1 Log into your Order Desk account at app.orderdesk.me. If you do not yet have an Order Desk account, you can sign up here.
2To connect to Vantage Apparel, click on Manage Integrations in the left sidebar. Under the Print on Demand tab, find and click to enable the Vantage Apparel integration.
3 Enter your Vantage Apparel credentials and Program ID, then click to connect. If
you do not yet have credentials, contact integrations@vantageapparel.com.
4Once connected, you will be presented with the integration’s settings. Detailed information on these can be found here. Set them as necessary for your specific use case.
5 Before leaving this page, enter “Vantage” in the Inventory Location Match field.
This will be important later.
For more information on what this field is used for see here.
On this page there is a link at the top to view available products from Vantage Apparel. Clicking it will display a page like the one below. The products you create in BigCommerce must coincide with a Product ID and Part ID in this list.
The Product ID can be thought of as the parent product. Each Product ID is associated with a number of Part ID’s. These can be thought of as the individual SKU, specifying color and/or size.
If you’re having trouble knowing which Product ID is associated with the products you will add to your store, you may search by Product ID at the Vantage Apparel website.
Configure Product in BigCommerce
6 To configure a product in BigCommerce that will be sent to Order Desk for fulfillment by Vantage Apparel, you will configure the product largely as you would any other.
However, it is important that each variation of a product (size and color) have its own unique SKU. This SKU, along with the Inventory Location Match setting from the previous step will be used to sync product metadata that Vantage Apparel will require when sending orders.
7 Finish product setup as you typically would.
In later steps, you will be creating instances of your products in Order Desk as Inventory Items. This can be done en masse via a data import in Order Desk. For this reason, you may want to be prepared to export your product data out of BigCommerce for preparation for import into Order Desk.
This guide will show you how to add products manually in Order Desk and provide a link to Order Desk’s import data documentation should you decide to do this as a bulk task.
Enable BigCommerce Order Desk Integration
8 Log into your Order Desk account at app.orderdesk.me. If you do not yet have an Order Desk account, you can sign up here.
9 To connect to BigCommerce, click on Manage Integrations in the left sidebar.
Under the Shopping Carts tab, find BigCommerce and click to enable the
integration.
10 Click the green Connect to BigCommerce button.
11 Click the blue Log in button.
12 You will be taken to your BigCommerce dashboard. Click the blue Install button.
13 Confirm access for Order Desk by clicking the blue Confirm button.
Configure Inventory Items in Order Desk
14 When sending orders from BigCommerce to Order Desk to be forwarded to
Vantage Apparel, there are three pieces of data that we need to add to the
products when an order is imported into Order Desk.
1. GD# (Garment Design ID)
2. Part ID
3. Print SKU
These will be explained in more detail below.
In order to add this data, we use Order Desk’s Inventory Items feature. We can
create instances of our BigCommerce products in Order Desk that contains the
GD#, Part ID, and Print SKU in special metadata fields. Then, by matching on the
SKU and the Inventory Location Match that we set up earlier, these metadata
fields will be automatically synced to the line items when the orders are imported
into Order Desk.
For example, if in BigCommerce we’ve set up Vantage Apparel’s High-Def T-Shirt
in color red, size small, we then create that item in Order Desk’s Inventory Items
list. Here’s how.
15 In Order Desk, click on Inventory Items in the navigation bar and then click on
Add New Item.
16 Configure the inventory item as seen below.
• Name: Whatever name you use in BigCommerce is fine. You’ll be creating an item for each variant so we recommend indicating those variations in the name.
• Code/SKU: This should be the SKU for the item as it appears in BigCommerce.
• Location: Set this to “Vantage” – this is the same value that the Inventory Location Match feature (set up in Vantage Apparel’s integration settings) is looking for.
• print_sku: Set this to the Vantage Product ID associated with this product, eg. “0290”.
• part_id: Set this to the Part ID associated with this product, eg. “0290REDSM”
• artwork_id_1: Set this to the GD# that Vantage has provided you with.
The last three items above are the metadata fields that Vantage Apparel will be looking for when you send the order.
When finished, click the blue Save Changes button.
17 As you add more Inventory Items to Order Desk, your list will start too look like
the image below.
This process can go much faster by using Order Desk’s excellent Import Data feature which is documented here. Just be sure that your Inventory Items have the three required metadata fields when you import.
If your BigCommerce store will contain products that are not going to be sent to Vantage Apparel you may need to create Order Rules rules to split the orders between vendors. Instructions on splitting orders are available here.
18 Before you continue, navigate to your Order Desk Store Settings and enable Add Inventory Details to Order Items. With this enabled, when an order is imported into Order Desk from BigCommerce, the metadata fields we’ve configured for Vantage Apparel items will automatically be applied to the products in each order.
19 At this point, if you place an order in BigCommerce, when the order is imported it should look something like this. Note the metadata fields.
Configure Rules in Order Desk
20 At this point, if you were to click the Vantage Apparel button seen in the image above, the order would be sent to Vantage Apparel. You can this in the Order History when viewing a specific order.
Be sure to test an order or two with Vantage Apparel before launching your program.
21 If you wish to automatically send orders to Vantage Apparel, click on Rule Builder in the navigation and then click the Order Rule button.
22 Create an action to Submit Order to Vantage Apparel, provide the rule with a name, and click the blue Save Rule button.
With this rule enabled, when an order is placed in BigCommerce, the following happens automatically:
1. Order is imported into Order Desk
2. Metadata (print_sku, etc.) is automatically synced from the Order Desk Inventory Items for each product appearing in the order.
3. The order is sent to Vantage Apparel.
