Setting up Sinan for your shop means giving it a few addresses. One is your store. If you want a ping when a conversation needs a person, there's your escalation webhook. If you've wired Sinan into your own tools, there may be an automation hook too. Sinan calls those addresses to do its work: it looks up an order, passes a conversation on to you, or tells your other tools that something happened.
Until now, an address you saved was treated as correct. From this week Sinan checks it first. This post covers what the check does, when it runs and what it means for you day to day.
What changed
Any address you give Sinan to call is now checked twice:
- When you save it. If the address doesn't pass, Sinan won't use it. You find out while you're still on the settings screen, not days later when an order lookup quietly fails.
- Every time Sinan connects. Passing once isn't enough. Sinan checks the address again on every connection, so an address that was fine when you saved it still has to be fine each time Sinan uses it.
The rules are short:
- Sinan only connects to public addresses on the internet. Your store, your webhook and your automation hooks all live on the public internet, so this is what you'd expect. Sinan won't connect to anything that isn't a public address.
- A Shopify address has to be a real Shopify shop address. If you connect a Shopify store, the address you enter must be one that belongs to a Shopify shop. A typo or a different site won't be accepted as your store.
Two defaults we tightened
We also changed two things that were already in place:
- Your connection tokens are only ever stored encrypted. A token is the key that lets Sinan read your orders or reach your other tools for you. These keys are now never stored any other way.
- The phone line only accepts calls that come signed from our phone provider. When a customer reaches Sinan by phone, the call comes in through our phone provider. Sinan now only takes calls that carry that provider's signature, so the line answers real calls from your customers and nothing else.
What this means for you
For most shops, nothing about your day changes. If your store and your webhook are set up the normal way, they pass the check and Sinan keeps working as before. You won't see anything new until you change an address.
When you do enter or change an address, you'll know right away whether Sinan can use it. That's the practical gain: a wrong address gets caught where you can fix it in a minute, not after a customer asks about their order and gets no answer.
Because the check also runs on every connection, it covers addresses you saved earlier, too. If an older address doesn't meet the rules, Sinan won't use it. If something that used to work stops working, look at the address in your settings first. Make sure it's the public address of your store or tool, and for Shopify, your shop's own Shopify address.
Why we did it
Sinan works on your behalf. It reads your orders, talks to your customers and reaches your other tools. Every one of those steps depends on Sinan going to the right place and nowhere else. Until now, we relied on the address being right. Now Sinan checks it, every time.
This works the same way as the rest of Sinan. We build it so it never acts alone on anything that can't be undone: refunds, cancellations and the like still wait for your tap. That covers what Sinan does. This change covers where it connects. Both come from one idea: you should be able to see and trust the edges of what Sinan does for you.
What this doesn't change
Some things stay exactly as they were:
- You still decide which store and which tools Sinan is connected to. The check confirms an address is allowed. It doesn't add connections or pick them for you.
- Sinan still needs your approval for anything that can't be undone. That hasn't changed and won't.
- If you don't use an escalation webhook or automation hooks, there's nothing for you to do.
If an address you expect to work gets refused and you can't tell why, write to us. We'd rather look at it with you than have you guess. And if you're wondering whether Sinan is the right fit for your shop, the short version is this: it answers your customers around the clock, it connects only where you tell it to, and it waits for you on everything that matters.