medusa-store/www/apps/resources/app/recipes/commerce-automation/page.mdx

import { AcademicCapSolid, BoltSolid } from "@medusajs/icons"

export const metadata = {
  title: `Commerce Automation Recipe`,
}

# {metadata.title}

This recipe provides the general steps to implement commerce automation with Medusa.

## Overview

Commerce automation is essential for businesses to save costs, provide a better user experience, and avoid manual, repetitive tasks that lead to human errors. Businesses utilize automation in different domains, including marketing, customer support, and order management.

Medusa provides the necessary architecture and tools to implement commerce automation for order management, customer service, and more. You can perform an asynchronous action when an event is triggered, schedule a job that runs at a specified interval, and more.

---

## Re-Stock Notifications

Customers may be interested in a product that is currently out of stock. The following guide explains how to add restock notifications in your Medusa application:

<Card
  href="/recipes/commerce-automation/restock-notification"
  title="Restock Notification Guide"
  text="Learn how to implement restock notifications in the Medusa application."
  icon={AcademicCapSolid}
/>

---

## Automated Customer Support

Customer support is essential to build a store's brand and customer loyalty. This can include integrating with third-party services or automating notifications sent to customers when changes happen related to their orders, returns, exchanges, and more.

You can use the Notification Module to send notifications when an action is triggered, such as when a customer or their order is updated.

<Note title="Tip">

The [Events reference](../../events-reference/page.mdx) shows an extensive list of events triggered for each commerce module.

</Note>

Medusa also provides Notification Module Providers that integrate with third-party services, such as SendGrid.

<CardList items={[
  {
    href: "/architectural-modules/notification",
    title: "Notification Module",
    text: "Learn about the Notification Module.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
  {
    href: "!docs!/learn/fundamentals/events-and-subscribers",
    title: "Create Subscriber",
    text: "Learn how to create a subscriber to handle events.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
]} />

---

## Automatic Data Synchronization

As your commerce store grows, you'll likely need to synchronize data across different systems. For example, you need to synchronize data with an ERP system or a data warehouse.

To implement that:

- Create a workflow that implements the synchronization steps, along with retry and rollback logic.
- Create a scheduled job that executes the workflow automatically at the specified time pattern.

<Card
  href="!docs!/learn/fundamentals/scheduled-jobs"
  title="Create a Scheduled Job"
  text="Learn how to create a scheduled job in Medusa."
  icon={AcademicCapSolid}
/>

---

## Order Management Automation

Using Medusa's architecture and commerce features, you can automate a large amount of order management functionalities.

To handle events within an order flow and automate actions, create a subscriber. For example, create a subscriber that listens to the `order.placed` event and automatically creates a fulfillment if predefined conditions are met.

<CardList items={[
  {
    href: "!docs!/learn/fundamentals/events-and-subscribers",
    title: "Create a Subscriber",
    text: "Learn how to create a subscriber in Medusa.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
  {
    href: "/events-reference",
    title: "Events Reference",
    text: "Check out triggered events by each commerce module.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
]} />

---

## Automated RMA Flow

Businesses must optimize their Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) flow to ensure a good customer experience and service. By automating the flow, customers request to return their received items, and businesses quickly support them.

Medusa's commerce features are geared towards automating RMA flows and ensuring a good customer experience:

- Customers can create order returns from the storefront. Merchants then receive a notification and handle the return from the Medusa Admin.
- Merchants can make order changes and request the customer's approval for them. The customer can also send any additional payment if necessary.
- Every order-related action triggers an event, which you can listen to with a subscriber. This allows you to handle order events to automate actions.

<CardList items={[
  {
    href: "/commerce-modules/orders",
    title: "Order Module",
    text: "Learn about the Order Module and its features.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
  {
    href: "!docs!/learn/fundamentals/events-and-subscribers",
    title: "Create a Subscriber",
    text: "Learn how to create a subscriber in Medusa.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
]} />

---

## Customer Segmentation

Businesses use customer segmentation to organize customers into different groups and then apply different price rules to these groups.

Medusa's commerce modules provide the necessary features to implement this use case:

- The Customer Module provides a customer groups feature to organize customers into customer groups.
- The Pricing Module provides the features to specify prices based on a condition, such as the group of the customer.

For example, to group customers with over twenty orders:

1. Create a subscriber that listens to the `order.placed` event.
2. If the customer has more than 20 orders, add them to the VIP customer group.

<CardList items={[
  {
    href: "/commerce-modules/customer",
    title: "Customer Module",
    text: "Learn about the Customer Module and its features.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
  {
    href: "/commerce-modules/pricing",
    title: "Pricing Module",
    text: "Learn about the Pricing Module and its features.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
  {
    href: "!docs!/learn/fundamentals/events-and-subscribers",
    title: "Create a Subscriber",
    text: "Learn how to create a subscriber in Medusa.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
  {
    href: "/events-reference",
    title: "Events Reference",
    text: "Check out triggered events by each commerce module.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
]} />

---

## Marketing Automation

In your commerce store, you may utilize marketing strategies that encourage customers to make purchases. For example, you send a newsletter when new products are added to your store.

To do that, create a subscriber that listens to the `product.created`, and send an email to subscribed customers with tools like SendGrid or Mailchimp.

You can also create a scheduled job that checks whether the number of new products has exceeded a set threshold, then sends out the newsletter.

<CardList items={[
  {
    href: "!docs!/learn/fundamentals/events-and-subscribers",
    title: "Create a Subscriber",
    text: "Learn how to create a subscriber in Medusa.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
  {
    href: "!docs!/learn/fundamentals/scheduled-jobs",
    title: "Scheduled Jobs",
    text: "Learn how to create a scheduled job in Medusa.",
    icon: AcademicCapSolid,
  },
]} />