What this is
Intel Panel is the customer intelligence block Tracksies adds to the WooCommerce order edit screen. When you open an order, Intel Panel shows you who you’re shipping to at a glance — their status, lifetime value, tags earned, recent orders, and any notes worth knowing — without you having to navigate to the customer profile page.
Think of it like the profile card you’d keep in a good old-fashioned filing system: the moment you pick up an order for someone, you already know the basics about them before you start reading the order itself.
Why it matters
WooCommerce’s default order screen tells you what was bought, when, and for how much. It tells you nothing about who bought it. Is this their first order or their fifteenth? Are they a VIP? Have they been flagged as a caution? Do they usually order in volume, or did they just hit a threshold you should celebrate?
Without Intel Panel, answering those questions means:
- Opening a new tab and navigating to the customer profile
- Losing your place on the order you were working on
- Doing that every single time, for every single order, forever
With Intel Panel, that context is right there next to the order — one panel, always visible, always current.
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What Intel Panel shows
Customer status
A colour-coded badge for the customer’s current status:
- Active — regular customer, nothing special to call out (default state, no badge)
- VIP Customer — one of your top customers, treat with extra care
- Caution: Check Notes — has a warning flag on their account; read their notes before proceeding
- Do Not Serve — flagged as a customer you’ve stopped working with; the badge stands out so you notice before you ship anything
These statuses come from the Flags (manual) system — you set them manually on customer profiles. Intel Panel just surfaces them where they’re most useful.
Lifetime value
Total spend by this customer across all orders in your store. Tells you at a glance whether you’re dealing with a A$50 one-off or a A$5,000 repeat buyer.
Lifetime value is calculated from WooCommerce order history by the Order Sync system — you don’t need to enter anything manually. If you’ve imported historical orders, your LTV reflects all of that; if you’re just starting out, it’ll build as orders come in.
Tags earned
Chips showing every tag the customer has earned across your enabled channels:
- Commitment — Starter, Regular, Loyal, Champion (based on order count)
- Tenure — Newcomer, Established, Veteran, Founding (based on months since first order)
- Value — Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum (based on lifetime value)
- Price sensitivity — Occasional Saver, Deal Seeker, Bargain Hunter (based on discount use)
- Engagement — Active, Recent, Returning (based on recency of last order)
- Returns behaviour — Selective Returner, High Returner (based on refunded % of LTV)
Each tag uses its configured colour and icon from the tag settings. For the full tag system and how thresholds work, see Customer Tags.
Recent orders
A short list of the customer’s recent order history — order number, date, status, total — so you can see their buying pattern without leaving the order screen. Handy for questions like “did we ship them this same thing last month?” or “are they building up orders before a holiday?”
Linked accounts
If this customer has been linked to another account (same person using multiple emails, or a household relationship), Intel Panel surfaces the link. If the linked account is flagged Caution or Do Not Serve, a prominent warning appears — so someone trying to slip past a flag with a new email gets caught before you pack anything.
Notes count
A count of notes on the customer’s profile, with a link through to the full interactions timeline if you want to read the details. The timeline includes internal staff notes, customer messages left at checkout, phone call logs, and every other interaction logged against the customer.
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Where Intel Panel appears
Intel Panel works in two modes depending on whether Order Hub is active:
When Order Hub is on (default)
Intel Panel content lives inside Order Hub’s Summary tab. You open an order, you’re on the Summary tab by default, Intel Panel content is right there at the top.
This is the cleanest setup — Intel Panel is woven into the unified order panel rather than being its own separate metabox.
When Order Hub is off
If you’ve disabled hq.hide_woo_metaboxes (or Order Hub is otherwise not active), Intel Panel registers as its own standalone metabox on the order edit screen. You’ll see it as a dedicated box labelled “Customer Intelligence” or similar.
Either way, the same content appears — just in a different frame.
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Enabling Intel Panel
Intel Panel is on by default. The feature toggle is hq.intel_panel in Tracksies > Settings > Features.
Turn it off if you want a leaner order screen, or if you’re running with minimal Tracksies features enabled for performance reasons. In practice, most shops leave it on — it’s one of the features that makes HQ feel qualitatively different from stock WooCommerce.
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What it doesn’t do
A few things worth being clear about:
- Intel Panel doesn’t edit customer data. It’s a read-only display. To change a customer’s status, flags, notes, or tags, click through to their customer profile (the customer name at the top of Intel Panel is a link).
- Intel Panel doesn’t run automations. It surfaces information; it doesn’t trigger anything. If you want “when an order comes in from a VIP, email the store owner” behaviour, that’s the Store Alerts system.
- Intel Panel doesn’t contact customers. No messaging, no direct outreach from the panel. Notes and messages happen via the Customer Notes system on the customer profile.
Intel Panel’s whole job is to give you the context. What you do with that context is up to you and the rest of the HQ feature set.
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HPOS compatibility
Like Order Hub, Intel Panel is fully compatible with WooCommerce’s High Performance Order Storage. It registers on both the classic order post screen and the HPOS orders admin page. If your store has HPOS enabled (WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features > Custom Order Tables), Intel Panel works without any configuration changes.
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If something goes wrong
Intel Panel shows but customer data looks empty
Usually means the customer hasn’t been synced yet. If this is a guest-checkout order, Tracksies creates a customer profile from the order’s billing email on the next admin page load. If it’s a logged-in customer, check whether the Order Sync feature (hq.order_sync) is enabled in Features.
Lifetime value looks wrong
Likely a recalculation issue. Go to Tracksies > Customers, find the customer, and look for the Recalculate option. Tracksies will re-read every order for that customer and rebuild the LTV, tags, and flags from scratch.
Tags I configured aren’t appearing
Tags are per-channel. If the Commitment channel is disabled (in Tracksies > Settings > Features), commitment-based tags won’t show. Also, tags only award when the customer crosses the threshold — a new customer won’t have any tags until they meet at least one channel’s criteria.
Intel Panel isn’t showing at all
Check that hq.intel_panel is enabled in Features. Also check the Screen Options panel at the top-right of the order edit screen — make sure the Intel Panel / Customer Intelligence metabox isn’t hidden.
Linked account warning missing
Linked accounts are set up manually on the customer profile page (see Customer Profiles). If there’s no warning but you expected one, the accounts probably haven’t been linked yet. The link has to be explicit — Tracksies doesn’t auto-link accounts just because they share a surname or address.
Need more help? Check our FAQ & Troubleshooting guide or contact support.