ChannelEngine: create product bundles in bulk via CSV upload

About this article

This article explains how to create product bundles in bulk using a CSV file.

Table of contents

Introduction

Requirements

How it works

Example CSV file

Introduction

While it is possible to create individual product bundles step by step via the ChannelEngine web interface, it is also possible to create basic bundles by uploading a CSV file. CSV uploads are useful if you need to add a lot of product information to your bundles or create multiple bundles in one step.

Requirements

The following requirements must be met for you to successfully create new bundles in bulk:

• The CSV must use the comma as a delimiter. Delimiters such as semicolons, pipes, or tabs cannot be used.
• Prices must have decimals, be more than zero, and not contain thousands separators. Use a dot as the decimal separator. E.g.: 59.99. It is also possible to use the string value 'default', which uses the current price of the product.
• The price of each bundle part must be more than zero. Therefore, you specify the price percentage of each bundle part instead of the raw price per bundle part.
• Duplicate Merchant product numbers for individual products (i.e.: product1_mpn) are not allowed. Instead, use the product_qty columns to increase the number of units per product.
• Duplicate Merchant product numbers for bundles (i.e.: mpn_bundle) are not allowed within the same CSV. If you use a Merchant product number that was created previously, it updates the existing bundle with the latest details and does not create a new one.
• Merchant product numbers tied to parent products are not allowed.
• The CSV must contain columns as per the example in Example CSV file. Note that the locations of the headers and their values are fixed. I.e.: column #1 needs to contain a unique Merchant product number for your bundle, column #2 must contain a unique GTIN, etc. Include the following headers in your CSV file:
  • mpn_bundle - the bundle's unique Merchant product number. The maximum number of characters is 64.
  • ean_bundle - the bundle's unique GTIN, such as an EAN or UPC. Note that this GTIN cannot already be known to ChannelEngine.
  • name_bundle - the bundle's title. The maximum number of characters is 256.
  • img_link¹ - the bundle's main image. The maximum number of characters is 512.
  • description_bundle - (optional) the description of your bundle product; the bundle's Description field on ChannelEngine.
  • price_bundle - the total price of the bundle product; the bundle's Price field on ChannelEngine.
  • product1_mpn - the Merchant product number of the bundle's first product. This product must be known to ChannelEngine.
  • product1_qty - the quantity of the first product included in the bundle.
  • product1_pricepercent - the percent of the total bundle product price that represents the first product included in the bundle.
  • product2_mpn² - the Merchant product number of the bundle's second product. This product must be known to ChannelEngine.
  • product2_qty² - the quantity of the second product included in the bundle.
  • product2_pricepercent² - the percent of the total bundle product price that represents the second product included in the bundle.
  • And so on.

1. If you provide the bundle's image link via an additional feed, you do not have to include it in your bundle feed. However, the column related to this attribute must be included in your CSV file.

2. If one of these values is left empty for one of the products in the bundle, the product is excluded from the bundle.

How it works

To create product bundles in bulk via CSV upload:

1. Go to Products, Product bundles.
2. Click Upload CSV.

Once you select the CSV file for upload, ChannelEngine processes the file. If file processing succeeds, the task is marked as a success. To see the status of this task on ChannelEngine, go to Settings, Scheduled tasks.

If file processing fails, the task is marked as Failed – and a notification is shown. To receive it, you need to enable the Product bundles import failed notification. To learn more about enabling notifications, check out the article ChannelEngine: how to configure notifications.

The error in the notification should state that a definition cannot be found, which either means that one of your column headers is named incorrectly or the GTIN/Merchant product number for the individual parts of the bundle cannot be found. If the error is unclear, contact ChannelEngine's Support team – and make sure to have your CSV file ready.

Example CSV file