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Aggregate shipment tracking statuses with FedEx, UPS and DHL

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Created by: Kyle T. || nodreldev
Kyle T.

Last update

Last update 4 days ago

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Quick Overview

This workflow runs every 15 minutes to fetch active shipments from an n8n Data Table, query FedEx, UPS, or DHL tracking APIs with circuit-breaker protection, normalize each response into a shared status schema, and upsert the latest status back into the same table.

How it works

  1. Runs every 15 minutes on a schedule.
  2. Loads all rows from the n8n Data Table shipment_tracking and filters out shipments already marked as DELIVERED or RETURNED_TO_SENDER.
  3. Routes each remaining shipment by carrier and marks unsupported carriers with a canonicalStatus of UNKNOWN.
  4. For FedEx, UPS, and DHL shipments, checks a per-carrier circuit breaker and either calls the carrier’s tracking API or skips the call when the breaker is open.
  5. Normalizes each carrier response (or skip) into a canonical status (for example PRE_TRANSIT, IN_TRANSIT, OUT_FOR_DELIVERY, DELIVERED, EXCEPTION, UNKNOWN) while updating the breaker state based on 429/5xx/network failures.
  6. Merges all carrier results and upserts the latest fields back into the shipment_tracking Data Table using trackingNumber as the match key.

Setup

  1. Create the n8n Data Table named shipment_tracking with columns such as trackingNumber, carrier, canonicalStatus, rawStatus, breakerState, httpStatus, and checkedAt, and seed it with shipments (use lowercase carriers: fedex, ups, dhl).
  2. Add OAuth2 credentials for the FedEx Track API and select them in the FedEx HTTP request step.
  3. Add OAuth2 credentials for the UPS Track API and select them in the UPS HTTP request step.
  4. Add DHL API authentication (as configured for the DHL request in this template) and select it in the DHL HTTP request step.
  5. Activate the workflow so workflow static data persists between runs and the circuit breaker state is maintained.