Overview

Endicia Professional automates your shipping process by directly communicating with an outside data source—such as an ODBC compatible database (SQL, MySQL, Access, and others) or data file (CSV, Excel, tab-delimited file, and others) to print shipping labels.

Endicia Professional reads shipping address data from your database, and depending on the information available from your data source, Endicia Professional lets you automate or select the weight, mail class, and optional services, and numerous other functions. When you print a label, Endicia Professional sends a request to Endicia’s servers (SOAP-based API) and receives back an image of that label for printing.

Data Connectivity

To read and write data, Endicia Professional uses either:

OLE-DB (Object Linking and Embedding Database):

Using OLE-DB, Endicia Professional can natively connect to Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, and Visual FoxPro databases as well as comma or tab-separated value text files (CSV) and Microsoft Excel files.

However, if you have some other database type or you use only an ODBC data source, you may be able to use ODBC to connect Endicia Professional.

ODBC (Open Database Connectivity):

ODBC drivers are available for most types of databases, as well as comma or tab-separated value text files. To use ODBC, you must create an ODBC Data Source Name (DSN) on the computer that has Endicia Professional. This DSN can be thought of as a shortcut to your database and contains the information that needs to connect to your shipping data.

Marketplace Integration

In addition to ODBC and OLE-DB connectivity, Endicia Professional also supports online marketplace integration with both eBay and Amazon accounts through the web store functionality.

Data Retrieval

To retrieve shipping addresses from your database, Endicia Professional needs a unique ID for the database record—such as an order number or invoice number—and the shipping address fields. You can customize data retrieval by using the Advanced Editor feature, which allows for such things as pulling information from multiple tables, mathematical functions, virtual database fields, and many other logical functions that can be accomplished with SQL or MySQL.

Data Post-Back

Through the user interface, the data post-back feature—which allows you to write shipment details back to your database—is limited to a single file, table, or database view. An Endicia support technician can provide assistance in writing back to multiple tables (though it is still limited to a single file or database) or other custom features that cannot be accomplished through data mapping. This functionality is hidden to prevent users from accidentally damaging their database.

Support

This Help project describes only the major features of Endicia Professional.

If you have questions or suggestions, contact support.

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