Notes from Buyer - Shopify Importing

[KerryCG]

This issue has been brought up a couple times and has unfortunately not been fixed. It has to do with how the 'Notes from Buyer' field is imported from Shopify orders. After creating support tickets with both companies and receiving messages from Shopify developers about this issue, I hope to provide a comprehensive breakdown and potential solution. I will make one assumption to create examples, that ShipStation uses GraphQL to query from the Shopify API, as I do not know what is actually used.

• The Problem
  • Shopify has 2 relevant fields, 'Notes' and 'Additional details'
    • As seen on Shopify:
    •  
    • These fields are titled 'note' and 'customAttributes' in Shopify's API, and I will refer to them as such from now on
    • https://shopify.dev/docs/api/admin-graphql/2024-10/objects/Order#field-customattributes
    • https://shopify.dev/docs/api/admin-graphql/2024-10/objects/Order#field-note
  • 'note' is the actually relevant field needed, as it contains gift messages and other information from the customer
  • 'customAttributes' is rarely needed (never, in the case of our company), as it is utilized by Shopify's partner Apps and plugins for tracking information
  • When imported, these fields are added together, as seen in ShipStation
  • 
  • Because of this, we have to manually remove the 'customAttributes' from every order affected

• The API
  • When talking with ShipSation, I received this data as an example of Shopify's message:
  • 
  • *Clarification - this example does not have the "Happy Birthday!" as it was from a different order
  • While yes, this is the data sent from Shopify, 'NotesFromBuyer' represents the field as requested/queried from the API, not Shopify's original data
  • I believe that ShipStation set up a query that concatenates the two fields together and labels them as 'NotesFromBuyer', instead of leaving them separate

• The Solution
  • The ShipStation query would need to be edited in order to fix the issue, as Shopify's API does provide both fields separately to query from, seen in their linked documentation above and this example GraphQL query:
  • {
    order(id: "gid://shopify/Order/11142312460310") {
      id
      note
      customAttributes {
          key
          value
        }
      }
    }
  • As changing this field may have unintended consequences for some users, I propose adding a Shopify Store Settings checkbox to opt-into excluding 'customAttributes' from 'NotesFromBuyer' (toggling between the original imported field and a 'note' only field)
  • 
  • If this is entirely wrong, a bug is preventing the query from being changed, or any assistance is needed, I have contact with Shopify Developers and they have offered to assist in a meeting between developers

Thank you for making it through my breakdown, I hope it proves useful and we can improve the platform for ShipStation's customers!

[tharper]

I NEED the order notes from customer to print on my packing slips and ship station needs to fix this.

[tharper]

ship station needs to fix this to allow order notes from customer to appear on the packing slips

[CaraAdmin]

Hello @KerryCG!

Thank you for your post in the community! We’ve escalated this to our developers for review and truly appreciate the detailed information you provided. Your feedback helps us continue improving, and we're grateful for your input!

Happy Shipping!

-Cara

[waltaugust]

Is there a fix yet?  We have the same problem.  Additional notes in the order is showing up as notes from Buyer and it is not the same thing.

[CaraAdmin]

Hello @waltaugust!

Thank you for your post in the community! After speaking with support and the development team, I learned that a backend option called "ignoreNoteAttributesOption" can be set to false, so you no longer see this issue. I have asked support to go ahead and name this change for you. If you still see the notes showing, please feel free to reach out, and we can dig in further. 

For any other merchants within the community who may want to prevent Notes from appearing, please feel free to reach out to support and ask them to make a false "ignoreNoteAttributesOption" in the backend settings. I hope you all find this helpful! 

Happy Shipping!

-Cara