Integrating your product or content feed(s) allows us to include relevant recommendations in your messages. Multiple options are available:
1. Feeds
To setup a catalog using Feeds, navigate to Catalog tab and click the +Catalog button to add a feed.
Pick the appropriate feed type, complete all required fields and click Validate.
- Enter a unique feed/catalog name
- Choose E-Commerce as Feed Type
- Pick the appropriate feed upload method. You can upload files via HTTP/FTP/Direct file upload/S3 bucket/SFTP. Provide additional information based on the option that you choose. For example, if you choose S3, we need S3 access key, secret access key, bucket name, and the region. Similarly, if you want to us to pick files from an FTP location, in addition to the URL of the server where you host the files and the port on which FTP service is running, we need credentials to access files on that location.
- Select upload frequency. Your options are:
- Only once
- Weekly
- Daily
- Hourly
In addition, you can specify Update Time. You can use this option to let our platform know whether:
- It should import files from the S3 location instantly
- Or it should start the import at a date and time that you specify (for weekly, daily, and hourly imports). In addition, you can also specify when our platform should stop importing the files based on the setting that you specify in the End option.
Things to check before uploading a file
-
Be sure to delete any empty columns
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File must be UTF-8 encoded csv
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At the very least, we need product id, product name, product url (http or https), image url (http or https) and category. However, we also recommend sending us brand, in/out of stock and other custom fields you may want to use in segmentation and messaging
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We support multiple catalogs. However, product ids must be unique within and across all catalogs
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You can set rules in the catalog settings to set a product as out_of_stock or in_stock by mapping your column to the Availability field
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Alternatively, for each product, you can set "start_date" and "end_date" fields in the file. The expected format is ISO8601 for these two fields. Ex: "2017-08-08", "2017-08-08T17:42:32Z". We will use them to automatically set a product to out_of_stock if the current_date does not fall within that range.
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We use INSERT/UPDATE logic to INSERT new products and UPDATE existing products as identified by SKU/product_ID.
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Please use true or false (lower case) for boolean values.
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Please use snake case where possible, as it's much easier to use it in the templates.
Ex: "Release_Year" instead of "Release Year"
In the next screen, you will need to map your catalog attributes to Blueshift defined attributes. Attributes that cannot be mapped to our standard ones will be loaded as custom attributes.
You will receive an email confirmation once the catalog has been uploaded including processed and failed records.
2. Catalog API
The catalog API allows the following actions:
Create Catalog
You can create a new catalog from the API by using the create catalog API end-point.
Inputs:
- “name”: Catalog name (string)
Output:
- On successful create, returns the catalog’s unique identifier
Sample call:
curl -v -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-type: application/json" -X POST -d '{"catalog" : {"name" : "ACME Item Catalog"}}' -u <USER API KEY>: https://api.getblueshift.com/api/v1/catalogs
Sample Response
{"catalog_uuid":"<CATALOG UUID>"}Add Item To Catalog
You may add multiple items to a catalog in batches of 100 items at a time, by using the add item to catalog API end-point.
Inputs:
- "catalog uuid": Use the catalog uuid as returned from the create a catalog api end-point
- Array of products
Output:
- On success, returns “ok”
curl -v -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-type: application/json" -X PUT -u <USER API KEY>: https://api.getblueshift.com/api/v1/catalogs/<CATALOG UUID>.json -d '
{
"catalog": {
"products": [
{
"brand": "Nike",
"category": [
"Home",
"Home > Shoes",
"Home > Shoes > Running"
],
"image": "http://server/path/image.jpg",
"msrp": "47",
"price": "37.99",
"product_id": "189909",
"stock": "in stock",
"tags": [
"running",
"athlete"
],
"title": "Nike Jordan Running Shoes in Blue",
"web_link": "http://server/path/product.html"
},
{
"brand": "Reebok",
"category": [
"Home",
"Home > Shoes",
"Home > Shoes > Sports"
],
"image": "http://server/path/image2.jpg",
"msrp": "47",
"price": "37.99",
"product_id": "189910",
"availability": "in stock",
"tags": [
"basketball"
],
"title": "Reebok Basketball Shoes",
"web_link": "http://server/path/product2.html"
}
]
}
}'3. Catalog Attributes
Required fields
| Attribute | Description | Example |
| product_id | Unique identifier of item, should be unique across all your catalog's. | 123345_abcd |
| title | Title of the item | Iphone 7 |
| web_link | URL for item on your website (http or https) | http://www.apple.com/iphone-7 |
| image | Image Link (http or https) | http://www.apple.com/iphone-7.jpg |
| availability | Indicates item status. Used for excluding out of stock products in recommendations. Also used for computing back in stock alerts when a product goes out of stock and comes back in stock | "in stock" or "out of stock" |
| category | Logical grouping of items. The grouping can be hierarchical with any number of levels. This is very important field and many of the recommendation schemes use this grouping to compute trending and popular products. Please ensure that your category attribute is populated correctly | Travel > Europe > Italy |
| Attribute | Description | Example |
| parent_sku | Ties all variants or child items together. You can use parent sku to ensure you recommend only one variant in your recommendations. For example, only one color of the same dress, instead of multiple colors. | 12345_abcd |
| price | Selling/Discounted Price. Used for computing price drop alerts | 290 |
| msrp | MSRP | 350 |
| brand | Brand of the item | Apple |
| start_date | Indicates active/inactive status. Should be in ISO 8601 format. This is used to determine product recency, like recommending new arrivals. | 2017-06-09T15:28:33Z |
| end_date | Indicates active/inactive status. Should be in ISO 8601 format. This field is used to recommend ending soon products if present | 2017-07-09T15:28:33Z |
| tags | An array of strings denoting grouping of similar products into collections or groups. The array can be used for recommending similar items based on text similarity. | |
| latitude/longitude | Latitude/Longitude denoting location | 37.792805, -122.401444 for San Francisco Downtown |
Custom fields
You can also upload other relevant attributes you would like to include for segmentation and content personalization
Example: color, gender etc
Category field is an important signal for computing affinities and popular recommendations at different levels of your product groupings. Consult your Blueshift Success Manager for guidance in choosing the appropriate format.
Category
We recommend that you provide multiple levels (at least 2) for better recommendations. The format is bit different for API and for csv upload
File Upload:
For csv upload, you can denote multiple levels using a delimiter and can specify the delimiter when uploading the file. The delimiter is ">" in the below example.
Ex: "Travel > Europe > Italy"
Api Upload:
For API upload, you will denote multiple levels using an array of strings.
Ex: ["Travel","Travel > Europe","Travel > Europe > Italy"]
If it's uploaded correctly, the category should show up like this on our dashboard when you see individual product details.
Ex:
- If the end_date is not current or
- If the availability is set to "out of stock"