Re: UPS worldship

Lim,

does anyone know if it is possible to integrate in-house RPG application

with UPS worldship application? If so, is it pretty simply and
reliable?

Like Stephen and James, we use ODBC. In our case, we generate small labels
along with the pick tickets which contain a barcode with the order number.
The packers afix those to each box in a shipment. When they reach the
scale, the Worldship operator scans that barcode and it uses ODBC to read
the shipping information from the system. That includes not only the
desitnation address but things like ground vs 3 day vs next day (etc),
whether billed to the receiver (and their account number), etc.

As each package is weighed, Worldship accumulates the data until the
operator presses F10 or scans a barcode by the scale which indicates the
shipment is complete. Then Worldship spits out all the shipping labels
(including 1 of x etc) and for each package in the shipment performs an ODBC
insert into a package file on our system.

I use a trigger program (in RPG) on that file to update the order status on
our system, collect the actual shipping charges, package count, weights,
tracking numbers, etc. and for those customers who opt for an invoice send
with the package, it creates an invoice with the actual shipping charges and
immediately prints it at the scale. Customers who prefer an invoice mailed
get queued for day end processing.

We do the same with FedEx, but unlike Worldship, they send package data
(also via ODBC) as soon as each package is scanned, instead of each package
buffered and sent in rapid fire sequence when the order is marked as
complete by the operator.

UPS should be able to help you setup the field mapping for the import/export
of data for the ODBC. What I did was create a library which contains
nothing but the 2 files used for the scale processing ODBC. This not only
lets me secure the user ID used to only access that library, but ODBC seems
to perform better when there are fewer objects in the library. Or at least
it did at the time we first set this up many years ago.

Doug