Updating AC shipping Info

[redrisk@coleman.com]

I have been looking through the forum but not finding what I need.

Our company uses SAP and AC orders are passed to SAP for processing and shipment. I can retrieve this information from SAP such as ship date and tracking numbers.

Question #1, is there a better option than writing a program to directly hit the tables in AC? I'm not opposed to doing that and I think I have identified everything I would need to change.

Question #2, playing around on our dev site I modified the tables so the order status is complete, shipment date is populated and added some UPS tracking numbers. The order status page looks great but the tracking numbers although they appears as links do not go anywhere when clicked. In the trackingnumber table their is a ShipGateway id which I left null for my test as right now we don't have anything setup in the shipgateways table. What needs to happen so that those tracking numbers become links to the appropriate tracking site? We do flat rate shipping so I really don't need shipper integration but is that required anyway to allow tracking also? We use USPS, Fedex and UPS.

Thanks

[mazhar]

BTW here is a thread about how to send provider link in Email for order alert.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=9329