Order Data Migration

As part of transitioning your webstore to Radial Order Management from another platform, you can migrate data for closed webstore orders. Radial Order Management can use this data to build an order history for each customer and can make the information available to customer support systems.

This order data migration is accomplished through a batch file API called the Transitional Order Feed. To migrate your data, you will:

1. Prepare a file that contains the order data, following the schema and file naming rules of the Transitional Order Feed.
2. Use Secure FTP (SFTP) to place the file in your secure mailbox. Radial will provide your mailbox URL.

For more information, see Order Transitional Feed.

Best Practices

Radial recommends that you take the following steps to avoid delays in order data migration and ensure that your order data is loaded into Radial Order Management efficiently and accurately.

Transitional File Validation

Radial strongly recommends that transitional order data files be validated before delivery to Radial. The client should validate the file against the transitional order data XSD file. This process prevents file load failures due to invalid XML format and/or missing required data, and speeds up the transitional order data file load process.

Sample Transitional Order Data

Radial strongly recommends that before the load of live order data takes place that a sample transitional order file is first sent and loaded. This insures the accuracy of the Radial ingestion of the transitional order data and validates and any client-specific data has been incorporated into the process successfully. Radial recommends that at least ten test orders be created in the current web site. These orders should not be actual existing orders for real customers for obvious security compliance reasons, but instead orders placed with test customers and created specifically for the purpose of validating the transitional order data load process. (A good mix of different order category and scenarios is preferred, including standard orders, returns, orders with multiple shipping addresses, or where the billing address and shipping address differ, orders using different tenders, including gift cards, promotions, etc.) These test orders can then be extracted and delivered as sample transactional order data. If possible, the test customers used to place these sample orders should also be supplied so that Radial can validate the orders from both a customer perspective and a CSR perspective. Passwords for these test customers must be provided to Radial so that Radial can log into the test customer accounts and verify that the order data has loaded properly and is correct and accurate for those test customers. The sample transitional order data is delivered to and loaded to the Radial test environment and not to the production environment.

The Transitional Order Data Load Process

The Radial transitional order data load process is designed to work as an iterative process. Following the verification and acceptance of the sample transitional order data file, a file containing the full complement of all existing live orders from the source system will be delivered to the Radial production environment for load. Only orders in a “closed” or “fulfilled” status should be delivered to Radial. As a standard rule, Radial does not typically accept any orders in an “open” or “awaiting fulfillment” status. Please note that when loading transitional orders, transitional customers that placed those orders should first have been loaded. The first transitional order data file should contain all existing live orders from the current source system for all customers that have already been loaded, and it should be delivered to the Radial production systems at least several weeks prior to the go-live date for the new Radial webstore. After the initial ingestion of live transitional orders, one of more supplementary loads may be done to capture any new orders or changes to existing orders between the time of the initial load and the go-live of the webstore on the Radial platform. A final load to capture any final changes to order data that may have taken place prior to the source system being deactivated will be delivered to the Radial production environment between one to three weeks after the Radial web store has gone live. Radial strongly recommends that the above delivery schedule is followed during the transitional order data process.