what sync systems are out there_
Syncing tags between your Shopify store and Active campaign is important for running campaigns and automation between the different systems.
There are many systems, even the companies offer systems to try and sync but have limitations. https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012461899-Data-synced-from-the-ActiveCampaign-Shopify-integration
PieSync is a common tool, but lacks the ability to select tags to sync.
Many of the integrations offer features which lack
- 2 way syncing between Shopify and Active Campaign.
- Select only tags to sync between each account.
- Prioritise tags to sync
- Queuing system to work with API rate limits
- Admin area to select tags to sync.
- Visibility to view tags syncing
Why is it difficult to sync tags
Shopify is a great platform for e-commerce. Many clients use this product but with increased sales and visitors their becomes difficultly.
These difficulties could be:
Admin and manual processes are taking a lot of time. A small amount of orders the administration time is fine, but hundreds or thousands of orders then that could be a lot of admin.
Automation, many stored require automation. There is many apps that can help with this, but with many orders and users could cause issues.
Apps are great in Shopify, they allow extensions of the platform. But with many other systems, too many apps can cause issues. Sites could have up to 10 apps talking to each other, the system works, but there are bottlenecks in the system
API Limits, Shopify has API limits, this prevents you being able to use the API as much as you like and if you have a lot of back office work, can cause issues.
What we did
There was not one app or system which could sync selected tags between Shopify and Active Campaign.
Wirebox developed a custom database in PHP Laravel which
Created a buckets for a Shopify and an active campaign sites to store API keys. These keys would be how Shopify and an active campaign allow their API to be used.
Select tags to sync between each system. Tags could be one or two way sync’s.
Logs to capture all the interactions between the systems
Implement a queuing system which limited the APIs called and prioritised API calls which were more important.
Alert system when system failed to update.
Outcome
The system replaced around 3 different systems working together which included, Zapier. PieSync and Shopify apps.
System was a lot more stable, syncing was recorded in one place and less likely to fail. If it did, the logs would show the errors in one place.
Cost saving on not using so many systems and less admin cost managing it.
