Mailstep settings

All plugin settings are configured in WooCommerce → Settings under the Mailstep tab. If you haven’t installed the plugin yet, you’ll want to start with the Plugin installation article.

Basic settings

Below we’ll go through the individual plugin settings that need to be adjusted before you start using it. The other, optional parameters are covered in a separate part of the help below.

1. Connecting to Mailstep

First, let’s prepare the testing username and password we received during Mailstep onboarding. Enter them in the Username and Password fields.

If you didn’t receive your own URLs for the individual endpoints during onboarding, leave them as they are (Live endpoint URL: https://app.mailship.eu/mailstage, Test endpoint URL: https://staging.mailship.com/mailstage).

If the details you entered are correct, the borders of all fields turn green after a short validation. If any border is red, it can mean the following:

• red username and password – incorrect username and password (or the wrong endpoint attached to them, but unless you use some old endpoint, the default setting should work)
• red Test endpoint URL – the username and password work on the live site, but you don’t have the test endpoint enabled at Mailstep
• red Live endpoint URL – the username and password work on the test site, but the live endpoint isn’t enabled

To start, I recommend enabling logging of all requests to Mailstep so that, should you ever need to troubleshoot something, you know what’s happening in your shop. Once you’ve finished testing, you can disable logging. Failed requests that aren’t successfully added to Mailstep are logged either way.

Note

Test mode – use it if you’ve been given access to Mailstep’s test interface. If you don’t have it, run your tests on the live environment with an order you’ll reliably recognize – e.g. a sender named Test, and so on.

Danger

If you also sell in EUR, you need to contact Mailstep to have EUR enabled on their side (because of the conversion when insuring the parcel); nothing needs to be changed in the plugin.

2. Pairing shipping and delivery classes in Mailstep

In this section you need to pair the individual shipping methods you have in WooCommerce (attached to the individual shipping zones) with the couriers you use in Mailstep.

For example, if you ship by courier, you’ll want to find the matching carrier such as PPL, Geis, InTime, DPD, GLS, DHL Connect, DHL Express and Liftago.

Danger

You’ll have to update this section whenever you add a new shipping method – if you happen to forget, sending to Mailstep will fail, but once you’ve fixed it you can resend the order manually.

3. Order statuses

Now it remains to choose when the order is sent to Mailstep. The Send to Mailstep option applies only to orders that aren’t paid by cash on delivery – those are sent to Mailstep immediately.

Here you want to select the order status the order reaches after payment.

Note

It depends on your workflow – most often it will be the Processing status. But if you use it, for example, to send a fulfillment e-mail or in any other way, the plugin adds a new option, Mailstep – Paid, which has no customer e-mail sending attached to it.

Under Cancel order you set when a cancelled order should also be cancelled in Mailstep, so you don’t have to do it in two places. The default option is the standard Cancelled order status.

4. Activating the integration and testing

Once you have all the basic settings ready, go all the way back to the top of the settings and enable the integration by ticking Enable integration.

From this moment on, all orders are sent to Mailstep, where they are matched using the product’s SKU in WooCommerce against the product stored in Mailstep with the same value in its Internal SKU field.

Danger

If a product isn’t found by the SKU – Internal SKU combination, the order results in an error.

I recommend testing the entire order process so you know everything works correctly. If you need help with the setup, you can reach out to Mailstep or me.

Stock synchronization

Stock synchronization has its own article, but in short – we can do it, just read it carefully.

Additional settings

Besides the settings mentioned above, the plugin offers several other options.

Custom order statuses

If you run a large shop, it’s quite possible that in addition to the basic WooCommerce statuses you also use some others that your developer prepared for you or that you added via a plugin.

If you want to use your own status when an order is received into Mailstep (the New order status), you can select it in the Mailstep “New order” status option.

If you want to use a custom status for the moment the shipment is on its way (i.e. Mailstep – Handed over to carrier, or Mailstep – Ready for pickup in the case of personal pickup), you can use the Mailstep “On the way” status option.

If you want to hook your own actions onto other order statuses, your developer can do so the standard way, as if editing the default statuses. If you don’t have a developer, I’ll gladly help you with it – you can contact me here.

Hooks and filters for developers

If you need to change the plugin’s behavior in a way that isn’t described here, have your developer read the section with the ready-made hooks and filters for further extending the plugin.