You are now ready to do your 2nd csv file – the product category relationships file – which lists all products and the categories that they are in.
Don’t worry – None of your files will be processed yet
Again, remember that the batch job has not yet been turned on, so you don’t need to worry about your CSV files getting processed yet.
Sample Product Category Relationship CSV File
The following is a sample csv file:
"ProductCode","PrimCat_ExternalCode","BrandCat_ExternalCode"
"A1234","MENSJUMPERS",”NIKE”
"B2345"," MENSJUMPERS ",”NIKE”
"C3456","MENSTROUSERS",”ADIDAS”
Mapping each category code to the corresponding website category using External Category Codes
For this export, we will simply be assigning each product to categories on the website.
Before you set this export up, you will need to have set up some or all of the categories on the website. You then need to map the categories on your ePos/ERP to the categories on your website using a unique code for each category (which we call the “External Code”).
To update each category on the website with the same unique code that you are using in your CSV file, log in to your website as an admin and go into the category update screen for each category. You will see an EXTERNAL CODE field which is blank. Enter the ERP/ePos code into this field and click SAVE.
Note the following:
- You only have to set up EXTERNAL CODES for the bottom level categories. For example, if a main category is called MENSWEAR and it has 5 sub-categories called MENSSHIRTS, MENSJUMPERS, MENSTROUSERS, MENSSHOES and MENSSHORTS, you will assign the product to the 5 sub-categories and not the main category.
- Similarly, you need to assign it to the EXTERNAL CODE for each brand category that you will have set up on the website.
- You can also assign it to other categories on the website which is detailed under documentation under UPLOADING DATA / CSV FILES.
Fields to include in your CSV File
For this feed, you will need to set up your ERP/ePos so that you can assign each product to a code that corresponds to one of the categories that you gave in your list of main categories when you had your website set up.
The following are the fields to include in your CSV file:
Field |
Description |
Type |
ProductCode |
Your unique product code |
Text(50) |
PrimCat_ExternalCode |
The code for the primary category that this product is assigned to |
Text(50) |
BrandCat_ExternalCode |
The code for the brand category that this product is assigned to |
Text(50) |
Filter Products on ‘Active for Web’ Checkbox
Similar to the products export, when exporting products from your ERP/ePos into this file, only export the products that have been made “Active for Web”.
Ensure all categories have a unique category code
You need to ensure that each category has a unique category code.
Use the correct filename format
The name of the CSV file needs to be in the following format: prodcats_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.csv
YYYY is the current year (e.g. 2020), MM the current month (e.g. 06 for June), DD the current day (e.g. 01 for the 1st June), HH for the current hour, MM for the current minutes and SS for the current seconds. This ensures that no 2 files have the same filename.
Also, remember that you need to put leading zeros before certain numbers so that all files have the exact same number of characters in their file names – e.g. June is ‘06’ and not just ‘6’.
Be Careful of Double Quotes in your CSV File
Ensure that your columns in the CSV file are surrounded by double quotes and that any double quote within the field is doubled up within the value.
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