Universal Floral Order (UFO)

The UFO was designed by Petals to create a universal order format that can be used by Petals and their Partners to standardize the transmission of floral orders between a quite diverse range of order management systems in use with the various partners.

There are different methods of transmitting these orders available to Petals partners including FTP, URL encoded and XML. For more detail on these, see the inbound and outbound order pages in this site.

Presently, there is only a standard order record format. In development are a message and a status record - see Orders to Petals for more.

Evolution

the original version of the UFO was created in September 1998
several new fields were introduced on 4th March 2009 and are identified in blue below. More descriptive text was added
NOTE: 24 September 2010 When you receive from Petals, the <order> tag in the samples in the inbound section of this manual is replaced with <ufo>. In the next edition, we expect this will be standardized to one tag name rather than the two.

Required	Field Name	Description	Length	Type	XML Tag
Yes	recordtype	"01" = order	2	Character	<recordtype>
Yes	seller	A four digit Partner number for the seller, issued by Petals	5	Number	<seller>
Yes	sendid	An order reference number of up to 6 numbers. It can be issued by the seller of the order. This is the number we will use to reference the order in our system and between partners if no partner-specific reference is given. Presently, if this is blank or if it is more than 6 digits or if it is not a number or if the order number has been used previously, this order will be rejected and a warning message displayed in your browser. From V45, when sending an order to Petals, the sender should send a 6 digit order reference number as described above. When Petals sends an order to another party, we will insert an order number in the format mmmm.oooooo (where m=seller member number and o=a 6 digit order number). Therefore, this field will contain up to 15 characters as per the other order identifying fields below.	6/15	Number	<sendid>
No	sellid	Introduced with V45: An optional order reference supplied by the seller of the order to key into their system. Petals will try to pass this number around the partners to make it more convenient for the seller to find a referenced order in their system	15	alpha/num	<sellid>
No	supplyid	Introduced with V45: An optional order reference supplied by the supplier of the order to key into their system. Petals will try to pass this number around the partners to make it more convenient for the supplier to find a referenced order in their system	15	alpha/num	<supplyid>
Yes	password	The password given to you by Petals.	8	Characters	<password>
No	affilref	Optional Information that will be printed on EOM statement for your records. This might be a cost centre, membership number etc.	20	Character	<affilref>
Yes	recipient	Name of person receiving flowers	60	Character	<recipient>
Yes	surname	Recipient's surname-first 8 characters	8	Character	<surname>
Yes	address	Street address	100	Character	<address>
Yes	town	Town or city	30	Character	<town>
if relevant	state	State or province	10	Character	<state>
Yes	postalcode	Post or zip code	15	Character	<postcode>
Yes	crtyname	Country in words	30	Character	<crtyname>
Yes	crtycode	Uses ISO 2 character code system for the country (e.g. AU, NZ, GB)	2	Character	<crtycode>
Yes	phone	Recipient's telephone. It is strongly recommended that you seek and provide contact numbers for recipients to reduce delivery problems. Be advised that some partners in some countries will not deliver without a telephone number.	25	Character	<phone>
Yes	description	Order description in words. This field should contain sufficient info to supply the order. For example; 6 red roses bouquet, paper wrapped plus bottle of sparkling wine. Additional information on make-up can be supplied in the make-up field. Special delivery and and other special instructions can be added to the comments field. Not all partners are able to pass on some or all of the make-up and comments fields due to legacy systems so please keep the material in these fields to the minimum.	100	Character	<description>
Yes	message	Order card message	200	Character	<message>
No	comments	Any comments, delivery notes or special instructions	250	Character	<comments>
No	makeup	Introduced with V45: Provide optional information on how to make up the order. Note that this is only a guide. Petals Partners do not guarantee specific make-ups unless directly agreed between the Partners.	200	Character	<makeup>
Yes	deldate	Delivery Date –yyyymmdd. NOTE the special format of the date for international standardization. If this date has passed at Petals HQ, the order will be rejected and a message displayed in your browser.	8	Character	<deldate>
if relevant	deltime	text notes - e.g. am / pm, funeral time	20	Character	<deltime>
Yes	tvalue	Total value of the order in the currency Petals has you registered to send and receive orders in. Format is - $$$.cc	6	Number	<tvalue>
No	supplier	Member number of the supplying florist. Normally this will be provided by Petals when it chooses a florist to supply the order. However, if you have a preference, you can insert a valid Petals member number in this field.	5	Number	<supplier>
No	ccdata	(not presently in use) if Petals has to clear a credit card for this order, please supply a single data field with following info in order; card number, expiry date, security code (if relevant to card type - eg Debit cards), card holder name and billing address, holder phone and email	no limit	Character	<ccdata>
No	contact	(not presently in use - use the 'comments' field above or 'contact' fields below if need to send) if Petals needs to know the sending florist customer contact info (for e.g. complaint follow-up), please supply following. contact name, address if required, phone, fax, email	no limit	Character	<contact>
No	productid	The petals product id. Please refer to the pricing guide for product ids and descriptions. ADDED: 2009-11-09	10	Character	<productid>
No	Contact_Name	Purchaser or other contact person's name for the sell side of this order. (optional but needed if Petals might need to contact the purchaser)	30	Character	<contact_name>
No	Contact_Email	Purchaser or other contact person's email for the sell side of this order. (optional but needed if Petals might need to contact the purchaser)	65	Character	<contact_email>
No	Contact_Phone	Purchaser or other contact person's business hours phone for the sell side of this order. (optional but needed if Petals might need to contact the purchaser)	25	Number	<contact_phone>
No	BankID	A banking reference for credit card clearance. (usually not required)	10	Character	<bankid>
No	CC Levy	This field is used by Petals Eflorist orders to transmit the amount of the cclevy	6	Number	<cclevy>
No	Discounted FV	this should be the discount flower value when a promo code or discount agent has ordered, and should EXCLUDE handling and delivery	8	Number	<dflower>
No	Paymethod	should equal P if the payment was made via Paypal and E if the payment was made through the NAB	1	Character	<paymethod>
No	Address Type	should be the "location" part of the address ie Home/Business/Hospital/Church etc	15	Characters	<addresstype>
No	occasion	should be the occasion they select with the card message	15	Characters	<occasion>
No	Upsell	This is where you would include any add-on's such as chocolates, balloons etc	100	Characters	<upsell>
No	Upsellamt	This is where you would include the total value of all add ons	6	Characters	<upsellAmt>

Petals Response

When Petals receives an order, it will return information on the processing of that order;

emails are send to the email associated with the sender showing an order successfully received or (where possible) one that has fatal errors or warnings.
up to version 45, a HTML string was returned with status information. From this version onwards, an XML string capable of being read by humans and/or parsed by code is returned from the POST. Sample PHP code is here.

Notes:

All field names and XML tags are in lower case, this is to accommodate those systems that are case sensitive missing required data may cause the order to be rejected by Petals. We will try to provide feedback on problems of this type via email or web (and later with an XML record). However, if we can't identify who the order is from (typically if the login info is incorrect), this will not be possible.
Petals presently shows a website response when it receives an order and will shortly follow with a confirmation email to the address supplied. There are also periodic daily reconciliations emailed to all parties for further checking.
If any data field contains more characters than permitted in that field, it will be truncated at the maximum field size automatically (and possibly without the sender being advised). It is the responsibility of the order sender to 'pack' their information fields to fit within the maximum field size.
if you give a supplying florist member number of your choice, Petals will try to send the order to this florist. However, if they can't do the order for some reason (e.g. sick or closed or out of flowers), Petals will automatically re-allocate the order to a suitable florist in order to deliver the order in a timely fashion.
We recommend a few standards for the contents to appear in description and make-up fields. These are;
- all components of an order (e.g. flowers, balloons, wine, chocolates) must appear in the 'description' field
- the make-up field should be considered as a guideline to the florist rather than expected to be exactly followed. The exception might be when the supplying florist is already familiar with the seller's product range and has agreed to a WYSIWYG make-up.
- it is the responsibility of the seller to shorten their data strings to fit the agreed maximum field sizes. Any data lost through truncation to fit the field size will be the responsibly of the seller. The seller is discouraged from adding remaining data from one field to another field as this will make it difficult for the supplier to organize incoming data into their systems.

UFO was designed by Petals to create a universal order format that can be used by Petals and their Partners for a simpler transaction process. See the inbound and outbound transmission options for more information on how to send and receive order from Petals Network.