ChannelEngine: advanced address parser [add-on]

About this article

This article describes the advanced address parser feature on ChannelEngine.

Table of contents

Introduction 

Setup

Address validation quality gate

Minimum confirmation levels

Limit on parsing operations

Specific countries

Introduction

ChannelEngine’s advanced address parser maps an order’s billing and shipping addresses to known addresses in a global database. Unlike ChannelEngine’s standard address parser, the advanced address parser verifies the buyer’s supplied address with a third-party database of global addresses to screen addresses for realistic values. This improves address formatting on your shipments and helps ensure compatibility with shipping carriers.

Setup

1. Contact your customer success manager or the Support team to enable the advanced address parser in your tenant.
2. Once enabled, go to Settings, Settings, Address.
3. Verify your existing address parser settings. For guidance on setting up the standard address parser settings, check out the article ChannelEngine: address parsing.
4. In the Advanced address parser section, configure additional fields:
   • Enable advanced address parser enrichment - if toggled off, then only the house number, house number addition, and company name are verified. If on, then the advanced address parser includes the city, zip code, and region of the address in the verification.
   • Address validation quality gate - control how strictly ChannelEngine accepts validated addresses, to balance automatic order processing with manual processing to fix incorrect or incomplete addresses. To learn more about the address validation quality gate, check out the section Address validation quality gate below.
   • Minimum confirmation level for street/house number/house number addition/company - choose Confirmed or Plausible (default) or Only Confirmed. To learn more, check out the section Minimum confirmation levels.
   • Limit of possible parsing operations - the maximum limit is 10,000. To learn more, check out the section Limit on parsing operations.
   • Advanced parsing for orders originating from - selectively apply your advanced address parsing operations on only those orders that originate from specific countries. Specify those countries here. If you specify no countries, then you spend your limit of parsing operations on all orders, from all countries. To learn more, check out the section Specific countries.

Address validation quality gate

The address validation quality gate defines how strictly ChannelEngine automatically accepts the address that is validated with the third-party database. The quality gate setting determines the logic that automatically sends an order for normal processing or marks an order as Requires correction for manual review.

Choose one of the following options:

• Off - the quality gate is disabled. The address parser only accepts the Plausible confirmation level for each address field (e.g.: street, house number). This is the default setting.
• Minimal - accept most addresses; the street is confirmed. Only undeliverable addresses (i.e.: addresses with unconfirmed routes) are rejected. Use this setting to minimize manual order reviews and maximize automated address handling.
• Standard - accept addresses approximated to a building; the house number is confirmed. Minor address validation issues are allowed but may require verification.
• Strict - accept addresses matched to a specific building, building level, or better; street approximations are rejected. Reject addresses with minor address validation differences. The only scenario for Requires correction is to confirm a missing unit number.
• Maximum - only accept fully validated addresses with no suggested actions.

Minimum confirmation levels

The advanced address parser on ChannelEngine maps the order’s address fields to known addresses in a global database. In the settings, choose to manually review or automatically accept this mapping for the following address fields:

• Street - the street name.
• House number - the number of the building or house in the street.
• House number addition - the apartment or suite number, or any additional element e.g.: 'apartment on the left'.
• Company - the name of the company, if provided.

After mapping the address fields to the global address database, the parser marks a field as either plausible or confirmed. If the parser deems the field plausible, it means the field might be valid. If the parser deems the field confirmed, the parser is certain that it is valid.

For each address field setting, choose one of the following options from the dropdown:

• Confirmed or Plausible - you automatically accept both plausible and confirmed address fields on your orders. The related order is marked with the status New, in line with the normal workflow for orders. The system automatically parsed the address and requires no further action from you. (This is the default setting.)
• Only Confirmed - choose this option if you only want to import the address fields that the parser deemed confirmed with the global address database. If an address field is plausible, then the related order is marked with the status Requires correction, and you must manually review that field in the order’s address section before updating the order’s status.  

If you opt for accepting only confirmed fields, plausible fields are not considered valid, and the related order ends up in the Requires correction status on ChannelEngine. This means a manual check from your side is needed to make sure the address fields are filled out correctly. To learn more about manual address reviews, check out the article ChannelEngine: why is my order labeled as 'Requires correction'?.

Limit on parsing operations

Each tenant’s total limit on parsing operations is 10,000.

The advanced address parser uses one operation to first check if the billing and shipping addresses are the same. If the billing and shipping addresses are different, then the parser uses two operations. Once your total limit on operations is reached, ChannelEngine automatically switches to the standard address parser. To further economize your operations usage, try selecting specific countries to which to apply the advanced address parser. See the section below on specific countries.

Contact your customer success manager or the Support team to discuss resetting your advanced address parser operations limit.

Receive a notification

In Notification Settings, enable the Advanced Address Parser Limit notification to receive a message when you are near and at your limit on operations. ChannelEngine notifies you when:

• You reach 80% of your of your limit, so you can choose to increase your limit in advance.
• You reach 100% of your limit to inform you that the system has switched to the regular parser.

Specific countries

In the setting Advanced parsing for orders originating from, you can specify one or more countries where the advanced address parser applies. This setting provides you with two benefits: first, you economically spare your limited number of operations, and second, you shift your focus to countries where digital systems struggle with reading addresses.

It is recommended to enable the advanced address parser on orders originating from the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region because the standard address parser is, by default, disabled for these countries.