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Run the Fulfillment Operations Team

The Fulfillment Operations Team is an agent-assisted workspace inside Orderly Intelligence. It watches fulfillment and carrier signals, finds shipment groups that need attention, and prepares controlled action plans for a seller's operations team.

Its first mission is:

Protect today's untendered shipments before the carrier cutoff.

Open Fulfillment Operations

If the page opens to a setup checklist, complete Set up Fulfillment Operations first. If the navigation item is not present, the feature is not yet enabled for your organization.

How this differs from order dispatch

Order dispatch in Hub routes an order to its fulfillment destination and sends it through the configured fulfillment bridge. Fulfillment Operations does not replace that workflow. It monitors what happens around and after fulfillment, then helps your team protect shipments that may miss a carrier handoff or delivery promise.

WorkflowPurpose
Hub dispatchersDecide where an order should be fulfilled and send it to the destination bridge.
Fulfillment OperationsMonitor shipment evidence, identify time-sensitive risk, and prepare an intervention for review.
Intervention QueueRank in-transit shipments by predicted SLA-breach risk.
Commerce orderShopify or another source
Order ready
Hub dispatcherRoutes the order
Send to fulfill
Fulfillment bridgeShipStation, WMS, or 3PL
Operational signals
Operations caseEvidence and decision deadline
Controlled decision
Human reviewApprove or reject the plan

The operating team

The workspace presents one coordinated team rather than a separate chat for each shipment:

  • Fulfillment Commander prioritizes cases, consolidates evidence, and prepares the action plan shown to the operator.
  • Network Watchtower monitors cutoff proximity, scan silence, carrier acceptance, provisional WMS departure, and related network signals.
  • Fulfillment Optimizer compares operational alternatives, including carrier, service, rate, label, and fulfillment-priority changes.
  • Exception Recovery supports traces, address correction, claims, reships, and other recovery work for shipments already moving.
  • Customer Promise prepares revised delivery context and communication for review.
  • Claims and Cost Recovery identifies potential credits, claims, and failed premium-service exposure.

The current customer experience centers on the Commander and Watchtower. Other specialties contribute through the same case, evidence, recommendation, and approval records as their workflows become available.

Read the overview

The top of the page shows the current operating mode and four live measures:

MeasureMeaning
Active casesActionable shipment cohorts currently being monitored.
Due within 1 hourCases whose decision deadline is approaching.
Shipments affectedShipments represented across active cases.
Prepared actionsAction plans waiting for review.

The mission banner also reports the Watchtower state:

  • Active means a recent evaluation completed successfully.
  • Evaluation overdue means configured monitoring has not completed recently.
  • Cutoff setup required means there is no active cutoff rule.

Why cases contain shipment cohorts

The team creates a case for an actionable cluster, such as untendered UPS Ground shipments from one bridge approaching the same cutoff. It does not start an independent agent process for every package.

Each case preserves:

  • Priority, risk, confidence, and decision deadline.
  • Affected shipments, orders, bridge, carrier, service, lane, and cutoff context.
  • Observed facts and the evidence behind each claim.
  • The latest recommendation and its assumptions.
  • Deterministic cost and outcome estimates when source data is available.
  • Approval, action, and outcome history.

This structure keeps the recommendation reviewable and makes one decision useful across a related group of shipments.

Review a recommendation

Open the recommendation inside a case before approving it. Check:

  1. Rationale: why the Commander prefers this response.
  2. Evidence claims: the operational facts that support the recommendation.
  3. Confidence: strength of the available evidence, not a guarantee of outcome.
  4. Policy disposition: whether the plan is allowed, blocked, or ready for approval.
  5. Decision deadline: when the proposed intervention stops being useful.
  6. Assumptions: information that could not be directly observed.

Select Run Commander to reevaluate an open case after new information arrives. Only users with write access see this control.

Compare the financial scenario

When cost inputs are available, a recommendation can include:

  • Current and proposed expected cost.
  • Incremental intervention cost.
  • Expected late deliveries avoided.
  • Cost per saved delivery.
  • Customer revenue exposure.
  • Recoverable credits.
  • Net expected financial value.
  • Source confidence.

These values come from deterministic calculations over recorded cost inputs. The agent explains the tradeoff but does not invent rates, charges, credits, or financial totals.

Approve or reject a plan

Users with approval access can add a review note and choose Approve plan or Reject.

Before a decision is recorded, Orderly enforces the organization's allowed actions, confidence threshold, shipment limit, cost limit, and approval tier. Elevated actions require an organization owner. Expired or already-decided plans cannot be approved, and a plan must be reevaluated when relevant shipment state has changed.

Current execution boundary

Approval records the decision and complete audit history. It does not currently execute the change in ShipStation, a WMS, a carrier system, or a customer messaging platform. Carry out the approved operation in the system that owns the action.

Tender and SLA timing

Carrier acceptance is the confirmed tender event. A WMS pickup or departure can show that the parcel left a facility, but remains provisional until the carrier reports possession. Carrier transit SLA measurement begins from confirmed tender, not label creation or a warehouse-only status.

When all affected shipments in a case receive confirmed carrier acceptance, the Watchtower can resolve the case. Later tracking and delivery evidence is used to measure whether the intervention helped.

What to do when the queue is empty

An empty case queue can mean:

  • No configured shipment cohort is approaching a cutoff.
  • New operational signals have not arrived yet.
  • Every affected shipment has received carrier acceptance.
  • The Watchtower is overdue or cutoff setup is incomplete.

Check the Watchtower state, verify the bridge is active, and confirm the latest shipment sync before treating an empty queue as an all-clear.

Next steps