Feed Columns allows you to map any column to any product attributes, or to directives implementing special logic meant to follow marketplace specifications.

Please check with the marketplace feed specifications to understand what the feed columns should be.

The Column Map grid features the following:

Order - allows you to define the columns order in the feed. Higher numbers go last.
Feed Column - is the name of the column.
Map To - can be either Directive (first options in the dropdown), or a product Attribute.
Options - some Directives accept parameters that can be specified here.

Generally, it is recommended to associate directives (the first grouping in the dropdowns) to corresponding columns. Column names must be exactly as specified by marketplace provider.

When feed is added, depending on the marketplace feed type, a set of columns will be added by default. You can change and add more columns as you see fit, to better match your catalog data onto merchant feed specifications.

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11.1 Columns Map

Static Value

This directive can be used to set a string value for all your products. The parameter accepted is a string value.

Most of the times when all your products have the same constant information, you would want to use this directive instead of setting the same value in an attribute for all your products. One good example is setting the brand information for stores selling only products of the same brand.

In the default set of columns, condition is set to be new using this directive.

Product Id

Primarily this directive will output the product entity_id, and accepts as parameter Add Store Code Yes/No.

For multi-store, ids must be unique across all feeds, and to make them unique, you have the option to concatenate the product id and the store code together.

Product URL

Processes product urls so that they match the type of product and listing in the feed. Set the additional parameter Add URL Suffix to further customize the end of a product URL with custom string.

The suffix can be used to track referring URLs in web analytics software. Setting this to ?utm_source=google_shopping will generate links like: http://mystore.com/product-url.html?utm_source=google_shopping. Products without assigned categories will not use the SEO friendly version of the URL.

Configurable associated products can append to this URL parameters to target their specific variant, see Unique urls for associated products not visible setting under Configurable Products section of the feed config. Those options like color and size would need to be mapped in as columns in the feed.

Item Group ID

The output of this directive is a unique string which depends on your products setup. For associated configurable product that vary by one of the columns: color / material / pattern / size, It would output a unique string through all variants composed using the Parent SKU and other varinat attributes. Those columns would have to be mapped in the Column Map. For all others products it will output empty.

Most common usage for this directive is to output google's item_group_id column.

This directive is designed to make variant products appear as they are separate products in case one of the configurable attribute varies and is not part of the color / material / pattern and size, set. For example if you have a pair of jeans that vary by size and fit, you would want to have Slim and Regular as different products even if all variants are part of the same configurable parent. The item_group_id would be :

SKU1-slim
SKU1-regular

and each of them would have different sizes.

The directive is doing this by concatenating variant attributes values other than color / material / pattern or size to the Parent product SKU, in such way that they are unique per size.

The output limit is at 50 chars, so computed values longer than that will be hashed to fit inside the limit. Ex:

SKU1-786a0b21a65459150fb60e24f2e9be0c2e6904c4
78313ee4cabb3a9d6de8e3948d3de4cd6044400f

All Directives

Product Image URL

Simply pulls the product's main image URL. Allows the option to set under the Type parameter, which images is the main image, by default it's set to Base Image.

If your product does not have an image assigned as the Base Image, your product may be skipped if "image_link" is under "Skip product with empty". If you notice problems, try removing it from skip rule.

Product Category Image URL

Returns category image of the first category assignment found for your product. This should only be used for special cases where product images are defined on the category level.

Product Additional Images URLs

This directive outputs a comma separated list of active image URLs for the product. Under the Exclude Type parameter should be set to the main image of the product, so that only the rest of images are added through this directive.

Price

The price directive aims to match the price displayed on the product page, so it takes into account currency conversions, tax, promotions, MSRP and eco tax. Configurable, bundle and grouped items will have the minimal price of an item. Setting Add Tax option below to Yes will add tax to this price column, for US all prices should not include tax, the appropriate setting should be made here. The price output includes the currency information.

Msrp price is used in this directive when the product has msrp enabled and that value is bigger than the price itself, forcing Sale Price directive to display the regular price.

For products that have qty increments active, it will multiply the amount with the minimum number of items to purchase.

Tier Price

This directive allows you to output price for a specific customer group which is configured in the directive options at the column map. It uses the same format as regular Price directive, and it does not include other price computations like Price directive does.

Sale Price

This directive will output the lowest value for which the product can be purchased at. It computes the Special Price of the product, and any catalog promotion rules according to the Apply Catalog Price Rules setting from General Configuration section. Setting Add Tax option below to Yes will add tax to this price column, for US all prices should not include tax, the appropriate setting should be made here.

When Msrp is enabled, the value of regular price is used here if there are no running promotions at a lower value. Similar to Price directive it takes into account the qty_increments set for the product.

Sale Price Date Range

The date interval is taken primarily from the product's Start / End dates of the special price. This interval will never output empty, so when no end date is specified for the product, the range will be set for a full year. If the start date is not specified on the product, the current processing date is considered.

This date range is mostly useful in the feed along with the Sale Price, specifying when this sale apply.

Availability

Uses regular magento stock information to compute whether a product is on stock or not. When the additional setting Use default Stock Statuses is set to No, a custom attribute specified under Alternate Stock/AvailabilityAttribute, will be used to specify the availability. See more settings under General Configuration section.

Accepted values for this directive are: 'in stock', 'out of stock', and 'preorder'. Other values will be replaced by 'out of stock'.

Inventory Count

Simply pulls the stock inventory qty information. The Count Mode defines how the qty count should be performed in case of complex products like bundle.

Product Expiration in Feed

Computes an expiration date based on product creation and the "No. of Days" option below. Set "No. of Days" option to increase or decrease this date limit.

Shipping

This directive computes shipping information into accepted format, based on the shipping methods available for your products. To use this directive, Shipping section has to be configured on your feed. To specify which Shipping Methods and which regions will be considered please review Shipping section.

Shipping Weight

Outputs the weight attribute of your products along with the unit of measure specified here under options. For bundle products, there's an extra setting called Combined weight found under the Bundle Products section

Variant Attributes (Apparels)

Allows for using multiple product attributes to specify a different value systems for the same property. It comes handy to map apparel specific properties.

Example of size property:

shirts - shirt_size attribute, with values: Small, Large, X-Large, etc
shoes - shoe_size attribute, with values: 8, 9, 10, etc

Using this directive you can select both attributes, and when processing the product, the appropriate value will be considered depending on whether a value is specified in one of the attributes. First attribute found having a value for the product is been used.

For configurable items, all values will be computed into a list of values delimited by comma, or a delimiter specified under Associated Product Attribute Value Separator setting under Configurable products section of the config.

Product Option

This directive is used to output values of product custom options. This directive is used for apparel catalogs which hold the color and size variations as custom options instead of having those properties as configurable products items. It takes as argument the list of custom options names which should hold the values needed for the column you're setting up.

Each custom option in the argument has the number of products affected in the right (x).

The output of this directive also depends on how the Product Options section is configured, and it can be a list of possible values as comma separated, or it can be a single value in case the products is set to detail each options combination as separate row in the feed.

Adwords Price Buckets

This directive uses a set of rules defined under Adwords Price Buckets settings to output labels for different price ranges of your products. A common usage is to add the google custom_label_0 column which is handy to group your products when running AdWords Shopping Campaigns.

To specify the upper limit of your prices, just use some big number like 99999999. See below example image.

Fig 11.2 Adwords Price buckets

Product Review Average

Output product's average rating in the interval 1 - 5. Returns 0 if no reviews have been approved on your product

Product Review Count

Outputs the count of product reviews. Returns 0 if no reviews have been approved on your product.

Type by Magento Category Path

This method is the default way of filling a categorised column of your products that can be used to fill product_type.

Your product category paths are converted into a string revealing the hierarchy like: Root > Categ A > Categ B. Product been assigned to Categ B. All product categories will be used to build a list of comma separated paths, and they are limited to the Paths limit value.

Deeper categories are listed first, so that when the limit is set the most relevant ones are revealed.

Taxonomy By Magento Category

Uses a set of rules defined under the Categories Map setting to output category taxonomies.

Products will be matched through the set of rules using their assigned categories. The first category found with the most important category rules below will be considered. The rule importance is given by the Priority rule column, lower values matching first.

Product categories do not necessarily need to have a direct correspondent rule to cover products deeper in the tree. High level categories set here would dictate inheritance for products deeper in the category tree.

The more categories defied here, the granular your taxonomy definition becomes giving google a better and detailed view of your products.

We recommend that you set all rules with priority value. Setting higher Priority values for high level categories, and lower Priority value for deeper categories will make deeper categories will match first, dictating the output value.

It is advise to also set a Replace empty values rule to cover all missed categories from this set, and fill the values with a static default taxonomy or some product attribute holding the taxonomy.

11.3 Categories Map

Type by Magento Category

Similar to Taxonomy By Category directive, the value is been matched against the type value definition according to the category assigned to products and using the Priority set at each category under Categories Map.

Identifier Exists

This directive looks at your feed columns to see if two out of three of the following: brand, mpn, gtin columns have a value. Those columns are been considered as identification information of products, and if at least two of them are missing, the value returned here will be FALSE

Identifier Attribute

It is meant to output an attribute like UPC, EAN or ISBN. When the attribute's value is missing for a configurable or grouped item, will fetch the value from lowest priced associated item, and if empty for a bundle, will go for the highest priced sub-item.

Concatenate Attributes

Allows you to compose a string using attributes of your products or other column values.

Use product attributes in this format: {{attribute_code}}. Attribute codes available for your products can be looked up under Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attributes. To use other column output in concatenation use the same format: {{column_name}}, and make sure the column is defined in the column map, and it is not mapped to another concatenation directive.

This method works like a replace in string function, and looks for the {{}} marker through the string template to replace it with the attribute or column value as specified.

The following placeholders will inherit values as defined in the 'Fetch ... from' settings from Configurable Products and Grouped Products configuration sections:

{{name}}
{{description}}
{{url}}
{{image}}

If all placeholders bring an empty value when computed, the column output itself will be empty. For example if the template is: "Concatenate of {{name}} and {{size}}"

and {{name}} and {{size}} values in product are empty, the Directive will return empty string. Those values can be caught using Product Filters - Replace.

A special placeholder {{variants}} is available to configure into the concatenation string, this will pull all the configurable attributes of the associated products into the a comma delimited format: "Blue, M, Straight". This placeholder helps to create unique names for associated products and keep the non-configurable products names clean.

For example "{{name}} by {{brand}} - {{variants}}" would result in "3-pack Spoons" for a simple product and "Men Cargo Pants by H&M - Blue, M, Straight" for a configurable variant.

Is Bundle

Outputs TRUE if the item is a bundle item and FALSE otherwise

Promotions ID

This will output the generated ID of promotions feed, if configured under Google Promotions

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