Glossary
You may stumble upon some unfamiliar concepts in the documentation. This section lists the common terms in the documentation for easy access, learning and getting more insight into business context of the Ingrid system.
Merchant
A company that typically do online retailing. A merchant can have one or more sites, which are online shops operated by that merchant.
Site
A single shop or website (more precisely a web application) where offerings to customers are made that is operated by the merchant. Each site is uniquely identified for a merchant.
Carrier
A party that performs the delivery of the actual parcels and packages sent by the merchant to their customers, e.g. your country's national postal services (if Ingrid integrates with them).
Configuration
The underlying settings for how Ingrid products will work in the specific site setting. Configuration enables merchants to control and customise how the Ingrid products work such as: adding carrier products to their offering, adjust delivery prices, turn on/off product features etc.
Session
Main object of the Delivery Checkout product. It has its own separate section in our development documentation.
Carrier product
Delivery products that are offered from carriers to merchants. Carriers define their products and Ingrid integrates with them. It is separate from the shipping method, because the merchant can customise the details of the carrier product by setting e.g. price/price rules and when to offer the carrier product.
To use a carrier product, it has to be applied to Ingrid configuration in the Ingrid Merchant Platform for the given site.
Shipping method
It is the Ingrid internal representation of a delivery method that can be used in an Ingrid context. Shipping methods represents carrier products. Shipping methods are carrier product specific. A Shipping method can be an express home delivery or a pickup point delivery.
User of Ingrid Merchant Platform assigns carrier products while they are operated as Shipping methods in Ingrid.
Shipping category
Also known as delivery category. The entity that defines a delivery offering that will be selectable in the Delivery Checkout for the consumer. Shipping categories contains carrier products (represented as shipping methods). Merchant can customise the delivery categories by controlling what the Delivery category offerings is in terms of e.g. base Delivery Time, Delivery Time format (weekday vs. date) etc.
Shipping option
A concrete delivery choice selected by the customer. For example, we have a shipping category to a pickup point, that presents the user a list of 20 pickup points to choose from. A single choice is a shipping option, even though they all belong to the same shipping category.
Order
It is a representation of a completed session. Order holds all the necessary information about the result of user interaction with the Delivery Checkout needed to fulfill the delivery, such as cart information, delivery address, customer details and others.
Ingrid order is intended to be related with an order in the merchant's e-commerce system. The linking can be done by using external_id field.
Shipment
It is an order we began fulfilling. Shipment consists of data required by the carrier to make a delivery i.e. addresses, parcel details and delivery times. It can be created based on data held in order alone, but it can also be customized to represent complex scenarios (return deliveries, duty declarations, consolidated deliveries).
Parcel
It represents a physical box with a label that is identified by a tracking number and can be tracked using Ingrid Tracking solution. A single shipment can consist of one or multiple parcels needed to fulfil the delivery of goods to the consumer.
Ingrid Merchant Platform (IMP)
It is the administration portal for Ingrid clients. It can be used to manage orders, configure widgets, track shipments and more.