Testing and launching

You need to thoroughly test your integration before you launch it. The goal is to conduct a series of end-to-end user acceptance tests (UATs) to ensure the integration is working correctly. When you’re confident everything is working as expected, you can determine the launch date to make your services available to Shippit merchants.

User acceptance testing

User acceptance testing (UAT) is a quality gate to validate that our systems can communicate reliably. All testing takes place between Shippit’s staging environment and your staging environment. Your role is to ensure your staging system is configured and ready, and to be available to troubleshoot any issues that arise.

The Shippit team use a shared UAT sign-off sheet to track the status of each test case. The Shippit integrations team notify you when testing is ready to begin.

The Shippit team perform these tests:

Receiving bookings

This test validates that you can correctly receive and process booking files from Shippit.

Action: We place a test file in the /shippit/inbound/ directory of the staging SFTP server.

The directory structure is configured when your account is set up, so the exact directory could be different depending on your configuration.

The filename of the test file uses the structure /booking_path/manifest_reference_number.csv

Success criteria: You must confirm that your system has successfully received and processed the file. You need to provide us with the list of order_ids ingested from the file as confirmation.

Sending tracking updates

This test validates that you can successfully send us tracking updates for the test bookings. The test depends on the method you chose during configuration.

For CSV file uploads:

Action: You generate a Tracking_YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS.csv file containing updates for the test orders and upload it to the /inbound/tracking/ directory on Shippit’s staging SFTP server.

The directory structure is configured when your account is set up, so the exact directory could be different depending on your configuration.

Success criteria: Our staging system must successfully parse the file and update the status of the test orders. The file must strictly adhere to the specified format.

For webhooks:

Action: We provide you with a unique staging webhook URL. For each test order, you send a series of HTTP POST requests to this URL, simulating key tracking events. For example, pickup, in transit, and delivered.

Success criteria: Our staging endpoint must receive the webhooks with the correct JSON payload, authentication headers, and your system must receive a 202 Accepted response.

The launch process

When all UAT test cases have passed and been signed off, you can schedule the launch.

Work with your Shippit contact to agree on a date and time to activate the integration in the Shippit production environment.

Before the launch date, make sure you have updated the endpoint URLs. If you are using webhooks, you must update your system to point to Shippit’s production webhook URL.

On the scheduled date, the Shippit team completes the final configuration to make your services visible to merchants.

Post-launch support

After launching, both our teams closely monitor the integration to ensure everything runs smoothly.