An introductory guide to the Penny Black Chrome extension and how it can be used to trigger prints on a variety of e-commerce, WMS and shipping platforms.
Introduction
The Penny Black Chrome extension is installed in your web browser. It works on many software apps used for order fulfilment (usually your WMS, shipping platform or even your e-commerce platform) and allows you to trigger prints by adding buttons on the relevant pages.
Depending on the system in question, it can be used for single prints, batches and sometimes even fully automated printing as part of the packing flow. By working directly within your browser, the extension can provide indicators when prints are required (or not) in addition to notifying you of any errors.
Below is an example of a print button added dynamically within a web browser in Shopify using our extension
Installation
We call it our Chrome extension, but it also works on any Chromium-based web browsers, which notably includes Microsoft Edge. If you are installing for Edge, follow this guide on enabling extensions from other stores.
The following link is for the Penny Black extension in the Chrome/Edge Extension store.
On this page click the Add to Chrome button to install the extension in your browser (you will need to do this on all workstations that you intend to print from):
Once installed you can pin the extension to your browser bar for easy configuration access. Click on the “puzzle piece” icon to show an overlay with all your extensions. Click the pin icon next to the Penny Black Printer
You should now see the Penny Black logo icon for the extension to the right of your URL bar:
Clicking on this icon will open the configuration for the extension, where you can set it up for your fulfilling application.
Installing the extension on Microsoft Edge
Our Chrome Extension can also work on Microsoft Edge (v79 or later), see this link for enabling permissions to install extensions from other stores.
Configuration
The configuration will depend on your system of choice, see the individual system guides for more details.
Platform guides
The following pages contain guides for configuring and using the Chrome extension on the respective platforms