Creating and Importing Externally-Managed Offers

Content of this article

  1. Preliminary remarks
  2. Offer Creation
  3. Order Import
  4. Order Update

1. Preliminary remarks

Externally-managed offers cannot be sold via the plenigo Checkout. To carry out an order of an externally-managed offer, an import via API can be used.

 Note: An import creates an order and an externally-managed subscription. Externally-managed subscriptions differ from regular subscriptions. For more information, click here.


2. Offer Creation

All offers, which can be externally managed, have a corresponding option in the offer creation form.

To define an offer as externally-managed, follow the following steps:
  • Open the Product/Offers menu items.
  • Click on Create an Offer.
  •  Click on the desired offer type.
  •  In the area External Management of the offer form, select the desired option.
     This area can be found either at the end of the form or in the Base data tab, depending on the offer type.

3. Order Import

It is required to import the order via the API to carry out an order of an externally-managed offer.
The corresponding endpoint and request is described in the API documentation.

 Customer Data
To be able to carry out an import, the customer, for whom the order is to be created, must have been created already in plenigo.
 If this is not the case, the customer must be created via an additional request before the import. Follow the following steps:
  • POST-Request for creating a customer data set
  • The required data in the request are the following:
    • email
       the e-mail address of the customer as unique idenfication of the data set
    • language
      die Sprache des Kunden / the customer's language
  •  the other fields can be optionally filled

 Import Data
The required data in the request for carrying out the import are the following:
  • externalSystemId
    Unique ID from the leading third-party system. It is noted at the order and subscription in plenigo.
  • plenigoOfferId
    the plenigo order ID to be used
  • invoiceCustomerId
    the plenigo customer number
  • quantity
    The desired quantity of the offer
  • startDate
    The start date of the subscription. Also determines the start date of the access rights in plenigo.
  • paymentMethod
     The payment method, which is used for the order.
 In addition, there are more data fields available. A complete list can be found in the API documentation.

All imports carried out are recorded in the Log.

Note: An order import is carried out asynchronically. In the response to an import, a promiseID may be issued, which can be used for identification.


4. Order Update

Externally-managed offers cannot be updated in the plenigo Merchant Backend directly. For each update, a renewed import with adjusted data is required.

Carry out an update:
  • For updating an offer, the same endpoint is used as for the import.
    • Adjust the desired data in requestbody
    • Setting field endDate leads to the cancellation of a subscription
    • Update the payment method by updating the field paymentMethod.