Walmart’s Retail Link, which is used by (Accounts Payable) finance teams, announced that they were implementing a security update to prevent bots, and only users not using bots were allowed.
When I saw this announcement, I was a little bit surprised.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
As far as I know, Walmart is a large customer for UiPath and RPA in general, so I find it odd that they would try to prevent its use in their financial systems. Or maybe they are defining “bot” as something else and won’t be impacting its use.
Preventing automation seems like a step backwards to me
Not being familiar with Walmart and their platforms… From what is written there it sounds like Retail Link is a Front End UI for Sales/Inventory for “humans” partners/suppliers to interface with.
We understand that, for some suppliers, bulk access to the data is important. So, if you would like to consider Walmat Luminate Channel Performance APIs as an alternative to meet your needs, please contact the Walmart Data Ventures team to learn more.
The last tidbit ^^ implies to me that they have similar data access via an accessible API and would be their preferred method for partners/suppliers to fetch data in the case of M2M/B2B.
One of their job posting for Walmart Data Ventures starts off with the following
The Walmart Data Ventures team exists to unlock the full value of Walmart’s data by developing and productizing B2B data initiatives that empower merchants and suppliers to make better, faster decisions for the business.
So to me either
A) They are wanting to protect the SLA of their Retail Link platform, perhaps it wasn’t architected with the demand an automated script can have in the way individuals or companies are doing so.
B) They are attempting to drive clients/partners to use another service (Walmart Data Ventures) that isn’t clear to me may or may not be a paid for service for data access that is perhaps designed to facilitate the particular use cases they are trying to prevent with Retail Link.
It is odd that they wouldn’t (or perhaps they did) reach out to their partners a head of the change to work out any challenges and migrations.
Yeah, those were my thoughts too. They might be defining “unauthorized” as login sessions without the user accessing the system themselves. But, I’m also curious if there is a miscommunication here or if negotiations can be made to allow automated tasks.
I have no problem with using APIs, but I’m not an expert in it, and I also feel it may make translating user’s processes to automations using API more difficult and to get files and data formatted in the correct formats.
Interesting… I don’t have much to add to this conversation, but I’d like to keep in the loop.
I have only seen this behaviour from web platforms that sell their users’ attention as ads. Losing human attention to automated processes might be detrimental to such web platforms. However I doubt that is the case with this B2B portal.
the throttling limits say only 30 requests per hour. This could potentially be troubling for eventual high volume of jobs.
We haven’t gotten more details from the Data Ventures team yet, which we are in the process of, but I’m assuming we would be able to pull all details for a bulk of items. Otherwise, it won’t even work.
Our company uses this portal for submitting disputes. However, when I check that API it doesn’t say anything about creating disputes or claims. There isn’t much documentation on this API, and Walmart has a question form for the Luminate channel however nobody replies to any question there’s a question there (2 weeks).
I have the same predicament, my company uses Retail Link for disputes but also Sam’s Club appointment scheduling - neither of which have a defined API solution and attempts to get further guidance from Walmart has been unsuccessful.
If anyone identifies POC or SME from Walmart, please let us know.
Good news! Spoke with Walmart a few weeks back to review tasks executed by bots in Retail Link + guidance on how to transition using Luminate API service. Walmart advised they were not aware of impact and will review further. Today, I received the following message in Retail Link:
Hello @matthew.barrett our team is also looking to better integrate into Retail Link and have been trying to establish a better interaction with the data. Did you get any traction with the API discussion or would you be able to share how you contacted Walmart for further information? We have been requesting details via Walmart support tickets and no one has responded to us. Thanks!
Sorry, I have not replied until now, but our end, we never got information to utilize API, and we had many questions toward that as well. However, Retail Link also changed their approach and provided a survey to gain access of your bots, which I believe is linked in their announcements section of Retail Link.
Walmart implemented 2-factor authentification this week and turned it on on the accounts which we asked them not to. We still have not been able to find out how to use the API which they mentioned. Does anyone have experience with that API?
We experienced the same issue. Even though the survey was completed for certain users, the 2FA still started coming up. Then, another issue is that I just now learned, assuming it is correct, that the survey is closed so no other users can be added in the future?
I have not seen any info on API yet, so can’t help you there. But, we are in communications to try and resolve the 2FA issue since last week.
I have reason to believe that the 2FA came up while using “Internet Explorer”. So, having some brief testing, I come to realize the issue did not exist in “Chrome”. (we are translating everything to Chrome anyway since IE is no longer supported by MS)
Have you tried it using Chrome? Just thought I’d point this out in case that’s the problem.
