Import Product data to catalog

Hello everyone!

I happy to report that this feature is now live! Pease see our blog post for details and KB articles.

https://www.aleyant.com/new-features-alert-pressero-users-can-now-import-and-export-products-via-excel-file-block-calendar-dates-for-shipping-send-approval-comments-to-end-users/

Yes, we agree. Using a dedicated key for these imports and exports is essential.

It's great to see this forum and active engagement. I'm new to CRW Graphics and Pressero but have been working with storefronts for commercial printing for many years. Best implementations for export and import use GUID and I'm glad that's gotten worked out here.

We plan to have this feature implemented in our next version of Pressero. Pressero V7.

Thank you Michelle for some great examples. I'm adding these comments to the specifications used in creating the feature. We will review during production to make sure we are on track with the feature.

Thanks for the suggestions Mike!

Being able to import/export a product list (and to some extent also the user list) is the biggest feature that is missing from Pressero that is leading us to consider other solutions for future products.

When we have to make changes or add multiple products, we already have all the information in an Excel spreadsheets. Adding each product manually takes us hours more labor, relying on the load speed of each page to open, edit, and save each product. Any automation there is a very good thing.

A recent use-case for us was a company changing the capitalization of their company name. Every title, description, and pricing calculator that mentioned their name had to be updated. There was no easy way to search that information, or replace it. If we could've downloaded a spreadsheet, done a find and replace, and reuploaded the sheet, it would have saved us 6 hours.

Another example - a company wanted to add all of the same items for a new brand. We had to manually duplicate each individual product, change the general info, upload new artwork, save, and then go change the catalog organization for each product - all 200 of them. It would have taken minutes to do in Excel - copy, paste, find and replace the brand name, reupload. Even if we still had to manually add pricing calculators, artwork, and catalog organization, a spreadsheet would save time.

Too address Cynthia point, it would be great to have all those attributes to import. However to make sure the system ties things together I would suggest there be exports for pricing engine, groups, inventory, eDoc templates and maybe more. Each export would also have GUID that could be used in the product upload fields. Another option would be to have the download include those area���s as extra sheets and then use an excel pulldown data validation for those fields. On fields with multiple entries like ���Suggested Products��� all could be in the same cell with the GUID���s separated by ,���s

If there are errors, for example GUID that is not for that site, the whole upload is abort with an error and all data remains unchanged. The last thing I want is something half done.

Mike Taubel | Director of Technology

Burton & Mayer, Inc.

Jim,

Thank you for that! I can give the dev team a real world scenario of why having a key identifier that is not attached to anything but the product itself be used.

Chris,

Regarding the user import, we had a situation where multiple clients were updating their domain name. Since the email address was the key, there was no way to download the user list and change their domain name and update the current records. All it would have done would have been to create new users for each user. That would have caused them to lose their order history, which was not acceptable.

This was further complicated by the fact that for one of the sites, they had a photo that was tied to their user account. I would have had to modify every asset to point to the new account.

Since I couldn't do this, it has caused quite a few headaches. Regardless that we have added instructions to NOT create a new account, but to log in and update their email address on their current, they invariably create a new account, causing me to have to respond to a support request to fix the asset.

Cynthia,

I will ask the dev team if it is possible.

Mike,

Thanks for that information. I will stress the importance of using a GUID as the key identifier to the dev team.

If the GUID is used any field can be changed without causing a problem. I personally have had an import blow up, creating hours of repair time. We use another system that has GUID���s for all imports created from an export and it works great. The GUID makes sure the record I am changing is the one that gets changed no matter what I change. If the imported record is missing a GUID the record is created as new.

Mike Taubel | Director of Technology

Burton & Mayer, Inc.

Would this feature include all the product settings, like attributes and site groups? That would be extremely helpful, so we can export the list and quickly see those items and update if needed.

Sorry to press Jim but I want to get this right and need some specifics.

Why would it be handy for the user import to use a GUID rather than email address?

My question was because for the user import it uses the email address, I believe. It would be incredibly handy for that to use the GUID, but since it doesn't I wanted to ensure that this feature was going to use the GUID.

Thank you Alisson!

Jim,

Great question! It's up to me to provide the use case for the feature, UI and UX. But it will be up to the dev team to figure out how to match excel order to order. That being said I'm pretty sure the GUID will be used, and shown on the Excel file.

Is there a specific reason why you ask about the technical? Maybe you have further need we can build into the feature?

Thanks!

Chris,

This sounds like a terrific solution. Just for my knowledge, will the Excel file include the product's GUID to use as the key? If not, how will the product be identified?

Hi Chris,

I agree with your suggestion and I think it will work fine!

This idea is being seriously considered for production soon. The following is an overview of how we intend to proceed.

Please provide any feedback on this possible solution.

• Allow Excel import and export for the entire product list.

• Provide a blank Excel template for download so it can be used to populate new products for import.

• During import if the product exists update it with new information.

• During import if a product does not exist, create it.

• If there is an error during import specific error information will show so the Excel file can be easily adjusted.

• Load testing on the feature will be done before release to determine a maximum amount of product to be added / updated.

Why this solution?

When using Excel for import and export there is more possibility of bulk changes versus trying to do it in the UI. If we tried to implement bulk changes in the UI subscribers would be limited to the same change repeated over every product updated in bulk. Example would be trying to change the name of multiple products at once.

Excel will provide subscribers with a way to easily bulk edit their entire product catalog with filtering and find/replace.

Load testing is necessary to prevent tremendous upload times and possible timeouts.

Thank you for any feedback.

This is a great feature request! It is something pro services can do for you for a fee right now, but I agree that it would improve the user experience in Pressero for people building websites that have a lot of products per site. To get a quote from pro services for doing this as a project for you, start a ticket at support.aleyant.com, and choose professional services in the dropdown.

The amount of time this would save people is so extensive and most platforms have this option these days. Especially for those of us who wholesale items, and have 100's of items in their product range.