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Introduction

Feeds are templates for building specific files of product data that are submitted to or fetched by your advertising and selling channels. GoDataFeed contains 200+ channel templates. If you cannot find your desired channel in GoDataFeed, then you can either build a custom feed template or contact us for further assistance.

In the following sections of this article, we will explain how to setup your feed and submit it to your advertising or selling channels.

Sections

Best Practices
Feed process steps
Triggering a feed either manually or on a schedule
"Compile" vs. "Submit" vs. "Pull/Fetch"
Setting up your feed

Best Practices

Use your product data

Download and refer to your imported product data while completing your feed setup

Go to Products > Catalog > Download
Open the zipped .csv file in your favorite spreadsheet application

Compile & review your feed data

Compile your feed often to review your setup and to ensure your mapping, filters, categories and rules correct

Fix validation errors using mapping, categories or rules

Check your feed's validation status for any validation warnings/errors or channel processing report errors (at least once a week for maintenance)

Understanding field abbreviations: [P].[ProductFields] vs. [F].[FeedFields]

You will see field abbreviations when mapping and building rules for your data feed. Below are the definitions of the field abbreviations:

[P] is for product fields - data fields populated from your imported product data, including the primary source and any merge files

[F] is for feed fields - data fields populated from the given feed mapping

Feed process steps

Whether you manually trigger a feed or it is triggered by the scheduled hour, the feed process will go through steps to map, filter, categorize, customize and validate your data from your sources to feed files. Then, the files are ready to be fetched by the channel or submitted to a channel via FTP or API.

Process is triggered by manually selecting "compile" or "submit" in the app or by a scheduled import
Mapping data into the template from imported product fields or static values
(Optional) Filters & manual exclusion/inclusions remove/include SKU rows from the feed
(Optional) Category mappings and rules apply channel taxonomy values
(Optional) Custom rules modify and update data according to their execution sequence
Validation analyzes product data for missing required fields, invalid format, recommended fields and any optimization
Feed preview and validation files are written as CSV files, as well as any channel specific files like XML
(Optional) At this point, the feed file is ready to be fetched/pulled via URL
(Optional) Finally, when submitting the feed manually or on schedule, the system sends the feed files to the destination channel using the submission parameters

Triggering a feed either manually or on a schedule

Feeds are triggered either from the front-end of the app by clicking on buttons in the UI or by scheduled imports/submissions.

Compiling the feed builds the output files, as well as the feed preview and validation.
Submitting the feed both builds the output file and then sends it to the channel.

When a channel fetches the feed from the provided URL, then our system provides the last compiled feed file. Each new import will compile any feed template that has been pulled recently to prepare the feed to be pulled thereafter.

"Compile" vs. "Submit" vs. "Pull/Fetch"

Before we continue, allow us to define some terms so you may better understand different steps better.

Process term	Definition
Product Import	Product data is first downloaded in the cloud from your source(s), then parsed and imported into our internal database for use in one or more of your feed templates. Product imports can be manually triggered, but are most often ran nightly or on a daily schedule of your choosing.
Product Download	When you download the imported product data from our system to your own computer, we will provide a zipped file containing all of the desired products and columns so you can review the data in a program like Microsoft Excel or Notepad++.
Feed Compilation	Compiling a feed runs all steps from mapping, filters, categories, custom rules, validation, and so on to produce the feed files which are kept in a feed folder along with a CSV formatted preview and validation list file. Feed compilations can be manually triggered, but are most often ran after an import completes before being submitted or pulled.
Feed Download	Similar to the feed download, when you download the feed folder from our system to your own computer, we will provide a zipped folder containing a preview and validation list as well as the output file(s) for the channel so you can review the data in a program like Microsoft Excel or Notepad++.
Feed Submission	Submitting the feed send the output file(s) to the channel using the feed settings. Feeds which are scheduled to submit on a particular hour are first queued as "submission pending import". Once the import completes, the feed compiles and then submits to the channel. API feeds will then attempt to retrieve a processing report from the channel to get the results of the feed submission.
Feed Pull	After every import, our system will check for feeds that have been pulled in the last 30 days and will compile those feeds so they are ready to be pulled. Feeds can be pulled by a channel from a provided URL found in the feed settings. You will want to coordinate your import schedule to allow enough time to import and compile your feeds before the channel pulls or fetches the feed.

Setting up your feed

Once you have added the desired channel template to your store, you will need to turn it into a feed. You will need to map your product data, choose which products to send to the channel, categorize your products according to the channel's taxonomy, and then configure to when and where the feed will submit.

Mapping

The system will automatically map system fields to required fields. By default, fields like Sku, Price, URL, ImageURL, Brand, Description and Title, will be populated from the source data. You can add or remove these default field mappings.

Then, you can map more of your product data by mapping a source field or static value.

Filters

There are three ways products can be excluded from a feed:

Filter rules
Manual exclusions
Validation errors

Using Filters to exclude groups of products

Filter rules allow you to exclude many products based on data values or empty fields. In this example, a filter rule is created to exclude gift cards. Filters are inclusion rules which means you will need to write the conditions in a manner which correctly includes only products you want to include in the feed.

In the example below, the conditions are created to only include products which page_title does not contain "gift card" and Category does not equal to "Gift Card". If you want to create the same rule, then your conditions will be different depending on your product data.

Notes about feed filters

An unfiltered feed includes all products from your product catalog unless you manually exclude them on the product validation page
When we compile your feed, each rule is executed and products that do not meet the rule conditions are removed from the feed
You can manually exclude or include individual skus that are affected by filters using the options in the table on the Products page
You may also filter products at the product catalog import level using import filters (requires Ultimate plan)

Rules

Rules allow you to apply logic to your product data to update or modify field attributes, add third-party tracking, replace text in your data, calculate number values and generally improve product listing quality.

Creating a feed rule

In the desired Feed, go to Rules
Click the plus button
Name your rule
Under SET, select the feed field you want to change
Under TO, enter the desired value for your selected field by either typing it or choosing from either your imported Product [P] data or Feed [F] data from the drop-down menu
Choose whether to apply the rule to "All products" or "Some products"
If you want to apply a rule to only some products, then write the conditions for the rule
Save

Feed rule functions

Concatenation

Concatenation allows you to join fields or values together, like you would using a Excel function.

Append fields and static values to optimize titles or other feed fields

For example, you could join your brands and titles or you could append colors to the end of your titles or units of measure to shipping dimensions.

Brand + Title = "TREK Basketball Shoes"
Title + " - " Color = "Boys shirt - Blue"
Shipping length + " in" = "3.5 in"

Text replacement

Text Replacement rules allow you to replace or remove text in your feed data with a custom rule. Here are some examples of how you can use replace text functions.

Standardize capitalization

Remove "Free Shipping" language

Fix duplicate values

Remove values completely

To remove a value completely, you can leave the Replace value field empty and the system will remove any references to your Replace value from that custom rule's feed field data.

See more at our article: Text replacement

Calculator

Number Function rules allow you to modify numeric fields in your feed data with a custom rule.

For example, follow the formula below to add 50% to your prices:

`[[` `[P].[price]` `+` `(` `[P].[price]` `*` `.5` `)` `]]`

This is how your custom rule would look in our app.

See more at our article: Calculator function

Append UTM parameters to URLS

Use concatenation to append UTM tracking parameters to product URLS.

Use Google's Campaign builder tool to brainstorm your parameters. Then, use dynamic product data or static values to build your rule.

Example custom rule using concatenation to append UTM parameters to dynamic urls.

Learn more by reading our article: Concatenate UTM parameters to product URLs

Duplicate Conditions

Make similar rule conditions faster by duplicating the condition and changing the one or two values that are different rather than writing the entire condition repeatedly each time. For example, we want to write the rule condition "where title contains 'red' or title contains 'blue' or title contains 'green'". Now, we can duplicate the first condition row and only change the value from red to blue and green instead of writing the entire condition row.

Template Settings

These are settings to modify the feed template, feed file and processing reports. These settings are locked for common feed templates which are used by all stores in the app. If you want to customize any of the template settings or add/remove any feed fields or validation rules, then you must first clone the common feed. Custom feed templates allow you to modify these settings because the custom feed is only available to your store or account.

Feed Settings

Submit your feed to the channel by completing the submission parameters. This may require FTP, API, or other details from the channel. Please refer to our channel specific articles for more information. Otherwise, you can also configure the feed file settings, email alerts, submission schedule, or generate a feed pull url.

Some important actions to complete on this page include:

Name your file using the text box on the left, if needed
Add your email address to be informed when the feed succeeds and/or fails to submit
Complete the channel specific submission parameters
Add a submission time for when you want us to submit the feed (this means import your source data, compile the feed, and submit the feed to the channel)
Generate a feed pull URL to provide in your channel's settings (i.e. Facebook)

Here are some examples of publishing your feed to different channels:

Feed setup