Introduction to Filters
Filters provide a way to organize orders and customers in ShipWorks in order to streamline your workflow. Filters find and display orders that meet criteria that you decide upon. You can have any number of filters available for use at any given time.
Filters do not actually “contain” any orders. You cannot drag and drop orders or customers from one filter to another. Rather, they are specific views of the orders and customers in your database. Each filter is configured with conditions that determine what to display. Anytime an order or customer meets the condition(s) of a filter, you can see the order or customer in that filter.
One order or customer could meet the condition(s) for more than one filter. Imagine that you had two filters: one dedicated to all orders with an item called “red shirt," and another separate filter for orders shipped to zip code “63102”. If someone ordered a red shirt shipped to 63102, the order would appear in both filters.
We mentioned that Filters are used to organize your orders and customers, but how does organizing your orders and customers in ShipWorks help you? Great question. Filters can:
Organize orders that need to be included in product or sales reports.
Organize orders by date, perhaps to be included in a quarterly sales tax report.
Target customers to be included in a targeted marketing campaign by filtering the customers by state or postal code.
Track orders as they move through your shipping workflow by creating Filters for specific orders statuses to which orders be assigned, such as New Order, Being Picked, Packed, Ready to Ship, Shipped, and so on.
Filter orders so that Shipping Profiles can be automatically applied to the orders by configuring Shipping Rules.
Sort orders by how they are to be shipped, such as by the Requested Shipping service associated to the order.
Filter orders that need to have an invoice or packing slip printed. Then, create an Action to automatically print them for the filtered orders.
And much, much more.
While Filters provide a way to organize orders and customers in ShipWorks to help streamline your workflow, Folders provide several additional functions that can be used in conjunction with your Filters:
Group similar Filters into Folders so that they are easier to locate. For example, you may have several Filters that group orders according to where they are being shipped. By organizing all of these Filters into a 'Destination' Folder you can quickly locate this group of filters.
Organize Filters into Folders by:
Click on the Manage tab, then on the Filters button.
Select the Filter you wish to move into a Folder.
Click on the Move Into Folder button.
Did you notice that there is a blue number in parenthesis to the right of each Filter and Folder?
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Filters: This is the number of orders the filter has identified that meet the Filter's conditions.
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Folders: This is the sum of all of the orders identified by all of the Filters contained in the Folder.
Conditions can be added to Folders, similar to the way they are added to Filters. The difference is that when a condition is added to a Folder, the condition is automatically passed to all of the Filters contained within the Folder. (You'll learn all about adding conditions a bit later when you create a couple of Filters.)
Add a condition to a Folder when you have multiple Filters that all share the same condition. Placing the Filters into the Folder automatically ensures that all of the Filters will inherit the condition from the Folder. You only have to add the condition one time, to the Folder, instead of to each individual Filter.
Example: You have a store in ShipWorks called Widget Me This. You have several Filters to identify different orders for your store. By adding a condition to the Folder that says 'Store > Equals > Widget Me This' you can move all of your Filters into the Folder and each Filter will automatically inherit this condition.
When you install ShipWorks and when you add a sales channel or store to ShipWorks some filters are automatically created for you. You can view these default Filters in the Filters Panel.
The Filters Panel is where you can see all of your filters. Each filter is listed with a running count of how many orders or customers currently match the filter. Selecting a filter from the Filter Panel causes the corresponding grid to only show the items that match the conditions of the selected filter.
DEFAULT ORDER FILTERS
Store Specific Filters are created when you add a store or sales channel to ShipWorks and will reflect the available statuses of the store being added.
Destination filters organize your orders by the location to which they will be shipped.
Age filters sort orders by how old the order is according to the order date.
DEFAULT CUSTOMER FILTERS
Customers who have spent $100 or more.
Customers who are returning customers (have placed more than one order).
The best way to learn how to create custom Filters is to get hands-on. The articles listed below will introduce you to the process of working with Filters.
Once you have learned the process, you will be able to apply what you have learned to your own shipping workflow by creating Filters that organize orders according to your own needs.
THE ARTICLES
Filtering by a List - (Is In List): This article will teach you how to create a filter that includes a large list of product SKUs. However, the concept can be useful for filtering on any large list such as a list of postal codes, specific customers and so on.
Saved Searches - Saved searches work like Filters and are listed in the Filters Panel. The difference is that, when selected, the conditions of the search are displayed in the Advanced Search panel and can be updated or modified so that you can see the results of your changes in real time.
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