Overview

Linnworks macro engine allows you to inject your own automation behaviour into Linnworks by creating a Macro script that runs every time the system synchronizes. A script is essentially a set of commands written in .Net C# that gets executed during every synchronization.

Generic Macro scripting is used to run a set of automated tasks, unlike Order Scripting (see Scripting - Orders), which is executed against every open or processed order on the system, the generic script is executed once during the synchronization – which means it is ideal candidate for doing things in a batch.

Here are some examples of what Macro Script can be used for

• Email Feedback request to a customer after certain number of days since posting an order
• Email personalized marketing material to previous customers asynchronously.
• Export and Import orders to and from external systems.
• Interfacing with external systems for whatever purpose.
• Raise and email/submit purchase orders to suppliers.
• Implement System notifications, i.e. send yourself an email of low stock, stock you need to reorder, late deliveries
• Implement your own automated import routines from CSV, XML or a webservices.
• Plugin custom channel integration module
• Generally – any sort of automatic task

Create new macro script

• Settings > Macro
• Click New
• Specify the name for the script
• Save the script

The script can be enabled/disabled

• To enable/disable the script, click on Enabled
• Gray = disabled, Green  = enabled

The script has execution order

• To move up or down use up/down arrows 

Writing a macro

The syntax of the code is standard C# with most common namespaces attached in the compilation, so you have access to file system, networking components etc. But most importantly you have direct access to commondata library – which exposes most of the data queries and manipulations. In addition you have ActiveConnection parameter, this is supplied in the Initialize method as a parameter and you can use it to run data queries against your system. Since this documentation is not intended to describe every method, field and function in C# and linnworks data adapter, we can only give some pointers as to how to work with scripts. The scripting has full InteliSense – meaning that when you type the code, the method, function or a property of the object will have a comment, which describes what it does.

The code syntax is .Net C# (version 2 compile). The script has access to the following namespaces

• System
• System.Data
• System.Xml
• linnworks.finaware.CommonData

The code must be placed inside public void Initialize(..) method.

Debugging

When writing a script it is sometimes necessary to output some debugging text to show value of certain variable. Initialize method provides a debug class variable.
To output a value in the debug window

To output script progress

The script progress propagates to Linnworks Synchronization progress. When running long scripts it is a good idea to keep the user informed of the progress.