ChannelEngine: create a product feed using Dropbox

About this article

This article describes how to use the file hosting service Dropbox to create a product feed.

Table of contents

Introduction

Create a file

Upload the feed to Dropbox

Set up the feed on ChannelEngine

Introduction

There are different ways to upload and update product information on ChannelEngine, such as via a content management system (CMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), webshop, etc. If you do not use such as system or are unable to add all the required product information to it, a good alternative is to add to ChannelEngine using Dropbox.

Create a file

This guide does not include instructions on how to create a Dropbox account, but if you do not have one you can follow these steps.

To create a product feed file: 

1. If you have already created a file to use as a feed, skip this step. If not, create a new spreadsheet file.
   
2. Add at least one column for your Merchant product number/SKU. Note that the values here must be identical to the values under Merchant product number on ChannelEngine, as this is what connects the data. Add columns to represent whatever attributes you want to update from this file.
   
3. If you are unsure of the correct identifier used as the Merchant product number, look up the product on ChannelEngine.
   
4. When you are done setting up the columns and rows, save the document as a CSV file so it can be read as a feed. Make sure that every attribute has its own column in the sheet.
   
   

Upload the feed to Dropbox

To upload the feed to Dropbox:

1. Go to Dropbox and upload the file.
2. Navigate to the file and click Share.
   
3. Click Copy link.
4. Replace the last digit from the URL from 0 to 1. E.g.:
   

   https://www.dropbox.com/s/ksaj6tmeyc2e1bj/channelengine.xml?dl=0

   must be changed to

   https://www.dropbox.com/s/ksaj6tmeyc2e1bj/channelengine.xml?dl=1

Set up the feed on ChannelEngine

For a complete guide on setting up a product feed on ChannelEngine, refer to the ChannelEngine: product feeds article. The following steps describe how to set this up by using the previous example feed. The exact steps and complexity may vary depending on your setup.

To set up a product feed on ChannelEngine:

1. Go to Products, Product feeds, and add a new feed by selecting + Add feed.
2. Paste the feed link from step 4 in the Publishing to the Web (CSV) section.
3. Select the correct delimiter and click Continue. If you selected CSV, the delimiter is a comma. If you selected TSV, it is a tab.
   
4. Go to Settings, and enable the Additional field by switching the toggle to on.
   
5. If you used column names that reflect or resemble the names used by ChannelEngine, the expected attributes may already be pre-selected. You can identify them by the green highlight and the light bulb icon. If not, select the correct attributes from the Google Sheet feed. It is very important to select the correct Merchant product number attribute, as it connects the feed data with the existing product on the channel. Set all the attributes that are not in the feed to Not mapped - Keep value.
   
6. Once everything is mapped correctly, click Save to store the new feed and its mappings. Note that an import is required before the new data is reflected on ChannelEngine.