Question 1

What does the Shopify integration do?

Accepted Answer

The Shopify integration lets your AI widget agents handle e-commerce support in real time. During a chat conversation, the AI can:

Look up orders by order number and verify customer identity before sharing details
Cancel or update orders with a two-step verification and confirmation flow
Search customer profiles, retrieve full account details, and update addresses
Browse products and show visual product cards directly in the chat widget
Check live inventory levels by product name
Create draft orders (quotes) and share a payment link with the customer
Validate discount codes and list active promotions
Show tracking information and fulfillment status

All action templates are self-contained — each one works independently without requiring other templates to run first. Identity verification is built in and fires automatically before sensitive data is shared or changes are made.

Question 2

How do I connect my Shopify store?

Accepted Answer

Connecting your store takes about 30 seconds via OAuth. Go to Integrations in the Staffify admin panel, click New Connection and select Shopify, enter your store name (just the subdomain, e.g. "acme" for acme.myshopify.com), click Connect and a Shopify authorization page opens, review the requested permissions and click Install app, and you are redirected back to Staffify with the connection marked as Connected. The connection uses a secure access token stored with AES-256-GCM encryption. Only one connection is allowed per Shopify store.

Question 3

What permissions does the integration request?

Accepted Answer

During the OAuth flow, Staffify requests the following Shopify scopes: read_products and write_products (for browsing products, checking inventory, showing product cards), read_orders and write_orders (for looking up, updating, and canceling orders), read_customers and write_customers (for searching, viewing, creating, and updating customer profiles), read_inventory (for checking live stock levels per variant), read_locations (for listing store and warehouse locations), read_fulfillments and write_fulfillments (for retrieving tracking numbers and shipping status), read_draft_orders and write_draft_orders (for creating and completing draft orders), and read_discounts (for validating discount codes and listing active price rules). Only scopes required for enabled templates are used.

Question 4

How does identity verification work?

Accepted Answer

Before sharing sensitive data or making changes, the AI verifies customer identity automatically. Two patterns exist: Post-verification (for read actions like get_order and get_customer) where the API call executes first and identity is verified before data is released; and Pre-verification (for destructive actions like cancel_order and update_customer) where identity is verified before any changes are made. For orders, verification uses order number (numeric match) plus email address (phonetic/fuzzy match). For customers, verification uses email address (phonetic/fuzzy match) plus postal code (alphanumeric match). Phonetic match handles minor typos and spoken spelling. Each step allows up to 2 attempts; after the limit, the session ends and no data is released. cancel_order always re-verifies even if the customer was verified earlier in the conversation.

Question 5

What are product cards and how do they appear in the chat?

Accepted Answer

Product cards are visual cards that appear inside the chat widget below the AI text response, shown for product browsing actions (list_products, get_collection_products, get_product). Each card shows the product image (or grey placeholder if none exists), product title in bold, short description, price (single price or range if variants differ), a View link opening the product page on your Shopify storefront, and an out-of-stock badge for unavailable products. Card layout: 1 product shows a full-width card, 2 to 4 products show in a 2-column grid. For list_products, the AI receives a text summary of up to 50 products and selects the most relevant ones for the customer question. check_inventory returns plain text stock levels only, not cards.

Question 6

How do I assign Shopify actions to a widget agent?

Accepted Answer

Go to AI Agents and open the agent used by your widget, open the Integrations tab inside the agent settings, select your Shopify connection from the list, enable the action templates you want (for example list_products, get_order, cancel_order), and save the agent. The AI will use those actions during widget conversations. Only enabled actions are available. Tip: only enable actions your widget actually needs — fewer tools means the AI is more precise and less likely to pick the wrong action.

Question 7

What action templates are available?

Accepted Answer

The Shopify integration includes 24 action templates across five categories. Orders (7 templates): list_orders, get_order, cancel_order, update_order, list_fulfillments, list_refunds, create_refund. Customers (6 templates): search_customers, get_customer, create_customer, update_customer, list_customer_addresses, update_customer_address. Products (5 templates): list_products, get_product, list_collections, list_smart_collections, get_collection_products. Inventory (2 templates): list_locations, check_inventory. Draft Orders and Discounts (4 templates): create_draft_order, complete_draft_order, lookup_discount_code, list_price_rules.

Question 8

How is the Shopify connection authenticated?

Accepted Answer

Shopify uses a custom header authentication method. All API requests from Staffify to your store include the X-Shopify-Access-Token header with your encrypted token. This is the standard Shopify Admin API authentication method. The token is obtained via OAuth during the connection flow and stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM. It is never logged or exposed in plaintext. The integration uses Shopify Admin API version 2026-04. Tokens never expire — Shopify issues offline access tokens that remain valid indefinitely unless the app is uninstalled or the token is manually revoked. You do not need to reauthenticate on a schedule.

Question 9

How does Shopify work with pre-chat email collection?

Accepted Answer

If your widget has pre-chat email collection enabled, the customer email is captured before the conversation starts and automatically available to Shopify actions in that session. For example: list_orders can be called immediately using the pre-collected email without asking for it again; get_order still asks for the order number but may pre-fill the email during verification; get_customer may already have the email verification step satisfied by the pre-chat value. At the end of the session, the CRM contact record is linked to the conversation log. To enable pre-chat email collection, go to your widget settings and turn on Collect email before chat.

Question 10

How does the Shopify integration affect knowledge base search?

Accepted Answer

When Shopify action templates are assigned to a widget agent, the system automatically adjusts AI routing so it does not search the knowledge base for topics Shopify can handle directly. Re-routed topics include product queries (if list_products or get_product is enabled), order queries (if any order template is enabled), customer queries (if any customer template is enabled), inventory queries (if check_inventory is enabled), and discount queries (if lookup_discount_code is enabled). The knowledge base is still used for topics Shopify cannot answer: return policies, FAQs, company information, store hours, shipping times, and other KB content. If a Shopify action fails, the AI falls back to KB automatically. Routing is based on which templates are actually enabled.

Question 11

How is identity verification configured in the action settings?

Accepted Answer

All Shopify action templates come with verification pre-configured. When you add a template, the verification steps, match types, and field paths are already set correctly. Pre-configured verification: get_order, list_fulfillments, list_refunds use post-verification with order number (numeric) plus email (phonetic); cancel_order, update_order, create_refund use pre-verification with order number (numeric) plus email (phonetic); get_customer, list_customer_addresses, update_customer, update_customer_address use pre-verification with email (phonetic) plus postal code (alphanumeric). Available match types: phonetic (handles typos and spoken spelling, used for emails), numeric (strips non-digit characters, used for order numbers), alphanumeric (case-insensitive, strips spaces and dashes, used for postal codes), last_4_digits (compares only last four digits), fuzzy_date (accepts multiple date formats and handles EU/US ambiguity), phone_number (normalises international dialling codes), and exact (case-insensitive exact string match). For most stores, default configuration is correct.

Question 12

What happens if I disconnect my Shopify store?

Accepted Answer

When you disconnect your Shopify store from Staffify, Shopify fires an app/uninstalled webhook. Staffify receives this and marks the connection as inactive automatically. After disconnecting: all Shopify action templates stop working immediately, widget agents with Shopify actions assigned fall back to the knowledge base for product and order questions, and to reconnect you go through the OAuth flow again to get a fresh access token. If you manually revoke the Staffify app from your Shopify Partner dashboard without going through Staffify, the webhook fires and the connection is deactivated within seconds.

Shopify Integration