ChannelEngine: why is a category marked as deleted by channel?

About this article

This article describes why product categories are marked as deleted at times, and what to do about it.

Introduction

Periodically, marketplaces may update their data model (i.e.: the model in which product types/categories are defined together with the required or optional attributes per category). The frequency of these updates is different for each marketplace. E.g.: bol.com has a new data model every week, while Amazon only updates their templates once every 6-12 months.

During a data model update, which are done via the Import categories from channel task, it might occur that a marketplace's category or attribute which was previously available is removed – or replaced by a different category.

Solution

If a product category is not available anymore, ChannelEngine displays the !Deleted badge next to the deprecated category name.

Because it it impossible for ChannelEngine to determine what the new category should be, we cannot migrate your content automatically. Therefore, you must remap the category (as well as all related attributes) to one of the new available categories.