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Importing Products with Variants

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Adrian Ursu Dynamicweb Employee
Adrian Ursu
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Posted on 31/10/2017 10:41:58

Hi guys,

I find very often the need to explain internally or to customers how to import products using DataIntegration.

I have searched in the documentation for a best-practice how-to but I could not find anything.

I know in the past we have used a Data integration provider that was called Varedata. This provider was converting a spreadsheet with all SKU's into a standard formatted set of CSV's for importing products and variants at the same time.

I was thinking maybe in the meantime that approach became a standard DW functionality as it turned to be pretty useful.

If it's not the case, I could still use a proper documentation on how the files should look like, what columns are mandatory and what is the minimum set of files to be used in order to get a proper iimport for products and variants.

Thank you,
Adrian


Replies

 
Dmitriy Benyuk Dynamicweb Employee
Dmitriy Benyuk
Posted on 31/10/2017 15:06:59
Reply

Hi Adrian,
Varedata was a custom provider, worked for CSV transformation. It was not very much generic so it was not included to the standard Dynamicweb providers.
For the xml data import you can use the XSLT transformation applied on some non-Dynamicweb xml data file to make the xml suitable for Dynamicweb format.
You can watch videos for importing data here(they for Dynamicweb 8 but the concept has not changed very much) and read about Ecom provider.
As for the Dynamicweb format you can export Ecom data using EcomProvider as a Source and CSV or XML provider as a destination and get the out files with Dynamicweb format.
Regards, Dmitrij

 
Adrian Ursu Dynamicweb Employee
Adrian Ursu
Posted on 31/10/2017 16:13:57
Reply

Hi Dmitriy,

Thank you for the details. I know Varedata was a custom provider but my point was that it offered a very good functionality because usually, users that are preparing import documents are preparing them in Excel or CSV and not XML.

For XML import, things are clear. But usually XML files are exported from other systems and they are not manually created. At least that's my experience so far.

What I need is not a documentation of DataIntegration but a documentation (video + sample files) for importing Products with Variants using CSV or Excel files. What fields are needed and what is their meaning. What can posibily fgo wrong. What limitations there are on specific sfields that are sensitive. Lilke ProductID or VariantOptionID.

I still think that the functionality provided by Varedata was VERY useful for all cases where the customer could only use a spreadsheet with all SKU's instead of a well-formated consistent XML file. I believe that the mere fact that Varedata existed, proves the need for something like that.

I usually find very hard to troubleshoot some functionality because there is no mention about the best-practice. If I use your suggestion, I will have to export about 6 tables and ask the admin to fill out tens of fields without all of them being mandatory or necessary. If you were in the admin shoes, would you like this approach?

If I am lonely in this request, I appologise and I will find a way to handle it on my own. 

Thank you,
Adrian

 

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