Purpose: learn what fallback methods you can use in case of downtime or bugs in your checkout.
When you use the checkout API, you can choose from available shipping options based on the configuration you set up in the Sendcloud panel. If there are no available options, you will receive an empty response. This could happen due to some reasons, for example — you disabled some of the carriers or reset API credentials, and outages or bugs happened. In that case, you can use a fallback method, which always provides an available shipping option for the checkout API.
Fallback methods
To prevent the absence of available shipping options or an error that might occur during the checkout, add functionality that inserts a premade hardcoded shipping option that a customer can use to complete the checkout process.
The identifier of the fallback option could be setting the shipping_method_checkout_name parameter to No dynamic checkout available. This enables applying the shipping rules by assigning a valid shipping method.
Alternatively, you can announce this parcel indirectly by sending it to the Sendcloud panel instead. Setting the request_label parameter to false would not announce the label at the carrier but place it in the Sendcloud panel under Shipping > Orders > Incoming orders, to pick it up manually for someone from your team.
Either way, the order will still need a valid shipping method. To apply that, use shipping method number eight, which is an unstamped letter. In the case of a major outage on the carrier’s end, you can send the order into Sendcloud and prevent it from being lost.
What if the parcel request happens in another system/WMS/ERP?
In this case, contact Sendcloud or the service owners you work with to see if a mapping is available. In some cases, we have a full mapping available which allows you to add your shipping_method_checkout_name.