[Feature Request] Allow Flows to add comments to resources

[SimJoSt]

It would be great if Shopify Flow would allow adding timeline comments to orders (and other resources).

With many Flows making changes to orders, it would be great if it could transparently document them for the non-technical staff members working on them.

Attaching logs as a file would be sublime, as the Flow logs are purged after 14 days.

This feature request has been on the old / non-dev community forum since July 2024 as well:

Add a timeline comment using Flow when a particular tag is added

Similar topics are:

Request: Add Comments to Order via API

Create timeline comment for discounts, products, etc

I’ve noticed that some graphql resources return timeline comments, if you query for connected events, for example this will return up to 10 messages: query DiscountWithComments { discountNodes(first: 5) { edges { node { metafield(key: "key", namespace: "$app:namespace") { id } events(first: 10) { __typename nodes { __typename …

How can I create a customer timeline comment via Admin API (CommentEvent)?

Hi! I’m trying to add a comment to a customer’s timeline programmatically. I see the CommentEvent object in the Admin GraphQL API docs, and I can query existing timeline comments, but I can’t find any mutation (like commentEventCreate) to create a new timeline comment. Does Shopify currently allow apps to create timeline comments for customers (or orders) through the Admin API? If so, which mutation should I use? If not, is this feature planned? Thank you!

API for adding Order timeline comments

There is no mutation that adds timeline comments for now. As I known, this is read-only.

[Alan_G]

Hey @SimJoSt - when Flow makes changes to orders, it should record those changes as events in the timeline and they should be retrievable by querying order events:

Order - GraphQL Admin

For the other questions, it looks like those were related to adding comments via the API in Flow for when Flow changes orders? Out of curiosity, is the use case just that you’d like Flow to add additional explanations, etc? Definitely can see how that would be a useful feature, but just wanted to share the above and clarify how you’d ideally like to see this work so I can advocate in a feature request better on my end. Hope to hear from you soon!

[SimJoSt]

Our specific use case is the transfer of order information to a fulfilment provider as XML files, as well as importing order status updates from them via XML files again.
In both cases, the exported and imported files should be archived and stored, easily accessible to the staff members.
Sometimes these transfers don’t work as expected or they don’t know when exactly the transfer will happen.
To fulfil all of those requirements, it would be great to create comments with files as attachment and inform the staff members about successful and unsuccessful transfers and additional information.

[Alan_G]

Hey @SimJoSt - thanks for the context, that makes a lot of sense. Having those XML transfer logs directly in the order timeline with status updates would be super valuable especially on the merchant facing side of things. One workaround you could look into in the meantime would be storing that data in a metafield (wouldn’t be as nice as appearing directly in the timeline though for sure): About metafields and metaobjects

I’ll definitely pass this along as a feature request internally though, since it does seem like it would be super beneficial for some use cases like yours. In the meantime, the best workarounds would be using order notes (though no file attachments) or metafields for tracking, but I know those aren’t as visible or user-friendly for non-technical staff. Thanks again for the followup, let me know if I can help with anything else on my end here.

[SimJoSt]

Great to hear the use-case makes sense for you.

We considered using a Shopify metafield as well, but only after checking now, I realized it is possible for a metafield to contain multiple files. This is necessary, as the integration is 1 XML file to the fulfilment provider and at least 2 files on the return path, but possibly more.

In which cases are changes to an order appearing on the timeline?
I know it works with changes to the note, but we don’t want to use that one. We might use another text metafield to record the current status.
If updating metafields from an app doesn’t trigger an entry on the timeline, we might need to also add a date and time metafield or record the timestamp in the status text field as well.

[Alan_G]

Hey @SimJoSt , thanks for the follow up. Just wanted to clarify, when it comes to order info popping up in the timeline related to updates made by external apps/API clients, this would just be info like this:

So, here you can see my app, “test2” is noted as the app that was making changes to an order in certain circumstances and when I made changes in the admin (shown as “you”), those actions are differentiated that way. For certain API functions like returnCreate you can add additional notes that should show up in the timeline as well:

Not sure if this would work to store the data you need, but wanted to just confirm where those updates show and share a workaround in case it helps.

I’ve set up that feature request for you on my end as well, but let me know if I can help out further, hope this helps!