Welcome to Black Harbor.
Black Harbor is your digital headquarters for discovering product opportunities, preparing products for your store, improving your catalog, and managing work through a structured approval-based workflow.
This guide will help you understand the Black Harbor workspace and get started with your first assignment.
1. Getting Started
After installing Black Harbor, open your Shopify admin and select Black Harbor from the Apps section.
Black Harbor opens directly inside your Shopify admin.
Your main navigation includes:
Harbor Square — Your executive dashboard and starting point.
Assignments — View work currently underway, completed assignments, and results requiring your attention.
Departments — Access the specialized areas of the Black Harbor workforce.
Store Intelligence — Analyze your existing catalog and identify opportunities for improvement.
Activity — Review activity occurring throughout your Black Harbor workspace.
Plans & Upgrades — View your current plan and available plan options.
Settings — Manage available Black Harbor settings.
2. Harbor Square
Harbor Square is the command center of Black Harbor.
When you open the app, Harbor Square gives you a high-level view of what is happening across your store and Black Harbor workforce.
Your dashboard can include information such as:
- Store Health
- Assignments requiring your attention
- Work currently in progress
- Store Intelligence findings
- Recommended opportunities
- Active assignments
- Suggested next actions
Atlas Executive Briefing
Atlas provides the executive-level summary displayed throughout key areas of Black Harbor.
Rather than requiring you to interpret every individual result yourself, Atlas summarizes the current situation and identifies the next action that may deserve your attention.
Atlas recommendations are informational. You remain in control of decisions affecting your store.
3. Store Intelligence
Before starting new product work, you can use Store Intelligence to review your existing Shopify catalog.
Open:
Black Harbor → Store Intelligence
Black Harbor analyzes available product information and identifies catalog areas that may deserve attention.
Depending on the product and available information, findings can involve areas such as:
- Product titles
- Product descriptions
- SEO titles and descriptions
- Product images and image information
- Pricing information
- Publication status
- Other catalog preparation opportunities
Store Health
Store Health provides a high-level indication of the catalog information Black Harbor has analyzed.
The score is intended to help you identify and prioritize potential improvements. It is not a prediction or guarantee of sales, traffic, conversion rates, or search-engine performance.
Reviewing Opportunities
Store Intelligence prioritizes findings so you can determine what deserves attention first.
When an opportunity is identified, you can review the finding and decide whether you want Black Harbor to help address it.
4. Starting a New Assignment
To begin new work, select Assign new work or Start new assignment where available.
Black Harbor uses assignments to keep work organized from the initial request through final merchant approval.
Depending on the workflow, you may provide a product or source you want Black Harbor to evaluate and prepare.
Follow the instructions displayed in the assignment workspace to provide the requested information.
Once submitted, Black Harbor creates an assignment and begins the applicable workflow.
5. Understanding the Black Harbor Workforce
Black Harbor organizes specialized work into departments.
Instead of treating product preparation as one large task, the application separates work into specialized responsibilities and brings the results together for merchant review.
Departments may handle different portions of an assignment involving areas such as:
- Product research
- Product information
- Merchandising
- Content preparation
- SEO
- Images
- Store analysis
- Catalog preparation
Available departments and capabilities may vary based on your Black Harbor plan and current application features.
6. Following Assignment Progress
Open:
Black Harbor → Assignments
Your Assignments area allows you to follow work as it moves through Black Harbor.
An assignment may progress through several stages before reaching merchant review.
You do not need to manually coordinate each individual department. Black Harbor keeps the work associated with the assignment together so that you can review the resulting package.
7. Results & Approval Center
When an assignment reaches the review stage, Black Harbor presents the completed work in the Results & Approval Center.
This is one of the most important parts of the Black Harbor workflow.
The Results & Approval Center brings the available assignment results into one place for your review.
Depending on the assignment, you may see sections involving:
Executive Summary
Atlas provides an overview of the completed work, important findings, and recommendations.
Optimized Product
Review prepared product information and merchandising content.
Images
Review available product image information and prepared image-related results.
Variants
Review available product variant information.
Inventory
Review inventory-related information associated with the product.
Additional sections may appear depending on the assignment and features used.
8. Understanding Readiness
The Results & Approval Center may display readiness information to help you understand the state of an assignment.
For example, you may see information concerning:
Approval readiness — Indicates how much of the assignment has received the necessary merchant decisions.
Technical readiness — Indicates whether the information required for supported technical actions is available.
Sections approved — Shows how many review sections you have approved.
Sections remaining — Shows how many sections still require review or action.
A technically prepared product is not necessarily a product you should immediately publish.
Always review unresolved findings before making your final decision.
9. Reviewing Before Approval
Black Harbor is intentionally designed to keep the merchant involved in important decisions.
Review the information presented in the Results & Approval Center before approving an assignment.
Pay particular attention to:
- Product accuracy
- Product title and description
- Images
- Variants
- Inventory information
- Supplier information
- Product cost information
- Selling information
- SEO content
- Unresolved findings
- Intellectual property concerns
- Any warnings or recommendations presented by Black Harbor
Black Harbor assists with the workflow, but you remain responsible for determining whether a product is appropriate for your business.
10. Approving Work
When you're satisfied with the prepared work, use the available approval controls in the Results & Approval Center.
You may be able to approve individual portions of the assignment as you review them.
When appropriate, Black Harbor may also provide an Approve everything option.
Do not use Approve everything simply because an assignment has completed processing.
First review the executive summary, findings, readiness indicators, and applicable assignment sections.
11. Publishing a Product
For supported workflows, approved product information can proceed to the publishing stage.
Before publishing, confirm that the information is appropriate for your store.
The merchant remains responsible for the final product listing and should verify applicable supplier requirements, product information, intellectual property rights, pricing decisions, and legal or platform requirements before publication.
12. Working With Existing Products
Black Harbor isn't limited to finding new products.
Store Intelligence helps Black Harbor identify opportunities involving products already present in your Shopify catalog.
This means you can use Black Harbor in two complementary ways:
Bring new opportunities into the harbor through assignments.
Improve what's already in your harbor through Store Intelligence.
Together, these workflows allow Black Harbor to support both product acquisition workflows and ongoing catalog improvement.
13. Saving Work
Where available, use Save draft when you want to preserve assignment work without completing final approval.
This gives you an opportunity to return to the assignment and continue reviewing it later.
14. Social Content Packages
Supported assignments may provide downloadable content intended to assist with external marketing workflows.
When a Download social package option is available, use it to retrieve the prepared package.
Downloading content does not automatically publish it to external social platforms unless Black Harbor explicitly indicates otherwise.
You remain responsible for reviewing and publishing external marketing content.
15. Activity
Open:
Black Harbor → Activity
The Activity area provides visibility into relevant work occurring within your Black Harbor workspace.
Use it when you want to review recent application activity or understand what has happened during your workflows.
16. Plans & Upgrades
Open:
Black Harbor → Plans & Upgrades
This area displays available information about your Black Harbor plan and upgrade options.
Features, processing allowances, departments, and other capabilities may differ by plan.
Refer to the current Plans & Upgrades screen for the features available to your account.
17. Tips for Using Black Harbor
For the best experience:
- Start with Harbor Square to see what needs your attention.
- Review Store Intelligence regularly for catalog opportunities.
- Use Assignments for structured product work.
- Allow Black Harbor's departments to complete their applicable work.
- Carefully review the Atlas Executive Summary when results are ready.
- Review individual sections before approving everything.
- Resolve important warnings before publishing.
- Verify supplier, cost, inventory, and product information independently when necessary.
- Review all final content before it reaches your customers.
Black Harbor is designed to organize the work and surface decisions—not remove the merchant from the decision-making process.
18. Need Help?
If something doesn't work as expected, visit the Black Harbor Support & FAQ page.
When contacting support, provide:
- Your Shopify store name
- The Black Harbor page you were using
- Your assignment reference, if applicable
- A description of what happened
- What you expected to happen
- A screenshot when helpful
Never send passwords, API secrets, authentication credentials, payment-card information, or other sensitive credentials through support communications.
Welcome to the Harbor
Black Harbor was built around a simple idea: managing a growing Shopify store involves many different kinds of work, but the merchant should not have to manage that work across a collection of disconnected processes.
Black Harbor brings that work into one digital headquarters.
Scout opportunities. Assign the work. Review the results. Approve what reaches your store.
Welcome to Black Harbor.