Pre-migration descartes migration checklist covering EDI VAN audit, customs filing inventory, carrier API account review, document image volume estimate. Generated programmatically against your live Descartes tenant in 3–5 days, signed off by logistics, customs, finance and IT before extract begins.
The Descartes tenant is an iceberg. The bookings and shipments you see in the GLN console are 10% of what's actually under migration scope. The other 90% — EDI trading partners, customs filings, carrier APIs, document archives — is what makes or breaks a cutover.
Logistics businesses running on Descartes accumulate operational dependencies that nobody centrally tracks: a niche trading partner whose EDI 856 ASN arrives once a quarter, a customs broker whose ACE entries flow through Customs Info but whose handoff procedure is undocumented, a carrier API credential issued in 2019 to a developer who has since moved on, a multi-TB document image archive whose volume nobody has measured in three years. Each of these is a cutover-weekend landmine, and the only way to defuse them is a programmatically-generated descartes migration checklist run against the live tenant.
Syntra ETL's checklist generator hits every Descartes product API in your tenant — GLN, MacroPoint, Aljex, Customs Info, ShipRush, Document Services, Datamyne — and produces a complete operational inventory. EDI trading partners with 90-day volume metrics, classified for re-pointing wave assignment. Customs filings counted per category with retention-window mapping. Carrier API accounts catalogued with credential ownership and re-issuance plan. Document images sampled for volume estimation. Carrier rate cards walked for version-history depth.
The checklist output is a signed PDF evidence pack reviewed and signed off by logistics ops, customs broker, finance/AP and IT integration leads before the migration enters the extract phase. That sign-off is what protects everyone when, three months later, someone asks why the EDI 944 warehouse-receipt partner wasn't migrated.
Each step runs against the live Descartes tenant API. No screenshots, no manual transcription, no missed records.
Walk every active trading partner on the Global Logistics Network. Classify by EDI 850/810/856/214/944 transaction type, measure 90-day volume, identify partner-side technical contact, capture qualifier/ID metadata, produce risk-prioritized re-pointing wave assignment.
Walk Customs Info for every ACE entry, ISF filing, ACI declaration, FDA Prior Notice and C-TPAT record. Capture CBP entry numbers, ISF transaction IDs and bond references. Map each filing category to its retention window (CBP 5 yr, FDA 2 yr, EU 10 yr).
Identify every active carrier API integration in MacroPoint, Aljex and ShipRush. Confirm credential ownership, capture rate-card version, produce re-issuance plan with each carrier (some credentials transfer, most need re-issuance for Fusion TMS).
Sample Document Services API for BOL, customs form, certificate and invoice volumes. Produce per-business-unit volume estimate, oldest-document age (often pushing CBP 5-year window), and document-id cross-reference scheme.
Walk every active rate card across GLN, Aljex and ShipRush. Capture version-history depth, lane complexity, accessorial-charge rules (hazmat, residential, lift-gate), fuel-surcharge formulas. Produce Fusion TMS translation plan.
Catalogue Datamyne subscription scope, watched-shipment lists, OTBI/Cognos report inventory pointing at Descartes. Produce post-migration analytics continuity plan so trade-intel work doesn't gap during cutover.
3–5 business days from discovery kickoff to signed-off evidence pack. Compare to 4–8 weeks of hand-built Excel checklist on a consultant-led project — typically still incomplete on cutover weekend.
Syntra ETL extractors authenticate against GLN and Aljex APIs with read-only scoped tokens. Shipment, BOL, EDI message and freight broker booking volumes catalogued for 90-day rolling window. Trading-partner registry pulled with qualifier/ID metadata.
Customs Info API walked for every ACE entry, ISF filing, ACI declaration, FDA Prior Notice and C-TPAT record. MacroPoint API walked for active visibility subscriptions, geofence configurations and ETA history depth. Retention-window mapping applied per filing category.
Document Services API sampled for BOL, customs form, certificate and invoice volume estimate per business unit. ShipRush API walked for small-parcel manifests and FedEx/UPS/DHL rate-card version inventory. Cross-reference scheme captured.
EDI trading partners classified into re-pointing waves (highest volume first). Carrier API accounts classified into transfer-vs-reissue buckets. Customs filings classified by retention-window urgency. Risk register populated with mitigations.
Logistics ops, customs broker, finance/AP and IT integration leads walk through the descartes migration checklist evidence pack. Adjustments captured. Final PDF signed and hashed. Migration enters extract phase with no items in dispute.
The cutover-weekend landmines a programmatic descartes migration checklist defuses in advance.
The seasonal trading partner whose EDI 856 ASN arrives once a quarter — missed on cutover weekend, then discovered three weeks later when the ASN arrives at a dead VAN endpoint. Customer escalation, manual rework, finger-pointing.
Customs broker assumes Customs Info stays live, IT assumes it's being decommissioned. Friday cutover, Monday ACE entries fail filing. CBP late-filing penalty, customs hold on import, retail customer SLA breach.
The 2019 carrier API credential whose owner left the business. Discovered cutover weekend when Fusion TMS can't authenticate to the carrier rate-feed. 72-hour delay while carrier re-issues credentials and Fusion TMS is re-configured.
Volume estimated by gut feel at 2 TB, actual volume is 18 TB. Transfer window estimated at 48 hours, actual transfer takes 12 days. Document-attachment binding misses majority of shipments. CBP audit substantiation gap.
Migration captures the cutover-week rate card but not the version history. Customer disputes a 2023 freight charge in 2026 — no defensible evidence of the 2023 contract rate. Freight claim defense fails. Settlement cost: six figures.
Datamyne watched-shipment list and historical query archive not catalogued. Post-migration the tariff-engineering team discovers their 3-year query history is gone. Trade-intel work restarts from zero, $400K of accumulated analyst effort lost.
A descartes migration checklist is a structured pre-migration inventory and readiness document that catalogues every EDI trading partner on the Global Logistics Network (GLN), every active customs filing in Customs Info, every carrier API account in MacroPoint and Aljex, every document image archive volume across Document Services, and every operational dependency that has to be resolved or re-pointed before the Descartes tenant goes read-only. Without a structured descartes migration checklist, projects miss low-volume trading partners (the EDI 856 ASN that arrives once a quarter from a niche supplier), forget customs broker handoff coordination, underestimate document-archive volumes by orders of magnitude, and discover carrier API account ownership issues during the cutover weekend. Syntra ETL's descartes migration checklist is generated programmatically from the live Descartes tenant — not hand-built in Excel — so nothing slips through.
The EDI VAN audit is the single most important step in any descartes migration checklist because the Descartes Global Logistics Network is itself an EDI VAN, and every trading partner connection has to be re-pointed before the Descartes tenant can go read-only. The audit catalogues every active EDI trading partner (3PL customers, suppliers, carriers, customs brokers), classifies by transaction type (EDI 850 POs, 810 invoices, 856 ASNs, 214 shipment status, 944 warehouse receipts), measures 90-day message volume per partner, identifies the partner-side technical contact for re-pointing coordination, captures qualifier/ID metadata, and produces a risk-prioritized re-pointing plan. High-volume partners go first (typically wave 1), low-volume seasonal partners go last (wave 3 or 4).
The customs filing inventory step in a descartes migration checklist walks the Customs Info tenant and produces a count of every ACE entry, ISF filing, ACI declaration, FDA Prior Notice and C-TPAT documentation record by filing date, importer/exporter, port of entry and HTS classification. The inventory also captures the CBP entry number, ISF transaction ID and bond reference for every filing so the post-migration chain of custody is preserved. CBP requires customs records retrievable for 5 years post-entry, FDA food import requires 2 years, EU customs requires 10 years — the descartes migration checklist surfaces the longest retention window per filing category and confirms either Fusion GTM or the descartes data archive will satisfy it.
Yes — and this is where most descartes migration checklist projects discover surprises. Descartes integrates with carriers (FedEx, UPS, DHL, ocean carriers, LTL providers, ground brokers) through API account credentials that are often owned by individuals who have since left the business, or stored in shared password managers with no clear owner. The carrier API audit step in the descartes migration checklist identifies every active carrier API integration in MacroPoint and Aljex, confirms credential ownership, captures rate-card version metadata, and produces a re-issuance plan: which credentials need to be re-issued by the carrier when Fusion TMS takes over, which can be transferred, and which dependencies (rate-card refresh schedules, tracking-feed cutover windows) need to be coordinated.
The document image audit step in the descartes migration checklist walks the Descartes Document Services API and produces an exact volume estimate (typically multi-TB), document-type breakdown (BOLs, customs forms, certificates of insurance, packing lists, commercial invoices), oldest-document age (often pushing the CBP 5-year and EU 10-year retention windows), and per-business-unit volume distribution. The checklist also captures the document-id format and cross-reference scheme so post-migration retrieval works the same way. Without this audit step, projects routinely underestimate document volume by 5–10x and discover the transfer window is weeks longer than planned.
The carrier rate-card audit step in the descartes migration checklist walks every active rate card across GLN, Aljex and ShipRush, captures version history depth (some logistics businesses keep 5+ years of rate-card versions to defend historical freight charges), identifies lanes with accessorial-charge complexity (hazmat surcharges, residential delivery, lift-gate, inside delivery), flags fuel-surcharge formulas that need Fusion TMS configuration, and produces a translation plan. Without this audit, the cutover discovers shipments rated at the wrong tier because the cutover-week rate card wasn't the contract-current rate card.
Generated programmatically by Syntra ETL against the live Descartes tenant, the descartes migration checklist typically completes in 3–5 business days: day 1–2 covers GLN, MacroPoint, Aljex and Customs Info API discovery, day 3 covers document image volume sampling and carrier API account audit, day 4 covers EDI trading-partner classification and risk-prioritization, day 5 covers review and sign-off with logistics ops, customs broker, finance and IT integration leads. Hand-built in Excel from screenshots, the same checklist consumes 4–8 weeks and is typically still incomplete on cutover weekend.
A complete descartes migration checklist requires sign-off from four stakeholder groups before the migration enters the extract phase: logistics operations (confirms shipment, BOL and tracking-event scope is correct), customs broker (confirms ACE/ISF/ACI filing inventory and handoff plan), finance/AP (confirms freight invoice and carrier vendor master scope), and IT integration (confirms EDI trading-partner re-pointing plan and carrier API account re-issuance plan). Syntra ETL ships the descartes migration checklist as a signed PDF evidence pack with a hash signature so the sign-off is immutable — useful when a stakeholder later claims an item was missed.
Book a 30-minute discovery call. We'll scope the read-only API access, run the discovery against your live Descartes tenant in 3–5 days, and deliver a signed checklist evidence pack before the call to plan the migration begins.