The Product Synchronization tool allows you to automate how Connectif will review your eCommerce product catalog and update it in your Connectif Store. Through its interface, you can choose the bulk synchronization option, either by Web Scraping or via the Product Feed, as well as configure this process.
In addition to the synchronization and verification methods available in the Connectif interface, it is also possible to import and update products by making calls to the Connectif API. For more information, check the associated documentation.
How to Access
You can access the bulk product synchronization feature through the path "Ecommerce > Catalog" by clicking on Product Synchronization.
Interface
The main interface of Product Synchronization consists of 3 sections:
1. Tabs: to navigate through one of the two synchronization options, as well as to review the synchronization log:
- Web Scraping: to automate synchronization by Connectif querying the eCommerce catalog.
- Product Feed: to automate synchronization by Connectif querying a previously published product feed.
Only one synchronization option can be activated at a time. To see how to configure each type of bulk product synchronization, see the section Operation.
- Synchronization Log: to review the latest synchronization processes and their details.
2. Main panel: where the options for each tab are located.
3. Return to integration list: to return to the Catalog once the integration is configured.
Operation
You can activate bulk synchronizations of your product catalog in Connectif with their status from your eCommerce. There are two methods that work differently:
- The Web Scraping, which makes individual requests to your web server to update its information.
- The Product Feed, which makes a single request to download your feed file and process the status of your products.
1. Activate synchronization via Web Scraping
Web Scraping consists of Connectif reviewing the product page URLs found in your Connectif catalog. When activated, at the scheduled time and manner, Connectif visits those URLs one by one, looking for the visited product tag present in your eCommerce, to update the status of products in Connectif and synchronize it with the information found on your website at that moment. If these products do not exist in your eCommerce catalog, Connectif will not visit them.
In Tabs (1), go to Web Scraping and click Configure.
In the Main Panel (2), configure the Synchronization Frequency, that is, how often you want Connectif to access your eCommerce and visit, one by one, the pages of the different products to create, update, or discontinue the various products in the Connectif catalog depending on their status on your website.
You can choose the options "1 day", "2 days", "3 days", and "1 week".
Select the Time at which you want each synchronization process to take place.
Within Advanced Settings, you can set two aspects that will help optimize the catalog update performance based on your website’s performance.
- In the dropdown Wait time between products, you can choose whether you want Connectif to wait between different product visits and, if so, how long it should wait. Depending on the size of your catalog, you can increase or reduce the time to avoid overloading the website.
- In the selector Include discontinued products, you can choose whether you want Connectif not to visit products marked as discontinued during the synchronization process. This option reduces website load and increases synchronization performance via Web Scraping.
Once you have set the synchronization configuration, click Activate to schedule the synchronization, or Activate and synchronize immediately to execute a synchronization and schedule the next one within the established period.
2. Activate synchronization via Product Feed
Bulk synchronization via Product Feed is much faster and reduces the load on your web server since it makes a single request to download your eCommerce feed file instead of making a request for each product.
Only one Product Feed can be added, so it must be complete.
This request is made at the configured period and time. Connectif saves a copy of the original Feed at the indicated moment, so if any changes are made to the Feed after a synchronization is carried out or during an ongoing synchronization, these will not be reflected in Connectif until the next synchronization operation.
Products change to "Discontinued" status if the product does not appear in the feed for 10 days. This check runs daily.
In Tabs (1), go to Product Feed and click Configure.
In the Main Panel (2), in the Add product feed area, add the URL of the product feed from which Connectif will extract your catalog information.
The product feed is an XML file that must be publicly accessible, meaning the feed URL must be public, without httaccess. This document contains a series of objects that hold the properties of a product in the form of tags and values.
Specifications about the Product Feed:
At the end of this article (or by clicking this link), you will find a sample Product Feed document.
You will also find a downloadable file with the schema used to describe the structure and constraints of the contents of XML documents for Product Feeds (or by clicking this link).
- When Connectif tries to read the feed at a URL, it uses the header 'User-Agent': 'Connectif'. This can be useful if you need to allow access to the resource only for certain applications.
- The feed model specified by Google can be used. If another format is used, only the "Product" element is allowed at the second level, meaning the feed can contain at most three levels: the one containing the product list, the item itself, and the product property/properties.
- The feed encoding must be UTF-8.
- Google fields that Connectif automatically converts (when the feed fully respects the Google format):
- G:AUTO_PRICING_MIN_PRICE, G:SALE_PRICE, G:PRICE: formatted to remove the currency and treated as numbers.
- G:AVAILABILITY: accepts Google’s allowed values 'in_stock', 'in stock' and transforms them into our valid value "instock".
- G:GOOGLE_PRODUCT_CATEGORY, G:PRODUCT_TYPE: Google-required characters ">" for category separation are replaced by the Connectif-allowed "/". For this field, Connectif will obtain the Google category definitions.
- If you want to obtain customized categories with your own hierarchy, this is possible through the G:PRODUCT_TYPE field.
- To indicate the different categories a product can have, repeat the field in the feed.
- To indicate different sublevels of a category, use the value ">".
- For more information about this field, see the official Google Merchant Center documentation.
For example, a product with the following customized categories:
- First level:
Bicycle
Outlet
- Second level:
Bicycle/Mountain
Bicycle/Touring
Outlet/Bike.
- Third level:
Bicycle/Mountain/Thousand_meters
Should appear in the feed as follows:
<g:product_type>Bicycle > Mountain > Thousand_meters</g:product_type>
<g:product_type>Bicycle > Touring</g:product_type>
<g:product_type>Outlet > Bike</g:product_type>
- Fields not mapped in the feed are preserved and not overwritten.
- Products created by mechanisms other than the feed are not discontinued.
- If the Google format is not used, price-related data must be in number format.
- Multiple tags with the same name can be used.
- When manually mapping a non-autodetected field, the path to the field is the names of each tag level up to the value separated by a ">".
- All fields that are of type "array" in a mapping will collect all values appearing multiple times in the Feed for that field.
If you use customized categories for your store products and your product feed is of the Google type, you can add them in the G:PRODUCT_TYPE tag and then configure it in the mapping for Connectif to obtain them. If you need more information on how to send customized product categories, visit the official Google documentation.
Configure the Synchronization Frequency, that is, how often you want Connectif to access your Product Feed to extract the information. You can choose the options "1 day", "2 days", "3 days", and "1 week".
Select the Time at which you want each synchronization process to take place.
Click Next.
In the Main Panel (2), you must select the detected Product Feed values and link them to those in the Connectif product record.
The field mapped as "Product URL" is validated with the allowed domains.
To do this, click on each field in the Automatically detected product fields column and drag them to the central column so that they match the fields in the Connectif product record (right column).
The selection of fields to map is obtained from the unique fields of a sample of products from your Feed.
If there is a field in your Product Feed that you want to link but does not appear in the value selection, you must select the value "Field path", link it to the corresponding field, and manually enter the path and each of its levels in the same format as the other fields in Connectif.
Copy the path and its different levels as shown in the example.
Enter them in Connectif with the corresponding format. Each level of the path you enter must be separated by the symbol ">".
If you change the name of any mapped fields in your Product Feed, you must update it in Connectif accordingly.
In our example, the field "product_tags" was created, extracted from the path in the previous image. In this case, the full path would be RSS>CHANNEL>ITEM>G:PRODUCT_TAGS.
Once you have set the synchronization configuration, click Activate to schedule the synchronization, or Activate and synchronize immediately to execute a synchronization and schedule the next one within the established period.
3. Deactivate one synchronization type to activate another
It is not possible to have both synchronization processes active at the same time, so if one is active, it must be deactivated before you can configure the other.
To do this, go to the Tab (1) of the synchronization type you have activated and, in the Main Panel (2), click Deactivate.
4. Review the Synchronization Log
In Tabs (1), go to Synchronization Log.
In the Main Panel (2), you can review the execution dates of past synchronization processes, as well as possible status changes of each synchronization.
Regardless of the execution time set for the synchronization process, the product discontinuation process will run daily, so more processes than indicated in the configuration will appear in the list.
Congratulations!
You have reached the end of the lesson.
Keep learning!
To make the most of your Connectif account’s potential, we recommend continuing with the following articles:
Onboarding, to gain skill with our interface.
Initial Workflows, to implement your first strategies in the account.
Integrations with external systems, to integrate with Facebook, forms, and webhooks from your website.
Events that consume Activities, to better understand your account’s consumption.