Gladly’s Purple Dot integration surfaces the Customer’s pre-orders (status, line items, expected ship dates, shipping address, and refund totals) directly on the Gladly Customer Profile, and lets team members resolve the common pre-order requests without leaving the Conversation.
Key benefits
Answer “where is my pre-order?” instantly
The Purple Dot card shows each pre-order’s reference and status, its line items with SKU, quantity, price and expected ship window, the shipping address, the order totals and any amount already refunded, and the Shopify order number once the pre-order has exported: all live from Purple Dot, on the profile.
Resolve pre-order requests in the Conversation
Team members can issue a refund against an exported pre-order, either every item on it or a custom amount, and look up the merchant’s self-service management link to share with the customer, straight from the compose menu.
Refunds are bounded by guardrails you set
Custom-amount refunds are capped by a maximum single refund amount that an administrator sets, and amounts above an approval threshold require explicit approval. Every refund issued from the form also requires the team member to type a confirmation first, since refunds cannot be undone.
Line items are refunded against the order they belong to
A pre-order whose items ship in separate batches exports to more than one Shopify order. The refund form offers each exported order separately, so the items in a refund always belong to the order it is sent against.
Supported features
The Purple Dot App Platform integration is available in the following areas of Gladly:
Gladly Team
The Purple Dot card is available on the Customer Profile, and two pre-order actions are available from the Conversation’s compose menu. When a team member opens a Conversation, the card matches the customer by email address and renders their Purple Dot pre-orders alongside the Conversation.
Purple Dot is connected with a private API access token entered in Gladly Settings. There is no OAuth flow, and no command-line tools are required at any point.
Details
What data can you access
Purple Dot pre-order card
Pre-order reference and status: active, exported to Shopify, or cancelled
Cancellation reason on a cancelled pre-order
Line items with name, SKU, quantity, unit price and line total
Cancelled line items, shown as cancelled rather than hidden
Expected ship window on each line item, or a single date when only one end of the window is known
Shipping address
Order subtotal, discounts, tax and total
Amount already refunded
The corresponding Shopify order number, once the pre-order has exported
Available actions
Issue refund: refund every item on an exported Shopify order, or a custom amount, within the caps an administrator sets and after a typed confirmation
Get manage order link: look up the merchant’s Purple Dot self-service page link for the team member to share with the customer
How does customer matching work?
The app matches customers by email address. No custom attribute is required.
When a team member opens a Conversation, the app looks up the customer’s primary email address in Purple Dot, falling back to any other email address on the Gladly profile when no primary is set. A Gladly customer with no email address on file, or with no matching Purple Dot pre-orders, simply shows no pre-orders (never an error), and the rest of the Customer Profile is unaffected.
Key use cases
Answer “when does my pre-order ship?” from the card
Use case: A customer asks when their pre-order ships, and what is on it.
How it works: The team member reads the pre-order’s status, its line items and the expected ship window straight off the Purple Dot card, with no lookup and no second system.
Business impact: Routine pre-order questions are answered in the first reply, without the team member leaving the Conversation.
Let the customer manage or cancel their own pre-order
Use case: A customer wants to change or cancel a pre-order that has not shipped yet.
How it works: The team member runs Get manage order link and shares the merchant’s self-service page link in their reply. The customer signs in there and changes or cancels the pre-order themselves.
Business impact: Changes that only the customer can authorize are handled by the customer, and pre-orders that cannot yet be refunded still have a resolution path.
Refund a delayed or unwanted pre-order
Use case: A pre-order has shipped, and the customer wants their money back.
How it works: The team member picks the exported Shopify order from the refund form, chooses to refund every item on it, types the confirmation, and the refund is issued in Purple Dot at the quantities originally ordered.
Business impact: Refunds are completed in the Conversation, at the right amount, without the team member working out which Shopify order or line items to use.
Refund a goodwill amount without refunding the whole order
Use case: A customer is unhappy about a delay but wants to keep the item.
How it works: The team member chooses a custom amount instead of the whole order. The amount is checked against the maximum single refund the administrator has set, and anything above the approval threshold needs explicit approval before it is issued.
Business impact: Goodwill is offered within limits the business has already agreed on, and larger amounts stay a deliberate decision.
Notes and limitations
Refunds require the pre-order to have exported to a Shopify order. Purple Dot’s refund endpoint takes the Shopify order ID, which does not exist until the pre-order exports, so a pre-order that has not shipped cannot be refunded from Gladly; share the self-service link instead, where the customer can cancel it themselves.
Custom-amount refunds need a maximum single refund amount configured. Until an administrator sets one, those refunds are blocked. Refunding every item on an order is unaffected and is bounded by the order’s own prices.
Refund guardrails apply to each refund on its own. There is no running total across refunds, so the maximum limits any single refund rather than the amount refunded over time.
Get manage order link does not send anything to the customer. It returns the link for the team member to share in their reply, and the customer signs in to their own account on that page.
Data pulls read up to 10 pre-orders per refresh.
There are no webhooks. The card refreshes when the Customer Profile is opened; Purple Dot changes are not pushed into Gladly in real time.