Online Stores
What it is
Online Stores connects your shop (Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce) to Threadline. Threadline then keeps a copy of its orders, products, customers and abandoned carts, and uses them in three places: the Inbox, automations and the AI.
It needs a plan that includes E-commerce. In the sidebar, the Store group has Orders, Products and (Admins) Stores.
The problem it solves
Customers ask shop questions all day: "Where is my order?", "Do you have this in stock?", "Send me the link". Without a connection, your team switches between the chat and the shop admin, copy-pastes order numbers and product pictures, and forgets to follow up with shoppers who left something in their cart.
With a connection, the answers are in front of you, the AI can answer order questions itself, and a lost sale can be recovered automatically.
How it works
- You connect a store with its keys.
- Threadline copies orders, products, customers and carts a page at a time, then keeps up with changes (every 15 minutes, and instantly through the store's own notifications where it allows).
- Orders and carts are matched to people you already have, by phone number and then email.
- That information shows in the Inbox, can start automations, and can be used by the AI.
1. Connecting a store
Open Stores (Admins) and press Connect a store. Pick the platform and follow the short guide in the dialog:
- Shopify: create a custom app in your Shopify admin with read access to orders, products, customers and checkouts (and write access to webhooks if you want Threadline to set them up), install it, and paste its Admin API access token and your shop address.
- WooCommerce: under WooCommerce, Settings, Advanced, REST API, add a key with Read/Write access. Paste the consumer key and secret and your site address (HTTPS).
- BigCommerce: create a store-level API account with read access to orders, products and customers, and paste its access token and the store hash.
Threadline checks the keys with the store before saving, asks the store to send changes to Threadline (webhooks), and starts copying. Big stores are copied a page at a time, so the first copy can take a while; the store's card shows when it last synced and any problem.
The store's card
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Test | Checks that the keys still work. |
| Sync now | Copies what changed since last time. |
| Sync everything again | Starts from the beginning. |
| Set up webhooks | Asks the store again to send changes, and shows the webhook address. |
| Edit | Change the name or the channel customers are kept on. |
| Disconnect | Removes the copied orders, products and carts. Your contacts stay. |
Where customers are kept
Pick a WhatsApp or SMS channel on the store (Edit). Customers with a phone number are then added to your contacts on it. They are added without consent: buying from you is not agreeing to marketing messages. Without a channel, orders are only matched to people you already have.
2. Orders and products
Orders lists every order with its payment and fulfilment state. You can search by number, name, email or phone, filter by store or fulfilment, and see the total of what you filtered, per currency.
Open an order to see:
- its items, with pictures and SKU;
- total, payment and fulfilment, and the tracking link;
- a link to the customer's own order page;
- the customer, if matched: View contact, or Message to jump into their latest conversation.
Refresh reads the order again from the store. Mark fulfilled marks it fulfilled in the store itself (the store may email the customer), then shows what the store says. It is refused for an order that is already fulfilled or cancelled, and the reason is explained.
Products lists the catalogue with image, title (linking to the shop page), SKU, price and stock (Out of stock, "N left", or Not tracked). Search by title or SKU, filter by store, and use Low stock (5 or fewer).
3. In the Inbox
- The contact panel shows the person's latest Orders, and Left in their cart with the cart link.
- Share a product (the shopping-bag button) sends a product's picture, name, price and link into the conversation. It follows the usual reply-window rule.
See Inbox.
4. Automations
New triggers, each with an optional store filter:
- A store order is placed, shipped or fulfilled, cancelled;
- A shopper leaves a cart without buying (starts after a delay you choose, 15 minutes or more);
- A new customer appears in a store.
New steps: Send a product and Send a product list. Steps can use {{context.store}}, {{context.order_number}}, {{context.order_total}}, {{context.order_url}}, {{context.tracking_url}}, {{context.cart_total}} and {{context.recovery_url}}.
Two ready-made flows are in the template list: Abandoned cart recovery and Order shipped message.
Only fresh news starts an automation: an order placed in the last few hours, a status that has just changed. Old orders copied when you connect never do. An order from someone not yet in Threadline has nobody to message, so it starts nothing. A cart the shopper then pays for is never offered.
Abandoned carts
- Shopify reports them itself.
- WooCommerce and BigCommerce do not. Use a plugin that can post to the store's webhook address (shown on its card) in this form:
{"event": "checkout.abandoned", "id": "cart-1", "email": "ana@example.com", "phone": "+15551234567", "total": 59.9, "currency": "USD", "recovery_url": "https://shop.example/cart/abc", "items": [{"name": "Lamp", "quantity": 1, "price": 59.9}]}
See Automation.
5. The AI and orders
When a customer asks the AI about their order, it reads that customer's own orders (the five latest) and answers from them: where the order is, what is in it, what they paid. It never sees anyone else's orders, and orders are matched to a person by phone number or email only. Even with an empty knowledge base, a customer with orders can be answered.
Turn this off under Settings, Workspace, Answer order questions from the customer's own orders if you want the AI to use your knowledge base only. See Workspace Settings.
6. The AI and your products
A customer can ask "Do you have the blue hoodie in M under $40?" and the AI answers from your connected store, with the real price and stock. It can also show the product as a card and offer a ready checkout. Turn this on per assistant, in Assistants:
- Can recommend products, with picture and price. It looks at your active products for what the customer wrote (words, SKU, and prices such as "under 40"), shows up to 3 as cards with a Buy now button, and puts out-of-stock products last with no button.
- Can create a ready checkout link. When the customer says what they want, it offers a checkout built from your products. Shopify gets one cart link with every item. WooCommerce gets one add-to-cart link per product, because WooCommerce adds one product per address. BigCommerce gets the product page, because its cart address needs your storefront's own domain.
- Can offer the coupon set on the store. In Stores → Edit, type one coupon code and when it may be offered ("only when the customer hesitates on price"). The AI gives that code exactly as typed and never makes up another.
What keeps it honest
- The AI is shown only the matching products from your own workspace, and a product it names that was not in that list is dropped.
- Before a card is sent, a product not checked in the last 15 minutes is refreshed from your store. If the store does not answer, the card says "Price at the time of writing".
- Shopify products use their first variant in a cart link. Other variants are not offered separately.
- Orders work as before: see The AI and orders.
Good to know
- These connections are labelled beta: they were built from each platform's documentation and tested with recorded answers, not a live shop. Try yours with a test order.
- Refunds, returns, product variants as separate items and creating orders from Threadline are not supported.
- The webhook address contains a secret. Keep it private.
Common questions
My store shows an error. The card shows the store's last message. The most common cause is a changed or expired key: press Edit, enter fresh keys, then Test.
An order does not show beside a conversation. Threadline matches by phone number or email. If the shopper used a different phone or email, there is no match.
The abandoned-cart automation never started. The shopper must already be a contact, the cart must be 15 minutes to a week old, and on WooCommerce or BigCommerce your plugin must post the cart to the webhook address.