Froogle Feed

[domino1]

My Froogle feed file doesn't seem to contain any of my products that have components, attributes and choices.

Is this a known issue with V8 or have I broken something?

Many Thanks

Dave

[cdicken]

How odd - this isn't a known issue with v8. Certainly my default v8 store exports correctly. Try checking whether the 'Exclude Products that Cannot be Purchased Online' box is checked. See whether unchecking this makes a difference.

[domino1]

Hi Chris.
The only box I have ticked is 'Include Tax ...'. Have been digging a little deeper though:

The way I have my products set up is to have price of zero on the main product and then full price on the options.

i.e.

Widget: £0.00
Size 1: £9.95
Size 2: £9.95

If I generate a Froogle Feed file, Widget doesn't appear in it. If I now change Widget to have a main price of say £0.01 then generate another feed file then Widget appears in it.

Dave

[cdicken]

What's your pricing model set to? Is it 'Sum of Component Prices' or 'Sum of Product and Component Prices'. If it's the former, try changing it to the latter.

[domino1]

It was 'Sum of Component Prices' but tried 'Sum of Product and Component Prices' and this hasn't made a difference. The only way I can get a product included in the feed is by having product price > 0.

[cdicken]

OK - I see you are right. I guess the assumption here is that a product shouldn't appear in Froogle if it has zero price.

You will need to change your pricing to maybe have the product with the basic ('starts from') price, and then the components and choices supply just the extra cost.

[domino1]

OK understood. Is this is a workaround? Will it be fixed in a future release? I 'd rather not have to put a base price in for every product as this doesn't mirror the pricing model for most of our products and will be painful to maintain.

[cdicken]

Don't think so. Trouble is, I don't think Froogle will list any products that have a zero price. You may have to put in a token price to get the products in the export file, and then edit the prices afterwards to something realistic.

[domino1]

Was hoping Actinic would do the formatting and generate 'Product - Size 1' and 'Product - Size 2' instead of a base product and two options.

I guess to do this there would need to be some way of specifying whether the 'choices' are parameters that describe the main product (eg size) or additions to the main product (eg batteries).

The above scenarios are completely different but the method that actinic uses to handle them appears to be 'cludged' into one.

[wjcampbe]

Bit unfair there Dave. Actinic gives you the opportunity to do it, buy you choose to have one product with two options in preference to having two products.

[domino1]

I see your point Bill and did wonder whether I was being overly critical but the site that I'm currently working on has products that don't seem to fit the structure. Take a look at this page:

MustadUltraPoint

To list each one of these as a separate product would result in a hideous layout.

Having to define a base price and then an additional cost for each size that exceeds the base price is also messy in this scenario.

If there was a checkbox that told the Froogle feed generator to treat the 'choices' as individual products the problem would be solved.

...Admittedly I could be the only Actinic user that would like this functionality in which case it obviously wouldn't be in Actinic's best interest to add it but it seems to me like a feature that other users might be interested in.

[Bodykits]

Zero prices in froogle feed

Dave, hopefully this may help:

Heres what I do.
Create the basic product (probably cheapest one) with the price,
Add component and choices with the 1st choice linking to the main product and add the rest linked to others as required.
Set pricing model to component price with no order line for main product.
This way all products have a price and will be uploaded to Froogle and if you use Sage to update prices like I do theres no need for any manual editing in Actinic. And also in Froogle your cheapest price is displayed.
It Works for me

[Jan]

Was hoping Actinic would do the formatting and generate 'Product - Size 1' and 'Product - Size 2' instead of a base product and two options.

The products in your froogle feed have to match those shown on your web page, so if Actinic were to do as you suggest, your feed would be rejected.

Regards,

[domino1]

Thanks Phil. I've done as you suggested. My custom layout has prices in the table with the buy button for each choice so one small side effect is that I end up with a main price as well as my individual choice prices for each product. Have solved this by introducing a variable to stop main price from being displayed when the product has choices.

My products that have choices now appear in the froogle feed. Problem solved!

[domino1]

Why would the feed be rejected Jan? The products in the feed WOULD match those shown on the web page.

See the following page for example..

MustadUltraPoint