Feature overview
What is this feature about?
Custom metadata can be used to store information from external systems in MotionTools. Metadata can be stored on individual bookings, booking stops, customers, drivers, organizations and packages. Metadata is searchable and can be accessed, created and updated via API to offer you unlimited flexibility to integrate MotionTools into your tech stack.
Which businesses benefit from the feature?
Delivery businesses that connect MotionTools delivery management platform to other software they are using, such as shop and ERP systems, as well as HR, accounting and CRM tools. Custom metadata makes building integrations easier and is also accessible to your operations team and drivers in your fleet via MotionTools apps and dashboards.
Who has access to this feature?
Custom metadata is included for all delivery businesses running on the MotionTools platform. Take a look at the MotionTools API docs to learn more about using custom metadata.
The role of custom metadata
M-TOOLS developer-first architecture makes it easy to integrate with other software in your tech stack. Using the M-TOOLS API you can build integrations to programatically interact with all aspects of your delivery business: from creating and dispatching bookings, managing users and organizations, to optimising routes and creating service areas. The key challenge here is to keep data synchronised across all systems, so that it's transparent where data came from or how it should get processed later on.
M-TOOLS offers a rich set of standard properties that can be used to store necessary information on bookings, booking stops or users. For bookings and individual stops this includes location and address data, as well as contact information from a recipient and delivery scheduling. For customers or drivers this includes user profile information, vouchers and opt-ins (for a list of all properties, check out the MotionTools API docs).
When it comes to building integrations you might also want to store additional data gathered from other systems in MotionTools on top of the standard set of properties. This can be achieved using custom metadata, which is available for all entities that you can create in MotionTools via API: bookings, booking stops, customers, drivers, organizations and packages. Metadata can also be created wherever CSV uploads are available.
As custom metadata is searchable and also shows up in data exports, it can be used to store identifiers and additional information that should be displayed in the web dashboard for admins and dispatchers. Additionally metadata can be used in search filters which makes finding datasets across multiple systems much easier.
Common use cases for custom metadata
Custom metadata enables you to build a broad variety of integrations using the API and webhooks in MotionTools. Examples of popular use cases include:
Identifying bookings and booking stops across multiple systems
Order numbers or IDs that were generated by external systems can be stored as metadata on bookings and/or individual stops that are created in MotionTools. Common integrations with external systems include ERP or shop systems. Storing and displaying this information as custom metadata allows for better data analysis and creates full transparency throughout the whole supply chain. This is especially important for operations teams to keep track of bookings as they progress along the delivery journey.
Keeping track of user across multiple databases
When users exist in multiple systems, such as HR, CRM or accounting software they will have multiple user IDs that can be used to identify them. Using custom metadata in MotionTools, all external user IDs can be stored in addition to the user ID that MotionTools creates, so that all data can be kept in sync. For customers in MotionTools this could be a user ID from an external CRM system or messaging tool. For drivers this could be a user ID from HR, payroll or other accounting tools. Metadata can also be used to add additional information to a user's profile, which can then be accessed by operations and customer support teams later on.
Want to learn more?
Check out the MotionTools API docs to see how custom metadata can be implemented.
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