Introduction

The Orders tab is where you can see all the orders for your customers.

On this page you will be able to see the orders progress in the queue, completed orders and cancelled orders. Each order is for one customer only. Note the difference between a cancellation order (which cancel a subscription of a customer) and a cancelled order - which is an order (e.g. new order) that has been cancelled (or stopped).

What is an order

Generally speaking, orders update the subscription or allocation of services/devices for a customer.

Order steps

Orders consist of a sequence of steps, which are run one-by-one via Encapto MSP’s order fulfilment process. These steps can be seen when you click ‘view details’ of a particular order, then select the ‘Details’ tab.

Automated steps

Encapto MSP has a number of automated workers that each process one order at a time from orders in the queue. The workers will progress through an order, completing one step at a time. Other orders will wait in the queue until a worker becomes available.

Some automated steps have processes in place to detect issues and then required manual confirmation/resolution. Effectively this means that orders with those automated steps may stop as a manual step and ask for confirmation about what to do next. An example of this is a Meraki migration order, when migrating a customer. The migration step may detect an incompatibility in the customers Meraki organisation - and will prompt for a resolution. If no incompatibility is found, then the order progresses without needs manual intervention.

Manual steps

Manual steps will need to be complete by a member of your staff. The order fulfilment process will stop for that order until the manual step is complete. once. Once the step is complete by a staff member the order will progress.

Order types

They fall into one of the following types:

New

New orders create new subscriptions with inventory items. This can be for new or existing customers.

Depending on the order, this may also:

• create a new customer account (if it’s for a new customer).
• create a new site for the customer and allocate the items to the new site. Note that the allocation process is done by kicking off another ‘allocate’ order (see below on details).

‘New’ orders can be created by several means:

• Importing/Migrating customers via CSV in the products page (See the On-boarding guide)
• via a product webstore (see the product configurator guide)
• via integrated partner webstore (e.g. AppDirect)
• via APIs

Cancel

These orders are the opposite of ‘new’ - they remove a subscription (or reduce its quantity) as well as the associated inventory items.

If cancelling the last subscription for the customer, then the customer account is also closed.

Cancel orders are raised in the customer subscription screen - see Managing Customers for details.

Allocate / Unallocate

These orders allocate/unallocate devices and licenses to/from a single customer site. On completion, this may activate or deactivate widgets on the site portal for the customer.

Allocate/Unallocate orders can be created:

• Allocate orders can be automatically created by a ‘new’ order (above) when a site is specified as part of a ‘new’ order
• via the customer inventory management screen (see Managing Customers)
• via APIs

Replacement

Replacement orders will replace a inventory item of the customers with another.

These orders can be raised by on the customer inventory management screen (see Managing Customers)

Synchronise

The purpose of ‘synchronise’ orders is to recheck the customer setup in the vendor and re-discover any changes made outside the context of Encapto MSP.

Examples of this are things like:

• adding devices to the customers Meraki organisation and network without making use of the import product CSV or the product configurator.
• moving devices between customer networks in Meraki instead of using Encapto MSP’s inventory management

In these scenarios - raising a sync order (done via the customer integrations page) will check the configuration in the vendor and synchronise any changes across.

Order failures

As the orders most often need to work with various third parties - there will occasionally be failures. Most of the time, these failures are temporary network issues - and upon retry will succeed.

For that reason, if an automated step fails to run (e.g. a network error) it will automatically retry with an exponential back-off strategy (meaning it retries after a minute, again after 2 minutes, then 4, 8). After 10 retries the order will be in failed status and can be retried manually. Encapto MSP will automatically raise a ticket to our support team - however, if you like, feel free to raise a ticket to support to have someone look into the issue (support@encapto.com).