Update of the Product Catalog with Automated Feed

Introduction

Product Finder 360 needs to have a topical Product Catalog to recommend products to potential customers based on their answers. With the "Automated feed" feature, Product Finder 360 can make sure that your product catalog is always up to date and consistent with the information in your store.

For the feed to be successful, you need to make sure that the fields of uploaded files are mapped to the fields of the product catalog.

All the settings are available on the right of the "Product" page.

This article will walk you through all the main steps of the feature set up:

• Set up the connection with your server

• Test and fetch the product catalog

• Schedule the data feed

• Enable the catalog structure update (if needed)

• Activate the data feed

• Monitor the activity

1. Set Up Connection With Your Server

To define the setting for connection with your server:

Click the arrow down by the "Automated feed" header and scroll to the "Feed settings" Fill in the URL to your server: the direct path to the file to be loaded Provide the credentials required to access the file

  ATTENTION

 The "Automated feed" feature may upload the file from HTTP, FTP or SFTP server.

For SFTP server, you also need to whitelist the IP address used by Product Finder 360: 52.31.133.200.

Please, contact your hosting provider or address our support in case of any questions.

2. Test and Fetch the Connection

To make sure that Product Finder 360 can access the requested file,  click the "Test connection" button. If everything is OK, the success message will appear at the bottom left corner

At this stage, you need to:

1. Fetch the catalog

2. Adjust the .csv file options

3. Adjust the product attributes mapping. Click the "Fetch product catalog" button.

  ATTENTION

While testing the connection is recommended, fetching the catalog for the first time is mandatory before you can activate the feed.

Click the "Fetch product catalog" button
"Downloading the latest product catalog" message will appear.

As soon as the catalog has been downloaded, configure the .csv file options.
Click "Next" and map fields of your .csv file to your product catalog

 3. Schedule the Data Feed

Next, you have to specify the date and time of the first scheduled feed update.

  Remember!

Both the date and time of the first feed have to be selected.

Select the frequency of the updates in the "Frequency" drop-down menu. Consider the real frequency of your catalog changes when selecting the value to avoid unnecessary load on one hand and make sure that the products are always up to date on the other.

4. Enable the Catalog Structure Update

If the feature is enabled, whenever new attributes (columns of the product catalog) arrive with the automated feed, they will be automatically added to the catalog and will become available for usage in the Product Finder.If a new feed has fewer attributes than before (some of the catalog columns have been removed), the column will be marked correspondingly but will stay in the catalog with the latest provided values - this way the existing Product Finder will not be affected. 

To enable/disable the feature, use the toggle below the "Feed schedule" section.

5. Activate the Data Feed

Click the "Activate feed" button.  If everything’s fine, it will turn into "Deactivate feed", which you can click later in case you decide to stop Product Finder 360 from downloading your product file.

ATTENTION

Remember that the setting changes will be applied to a live Product Finder only after you've Published this version of it.

6. Monitor Feed Activity

Once everything is up and running, you can monitor the activity of your data feeds, including the time of your last and next data imports. You’ll notice that handy boxes now appear in the Products tab: in the "Automated feed" section and under "Summary data". You can also view the History of your past feeds to check how your settings have changed over time.

Feed settings

 Good to know