How to use Supplemental Feeds?

How do I enable this feature?

You can request this feature by contacting your account manager or by reaching out to our Support Team (support@shopping-feed.com).

What is a Supplemental Feed?

It is an additional feed file that allows you to enrich the product data in your Shoppingfeed account by providing additional product attributes. These attributes are added to your Shoppingfeed catalog and can be used along with the existing attributes coming from your main source feed.

What are Supplemental Feeds used for?

• Add a separate source of truth for vital pieces of your product data (Price, Quantity, etc.) while keeping the core product details (Title, Description, etc.) imported from the main source feed;

• Have a dedicated feed for Promotions during a sale period;

• Add new product attributes that are missing in your main feed;

• Source different fields for specific channels. You can easily add fields like {eBayDescription}, {AmazonPrice}, {EtsyTitle} to your Supplemental Feed based on the best practices for a given channel.
  
  

How is Supplemental Feed configured?

Similar to your main source feed, Supplemental Feed has its update frequency. At a scheduled time, Shoppingfeed will import the Supplemental Feed from the provided Feed URL in order to retrieve the product attributes along with the corresponding values.

These product attributes and values are added to your product catalog in Shoppingfeed relying on the product SKUs (IDs) as identifiers. This way, Shoppingfeed associates those attributes with the corresponding products in your catalog. If the SKU (ID) from your Supplemental Feed does not exist in your Shoppingfeed account yet, the attributes for this SKU (ID) will be ignored and not imported.

Once the import is complete, the attributes and their values ​​will be available in Shoppingfeed in the same way as your existing attributes. You will be able to use them in Rules, Field Mapping, and etc.

Note that the imported attributes are prefixed with the name of your Supplemental Feed so that you can locate them more easily.

The status of every Supplemental Feed update is reflected on the Timeline page.

What are the requirements for creating a Supplemental Feed?

• File Format: CSV (UTF-8 encoding) only;
• Supported Separators:
  
  

• The Supplemental Feed file must have a column for product SKUs (IDs) so that all the attributes can be mapped with the products in your catalog based on the value in this column;
  

• The number of columns in one file is limited to 100 (SKU (ID) column + 99 attributes max);

• The file must be stored on the accessible URL that starts with one of the following schemes:
  
  

• The file must not contain lines without references (A line with data but no reference would block the import of the Supplemental Feed)
  Please note that : Should the file contain completely empty lines, those will be ignored during import.

The Supplemental Feed file sample is available at the following link: https://assets.shopping-feed.com/docs/test_supplemental-feed.csv

How do I create a Supplemental Feed?

Once the feature is enabled for your account, you will be able to access it from the Catalog page.

From there, you can see and manage your existing Supplemental Feeds as well as add a new feed by clicking the corresponding button.

When creating a new Supplemental Feed, you will be prompted to provide the following details:

• Feed (Catalog) Name

Choose the name for your feed carefully since it will be used as a prefix in the name of the imported attributes so that you can easily recognize the attributes imported from different feeds. For example, if you choose to name your Supplemental Feed "Feed2", the "Description" attribute imported via this feed will be named "Feed2_Description" in your Shoppingfeed catalog.

Note that the Feed Name can only contain letters, digits, underscores, hyphens, and dots.

• Feed (Catalog) URL

Your feed URL must be accessible and start with http | https | s3 | ftp | sftp.

• Separator

Defining the Separator of your CSV feed file is necessary for importing your data correctly.

Supported Separators are:

• SKU Column (product ID column) Name

Fill in the exact name of the column that contains product SKUs (IDs) in your feed. The attributes will be mapped with the products in your catalog based on the values in this column.

• Update Frequency and Start Time

Shoppingfeed will use the update frequency and start time of your main source feed by default. You can uncheck this option if you want to customize the update frequency and the start time for your Supplemental Feed.

Hit "Create" to finish the setup process after you fill out all of the required details. Once done, you will see the new Supplemental Feed available in the corresponding tab.

Imports from an additional feed

During the import of your additional feed, Shoppingfeed relies on the column containing SKUs to determine which products the imported attributes are intended for.

Once the import is complete, the attributes and their values will be available in the application for your use (in rules and mappings). You will notice that the imported attributes are prefixed with the name of your additional feed, making it easier for you to identify them.

You can track the imports of your additional feeds via the Timeline page of the application, and know that you can also request a manual import of your supplemental feed by clicking on the following icon:

How to check the import history of an additional feed?

You can view the import history of your additional feeds by clicking on "History."

The import history of an additional feed displays the 25 most recent imports made on that particular feed, each with the following information:

1. Date and time of the import

2. Import status
> When modifications are imported, the number of processed lines out of the total number of lines in the file is displayed.
> When the import is complete, the imported file is also available for download via the icon on the right.

Additional information:
The number of processed lines represents, after the import, the total lines containing modifications and those whose information has not changed.

How to delete an additional feed?

You can delete your previously created additional feed at any time by clicking on the following icon (note: deletion is permanent, and the data cannot be recovered):

What are the limitations and restrictions of Supplemental Feeds?

Supplemental Feeds are only used to add more attributes to your existing product catalog in Shoppingfeed.
It is not possible to achieve the following with the help of Supplemental Feeds:

• Create new products;

• Update or Remove values of the existing attributes from your main source feed;

• Delete existing products from your catalog.