At a glance
Live count of days remaining until the Interlink Express MyDPD Business API credential expires. When this hits zero, label generation stops, tracking webhooks stop, and the merchant cannot ship until a human re-authenticates. The card is the early-warning trip-wire for a connector outage; treat anything below 14 days as a calendar event for the ops team.
| What it counts | floor((credential_expires_at - now) / 86400) in days. |
| Credential type | Interlink/DPD-group MyDPD Business API uses per-account credentials with a typical 12-month lifetime. OAuth flows where used have shorter token cycles; the card adapts. |
| What expiry means operationally | Label generation via int_label_generation_success will start failing within hours of expiry. Tracking webhooks (POD events) stop flowing. Existing in-flight consignments continue to deliver but no new dispatch is possible. |
| Auto-refresh behaviour | If integration set up with refresh-token support, Vortex IQ silently rotates before expiry. If API-key only, manual rotation required. |
| Service level scope | Connector-wide. Affects all services equally. |
| Currency | N/A |
| B2B vs B2C | N/A |
| Time window | RT |
| Alert trigger | <14 days. Two-week window for clean rotation scheduling. |
| Roles | owner, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Interlink Express data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK merchant connected Interlink on 14 May 25; expiry is 14 May 26. Reading taken at 09:00 GMT on 30 Apr 26.| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Credential type | MyDPD Business API key |
| Issued at | 14 May 25 |
| Expires at | 14 May 26 |
| Days remaining | 14 |
| Alert state | Tripped (=14, on threshold) |
- Two weeks is enough notice. Rotation in MyDPD Business requires portal login by an account owner, generation of a new key, and copy-paste into the Vortex IQ connector. End-to-end ~10 minutes when nothing breaks; budget 1 to 2 hours for coordination.
- Schedule rotation 7 days early, not on the expiry day. A rotation 7 days early gives a buffer if new key has any propagation delay. Interlink/DPD-group APIs have been observed to take up to 30 minutes to recognise newly-issued keys.
- Coordinate with
int_label_generation_success. That card is the operational symptom; this is leading indicator. Both red simultaneously = rotation has failed mid-flight. - B2B-account merchants should rotate during weekday daytime. B2B reseller dispatch on Pre10:30 expects pre-09:00 label generation; weekend rotations that drift into Monday-morning propagation are worst-case. DTC-only merchants have more flex.
- Set a calendar reminder for 11 months out. Annual lifetime means the merchant should know each year when rotation is due. The card surfaces it at 14 days; the calendar reminder gives 30 days.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Token expiry is connector-health early-warning. Pair with these:| Card | Why pair it with Days to Token Expiry | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Label Generation Success | First operational symptom of token expiry. | If both red, rotation in flight may have failed. |
| API Error Rate | 401/403 auth errors spike when token mid-rotation or just expired. | Spike + expiry imminent = new credential not propagated. |
| Shipments | Volume drops to zero on expiry. | Flatline-with-expiry-imminent is the catastrophic outcome. |
| Cross-connector: any other shipping carrier auth-expiry. | Same operational role. Multi-carrier merchants should track all credential expiries on a single ops calendar. | Coordinated rotation week reduces ops cost. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Interlink Express’s own dashboard: Interlink Express MyDPD Business → Account Settings → API Access. Shows each issued key with issue date, expiry, and rotation action. Why our number may legitimately differ from MyDPD Business:| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Time zone | Boundary | UK local time on both sides. |
| Multi-key accounts | N/A | Card reads connected credential. Portal may show longer-lived keys alongside. |
| OAuth vs API key mode | N/A | OAuth shows shorter access-token cycle but auto-refresh; card reads underlying refresh-token expiry. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-connector: any other carrier auth-expiry | Same operational role. | Different credential lifetimes. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
What happens if we miss the rotation window? Label generation stops the moment the credential expires. New consignments cannot be booked. Existing in-flight consignments continue to deliver and tracking webhooks may continue to flow until cleanup, but no dispatch is possible. Recovery 30 to 90 minutes once new credential issued. Who needs portal access? The Interlink/DPD account owner (the named individual on the contract). Set up shared ops-team email for the portal login and bring multiple ops-team members onto the account; this avoids the only-one-can-rotate-and-they-are-on-holiday scenario. Why does the alert fire at 14 days? Operational realism. 30 days too noisy, 7 days too tight. 14 days gives clean two-week calendar slot, includes one full Saturday-Sunday gap. Override per-workspace if needed. Does Interlink ever revoke keys before expiry? Rarely. Will revoke if suspected leaked or misused, or if account is closed. Card reads intended expiry; unscheduled revocation surfaces onint_api_error_rate (401/403 spike) before this card catches up. Treat any 401/403 spike as urgent regardless.
Can we automate rotation?
Interlink/DPD-group does not currently support programmatic API-key rotation; manual portal action required. OAuth-mode integrations auto-refresh access tokens silently. The 14-day reminder is the automation today.
The card says 14 days but new key was issued yesterday; why has it not reset?
Two reasons. (1) The new key has not been pasted into the Vortex IQ connector yet; card reads connected credential. (2) Card cache: read-time sub-minute, but stale-cache windows of up to 5 minutes have been observed during portal-side propagation.
Multiple Interlink accounts: how do we monitor?
Each account has its own API key and its own expiry. Card surfaces credential of connected integration only. Multiple accounts = set up each as separate Vortex IQ Interlink connector.
Q4 peak considerations?
Credential lifetime is independent of dispatch volume. However operational cost of expiry is much higher during peak (a half-day of label-generation downtime in early December is catastrophic). Consider early rotation if credential expires inside November-December peak window; rotate in October.
Multi-carrier merchants: how do we coordinate rotations?
Pull all carrier credential-expiry-days into a single ops calendar (Interlink, Parcelforce, APC, DPD, Royal Mail, etc.). Schedule all rotations in a single quarterly maintenance window. Saves coordination cost and reduces forgotten-rotation risk.