This refinement details the necessary changes for the search by phone to work in admin tool documented in Search customer by phone in Admin App .

Solution 1

Create a phone lookup record in the commit order workflow. This will make sure that we’ll be able to find the customer searching by his phone as long as he has included it on the order, or registered in his account (verified or not). There are three possible scenarios:

Pros and cons

Pros

• Uses existing lookup record structure

• Search will work with both phone numbers included in the order or the user account

• This solution will be compatible with the Phone OTP

• Doesn’t require phone verification

• Doesn’t require migration scripts, the search will work as long as the user has made one order after the feature release

Cons

• A phone number can only be associated with a single customer, which will be the first one to inform the number on the platform

• There isn’t a simple way to delete the link between a user and a phone number recorded in a delivery order. One possibility is allowing customer support to remove the link via the support tool if it is outdated.

Implementation Proposal

POC

The code below creates lookup records if they don’t exist when the order is committed.

intl-whitelabel-graphql/src/functions/graphql/resolvers/orders.ts

Mutation: {
   async commitOrder(...) {
   ...
    const savePhone = () => {
      const phoneNumber = delivery?.dropoff?.phoneNumber ?? contextUser.details.phoneNumber;
      const { cognitoId } = contextUser;
      if (phoneNumber && cognitoId) {
        providers.users.createPhoneRecord(cognitoId, phoneNumber);
      }
    };
 
    savePhone();
  }
}   

intl-packages/src/user-lookup-by-phone/user-lookup-by-phone.ts

  class UserLookupByPhone {
    public async create({ cognitoId, phoneNumber }: { cognitoId: string; phoneNumber: string }) {
      const params = {
        ConditionExpression: INSERT_CONDITION_EXPRESSION,
        Item: {
          pk: `phone#${phoneNumber}`,
          pk2: `phone_user#${cognitoId}`,
          sk: 'v0_UserPhone',
          sk2: 'v0_UserPhoneLookUp',
        },
        TableName: this.tableName,
      };
  
      await this.executeWithRetry(DynamoMethods.put, params);
    }
    
    public async getByUserServiceLookup(
      phoneNumber: string,
    ): Promise<IUserLookupByPhone | undefined> {
      const dynamoSearch = {
        ExpressionAttributeValues: {
          ':pk': `phone#${phoneNumber}`,
          ':sk': 'v0_UserPhone',
        },
        KeyConditionExpression: 'pk = :pk AND begins_with(sk, :sk)',
        TableName: this.tableName,
      };
  
  
      const { Items } = await this.executeWithRetry(DynamoMethods.query, dynamoSearch);
      const Item = Items?.[0];
      return Item ? cast(Item, TUserLookupByPhone) : undefined;
    }
  }
  

1. Commit an order with delivery.dropoff.phoneNumber +222222
   

   

2. Validate record in database
   

   

3. Searching phone in support tool
   

   

4. Customer details
   

   

Solution 2

Solution 2 uses the same strategy as solution 1, the only difference is that it proposes to update the lookup record structure so that it can link multiple phone numbers to multiple customers. Below is a suggestion of the new record:

{
  pk: `phone_user#${cognitoId}`,
  pk2: `phone#${phoneNumber}`,
  sk: `createdAt#${createdAt}`,
  sk2: 'createdAt#${createdAt}',
}

With these changes, the search by phone will return a list of customers instead of a single one and avoid the problem of manual record deletion that solution 1 requires. However, the support tool front end will have to be adapted so that customer support can choose which one they want to check given the list of customers associated with that phone number.

The front end design will have to be aligned with UI/UX team.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Search will work with both phone numbers included in the order or in the user account

• Doesn’t require phone verification

• This solution will be compatible with the Phone OTP

• Doesn’t require migration scripts, the search will work as long as the user has made one order after the feature release

• Allows the association of multiple phone numbers with multiple customers

Cons

• Require the development of a new page in the support tool front end to select which customer they want to check

• Although very unlikely, there is a scenario where a single phone number is linked to many customers and this might make the process of finding the right one cumbersome

POC

For this POC I changed the getByUserServiceLookup to use the proposed structure:

intl-packages/src/user-lookup-by-phone/user-lookup-by-phone.ts

public async getByUserServiceLookup(
  phoneNumber: string,
): Promise<IUserLookupByPhone[] | undefined> {
  const dynamoSearch = {
    ExpressionAttributeValues: {
      ':pk2': `phone_lookup#${phoneNumber}`,
      ':sk2': 'createdAt#',
    },
    IndexName: 'brand-index-2',
    KeyConditionExpression: 'pk2 = :pk2 AND begins_with(sk2, :sk2)',
    TableName: this.tableName,
  };

  const { Items } = await this.executeWithRetry(DynamoMethods.query, dynamoSearch);
  return Items ? Items.map((item) => cast(item, TUserLookupByPhone)) : undefined;
}

created 4 lookup records for 2 customers:

and was able to find the two customers when searching for the phone number +123123123:

Task breakdown

[intl-user-service]

1. Update the lookup record structure to enable associating multiple phones and users

2. Develop create lookup records endpoint

3. Develop find by phone endpoint

[intl-packages]

1. Develop a method in intl-users that creates lookup records in via the new user endpoint

2. Update the searchByPhone method to use the new User endpoint

[intl-whitelabel-graphql]

1. Create lookup records in commitOrder

[intl-fulfillment-service]

1. Create lookup records in commitOrder

[intl-admin-app]

1. Update customer query to also search by phone

2. Develop customer selection page

3. Update universal search to include search by phone, and redirect the user to the customer selection page if more the one customer is found