity inserted in the box will be reduced from the Product Management stock. For example: In Product Management, if total quantity of an item is 50 and you inserted 10 in the ‘Enter Value’ field; in Big Commerce, the quantity of the item will be shown as 40.
  • Out of Stock Rule: Select the checkbox if you want to delete products from Online Store when stock reaches at ‘Zero’.
  • Product Availability: Choose product availability if it is Available, Disabled or Pre Order status.
  • Product Color Option: Select to choose different color option.
  • Product Other Option Type: select to choose different style options.
 

  • Default Weight: You can set the default weight of products from here.
  • Convert Matrix Items into Standard Items: This gives you the option to convert matrix items to All – Selecting All will convert all Source Matrix items into Standard items before publishing them on the website, With One Variation – this option will convert only those Source Matrix items into Standard where there is only one Variation or if it Does Not Apply.
  • Option Prefix: Enter the text you want to show in drop downs to select the attribute values in your e-commerce platform. For example – Choose, Select etc.

Categories In Use

This feature was introduced for Dropshipper Merchants. In this section, their clients can enable only those categories, they are dealing with and products of selected categories will automatic pass through to SCM.

Categories-in-Use

Downloading Locations from BigCommerce

After loggin into Octopus, click on ‘Download Locations’ >> ‘Download Locations from BigCommerce’

Bigcommerce download location

Mapping the Locations

Click on ‘Map Locations’ and then select the locations downloaded from BigCommerce from the dropdown menu. Map the locations with the corresponding ‘source location’ coming from the POS.

Bigcommerce map location