ChannelEngine: blocked products

About this article

This article describes how ChannelEngine flags products whose content is blocked from exporting to their respective channels and what you can do to unblock their exports.

Table of contents

About this article

Introduction

Limitations

Benefits

Causes for blocked content exports

Do you have blocked products?

Resolve errors on blocked products

Reset blocked products

Introduction

Many channels require you to complete extensive categorization and attribute mapping of your products before they are ready to be listed publicly. Sometimes your product content needs more enhancements before ChannelEngine can successfully send it to the channel without validation errors.

When ChannelEngine tries to export your product content for a product to a given channel three times, and each time, you receive the same set of validation errors, ChannelEngine automatically pauses product content exports on that product to the given channel.

When the system detects a product that has failed to export three consecutive times with identical errors, it blocks further export attempts for that item.

The good news is that you can intervene. Check your channel’s dashboard for blocked products, inspect the errors at Listed products, Blocked products, and reset the export.

Limitations

Implementation is currently limited to single-product channels. Complex parent-child export structures remain excluded from the automatic blocking.

Benefits

• Optimized performance of your ChannelEngine environment. Your environment uses its resources on higher-priority tasks rather than on retrying content exports on products that require manual intervention from you.
• Efficient use of your API limits. When your environment makes fewer calls to the channel, you conserve the allotment of API calls that the channel imposes on you for other, more important tasks.
• Priority view of your blocked updates. Take immediate action on blocked products as soon as you see them on your dashboard.

Causes for blocked content exports

How content is exported to the channel

In general, you trigger content exports in a few of ways:

• Update a value in Content mappings
• Manual export from Listed products
• Activate a channel for the first time

In response to a trigger, ChannelEngine sends your product content to the channel according to a set schedule, e.g: once every 60 minutes.

When validation errors occur

Validation errors appear on product exports in a few of scenarios:

• Categorization is not complete
• Required mappings are not filled out
• Attribute values are invalid for the channel; examples include:
  • Value not in the channel’s allowed value list
  • Description/title exceeds character limits
  • Numeric value sent with units
  • Wrong decimal/integer format
  • Invalid EAN length
  • Unsupported HTML or special characters

When content exports are blocked

When your product content exports return the same set of validation errors three times in a row, then ChannelEngine blocks product content updates on the respective products until you intervene.

Do you have blocked products?

View whether you have any blocked products by inspecting a given channel’s dashboard:

1. Open your channel on ChannelEngine.
2. View the Dashboard step.
3. Depending on your configuration, you see either:
   1. Product tiles at the top of your channel dashboard
   2. The product status widget on the right-hand side of the channel dashboard

Product tiles view 

In the product tiles view, look for any blocked products in the Products selected for export tile.

If you have any blocked products, the number of blocked products on the channel appears in the lower left-hand corner of the tile. This number indicates the number of products whose content is no longer exported to the channel.

This product tile also appears in the Listed products step.

Product status widget

If your channel shows the product status widget, view the number of blocked products in the warning callout at the bottom of the widget.

If you have blocked products, the warning callout indicates how many products are blocked with the message, “X products are no longer syncing”.

Resolve errors on blocked products

Blocked products overview

You are able to manually intervene from the first time that your product content export fails. Review the validation errors at Listed products, Validation and feedback.

However, if your product content export fails with the same set of errors after three consecutive attempts, the list of errors is summarized in the Blocked products tab in the Listed products step.

To view your blocked products and their validation errors:

1. Click View products from your product status overview (either from your product tiles or widget).
2. The channel’s Listed products step opens to the Blocked products tab.
3. Each line item in the Blocked products tab corresponds to a blocked product on the channel.

Errors overview

To view the specific validation errors on a blocked product:

1. Click the grid icon in the blocked product’s Actions.
2. A Content validation pop-up opens that displays the error preventing the product’s content export.

Resolve each error

Resolve each error on each blocked product before resetting your blocked products for a new product export.

To resolve each error:

1. In the Content validation pop-up, inspect the error in the Error field.
2. Take steps to resolve the error yourself elsewhere in the channel plugin.
3. Research answers to your questions in the ChannelEngine Help Center.

Reset blocked products

Once you resolve all of your blocked products' errors, reset the product export by clicking Reset all blocked products in the blocked products overview.

After you reset your blocked products on the channel, ChannelEngine retries the product content export on those products with the next scheduled product content export task.