Introduction
Installation
Getting up and running with Cardigan is pretty straightforward.
App installation
Cardigan can be installed into your Shopify store just like any other Shopify App.
The easiest way to get started is by following this link and entering your Shopify store domain, for example mystore.myshopify.com.
After installation, you'll be prompted to accept Cardigan's terms of service and privacy policy, as well as authorise the ongoing charge for Cardigan usage.
Once that's done, you'll land on the Cardigan dashboard and be ready to begin.
Profile configuration
Cardigan uses a concept called "Profiles" to define which external gift card provider to connect with and the API credentials to use when doing so. You can create multiple profiles per store, but only one profile can be active at any one time.
This allows you to create a profile for your testing or staging credentials while you're getting Cardigan set up, and then once you're ready to go you can create an activate a separate production profile.
Creating a new profile
From the Cardigan dashboard inside the Shopify admin, select "Profiles" from the left-hand side menu.
Click "Add new profile", select the type of external gift card provider you want to create a profile for, and then "Add profile".
You'll be able to give your profile a name (this is just used internally for your reference), and enter the API credentials supplied by your external gift card provider. It's a good idea to test your API credentials before saving your profile, just to make sure everything's working okay - you can do that by clicking the "Test credentials" button after entering your details.
Once you've run a successful credential test, click "Save" and your profile will be created.
Activating a profile
Profiles aren't active by default - this prevents them being used by customers accidentally before you're ready.
To activate a profile, open the profile detail view by clicking on the relevant profile in the "Profiles" tab of the Cardigan application. An "Activate profile" button will be visible at the bottom of the page - click it and confirm to activate your profile.
Deactivating a profile
If you want to deactivate an active profile, you can follow similar steps to the ones listed above - the button that was previously "Activate profile" will be "Deactivate profile".
Removing a profile
Typically, deactivating a profile is all you'll want to do, but if you want to remove a profile entirely, you can do that by clicking the "Remove profile" button at the bottom of the profile detail view.
Profile configuration options
In addition to the name of the profile and the credentials used to connect to your external provider, profiles allow specific configuration options depending on the provider in use.
Some of the common configuration options available are:
Refund behaviour
Allows you to specify Cardigan's behaviour when a refund is created in the Shopify admin against a gift card that was redeemed using the current profile. Available options are:
- Take no action (default): no action is taken by Cardigan;
- Issue new: a new digital gift card is issued and delivered to the customer owning the refunded order;
- Refund to original: the refunded amount is returned to the original gift card used for the purchase.
While taking no action is the default setting, in general we recommend issuing a new digital gift card on refund. Not only does this help with auditing gift card history for a particular customer, it also avoids issues in situations where the customer holding the gift card has lost or discarded their original gift card details.
Some providers have limitations on which behaviours are available depending on your external account setup, so be sure to read through the provider-specific documentation when selecting the appropriate behaviour for your setup.