Take action on orders with Sidekick
Shopify Sidekick is the AI assistant in the Shopify admin, and Alva Digital Downloads connects it to your digital-downloads data so you can act on an order in plain language. When you ask for an action, Sidekick opens a small confirmation page in the Alva admin app with the action staged. You review it and click Confirm to commit.
Sidekick is shop-scoped — every action runs against your own shop only. It never commits a customer-facing or destructive action on its own. The one exception is the test email to yourself, which sends immediately because it only reaches your own shop-owner address.
Sidekick fills in the action and hands it to you on a confirmation page in Alva. Nothing is sent, approved, or changed for a customer until you click Confirm. You can always close the page to cancel.
Resend a download or license-key email
Alva Digital Downloads lets Sidekick resend either delivery email for an order. Ask Sidekick to resend the download email and it stages the send; the license-key email is available once keys are assigned. Both open the email confirmation page, where you click Confirm to send.
- Resend the download email — re-sends the digital download email for the order. Staged for your Confirm.
- Resend the license-key email — re-sends the license-key delivery email. Only valid once keys are assigned. Staged for your Confirm.
- Send a test email to yourself — sends a test of your download template to your own shop-owner address. This is the only immediate action and never contacts a customer.
Email actions respect your email setting. If email is disabled for the shop, the confirmation page refuses the send and explains how to re-enable it before you try again.
Approve or reject a fraud-flagged order
Sidekick can triage an order sitting in the Alva fraud queue. Ask it to approve or reject a flagged order and it opens the order-triage confirmation page with the order staged. Approving runs the full post-fraud pipeline; rejecting cancels delivery. You click Confirm to commit either one.
- Approve a flagged order — runs the post-fraud pipeline: license-key assignment, the customer download email, and any auto-fulfillment.
- Reject a flagged order — cancels delivery for the order, so no keys are assigned, no email is sent, and no fulfillment runs.
Mark a personalized order complete
Alva Digital Downloads tracks personalized-product orders that are waiting on a customer-specific file. After you have delivered that file out of band, ask Sidekick to mark the order complete. It flips the order from PENDING_UPLOAD to COMPLETED on the confirmation page once you click Confirm.
Marking an order complete does not attach any files — it only updates the status. Use it as a bookkeeping step after the file has reached the customer, not as a way to deliver the file itself.
Manage download access (revoke, restore, extend, raise limit)
Alva Digital Downloads gives Sidekick four ways to manage an order's download access. Each one is staged on the download-access confirmation page and committed by your Confirm click. Each action is idempotent, so re-running it is safe.
- Revoke access — disables every download link on the order, so existing links stop working. Use it after a refund or confirmed fraud.
- Restore access — the inverse of revoke. Re-enables the order's download links.
- Extend expiry — pushes every download link's expiry forward from now, so a customer who ran out of time can download again.
- Raise the download limit — increases the per-purchase download cap for that order. There is no per-download counter to reset; raising the cap is what gives the customer more downloads.
How confirmation keeps you in control
The confirmation page is the safety model for Sidekick. Anything customer-facing or destructive — resending to a customer, approving or rejecting, revoking, restoring, extending, raising a limit, or marking an order complete — is staged and waits for your Confirm click. Sidekick never commits these on its own.
Only the test email to yourself runs immediately, because it cannot reach a customer. Every other action gives you a final look at the order and the change before anything happens, so you stay in control of what your customers receive.
Frequently asked questions
No. Sidekick stages the send and you click Confirm to commit it. The only immediate email is the test email, which goes to your own shop-owner address and never reaches a customer.
Ask Sidekick to resend the download email for the order. Sidekick opens the email confirmation page in Alva with the order staged, and you click Confirm to send it.
Yes. Ask Sidekick to restore access for the order. Restore is the inverse of revoke and re-enables every download link on that order once you click Confirm.
Raising the download limit increases the per-purchase download cap for that order. There is no per-download counter to reset, so raising the cap is what gives the customer more downloads.
See also
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Last updated 2026-06-18