Forthcoming Google Product Feed changes

[FrazerPart]

In the last few days, Google have announced that there are a number of changes coming into effect in September with regards to the feed data that is required to make use of this service.

(see http://googlemerchantblog.blogspot.c...e-product.html for more details)

An "Availability" status attribute is going to become a requirement and it will have four values:-

The availability attribute only has four accepted values:

•'in stock': Include this value if you are certain that it will be delivered (or be in transit to the customer) in 3 business days or less. For example, if you have the item available in your warehouse.
•'available for order': Include this value if it will take 4 or more business days to deliver it to the customer. For example, if you don’t have it in your warehouse at the moment, but are sure that it will arrive within the next few days. For unreleased products, use the value 'preorder'
•'out of stock': You’re currently not accepting orders for this product.
•'preorder': You are taking orders for this product, but it’s not yet been released.

Is there a way that Actininc v9 can help generate this information for me?

[leehack]

Read the inbuilt help on creating a variable, then create your own and add the 4 options (choices). Set the variable to be shown on products and it will then be there on each product for you to set. If ALL products will be the same, you can set up the value on the variable and each product will inherit that value automatically, meaning it would be about 3 minutes work to add it and apply it to all products. Even if you will have different values for your products, when you create the variable apply the most common value as the default value and you will only need to change products that are not that value then.

[FrazerPart]

Ok thanks Lee.
But is there a way that the built in stock control with Actinic could switch the variable between "in stock" and "out of stock" and vice versa as actual Actinic stock levels rise and fall?

[leehack]

Not that i know of and how could that work anyway, so you make a sale, take a product OOS and need to export for Google and send a new feed? Doesn't sound practical, how do you envisage it working?

What you want (i think) is Google to link into the actinic stock control system and update the details held against each product automatically, so no feed is required to update said measure. That's a distant pipe dream and not going to happen IMO.

[microbattery]

image and product type

I understand that it is not possible, however there seems to be a request for:
1.product type :breadcrumb
can we use sections actinic uses for the breadcrumb?
2.additional image link :
how can we use the image link used in the extended popup page?
if yes, i would be greatfull for some help with it.

[leehack]

OK, thanks for the info.

[FrazerPart]

No Lee, that isn't what I was asking for.
What I am wanting to do is prepare accurate data for the google feed. Automatic uploads hasn't been mentioned and at present, I'm still happy to manually upload the feed data as and when I am ready to.

I merely asked if there was a way to connect the stock control feature within Actinic to the product variable that you were suggestion to minimise the amount of management that would be required
e.g. a number of products are sold online and Actinic stock control switches the product to "Out of Stock".
When this happens, the "Availability Status" attribute/Actinic product variable would then switch from being "available" to "out of stock"

I want to submit accurate data to Google. I don't want to spend my day manually going through all the products when stock is on back order. I am trying to explore solutions. If there really is no other solution than having a default value of "available" then that is what I'll go with

[microbattery]

Is there any one with an option?

[Mike Hughes]

The stock feature in the feed is something Actinic can't do yet (but I'm sure they and Mole end are likely to be looking at).

The only way I can see of doing this (semi) automatically in the meantime is:

1. Create an Availability variable for the feed as Lee suggest.
2. Use an external program such as excel or access to look at the available stock in actinic and set the variable to the correct value.

This is going to take a bit of time, effort and knowledge to set up so I'd probably suggest an email to Jan at Mole End is going to be your best option.

Mike

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Is there not an option to exclude out of stock items from the feed completely already.
There is certainly an option that says 'Exclude products that cannot be ordered online", but am unsure if this includes out of stock items or not.

I thought the previous Google policy was that out of stock products should not be listed in the feed, although can't find the policy wording I read.

[Darren B]

The stock feature in the feed is something Actinic can't do yet (but I'm sure they and Mole end are likely to be looking at).

The only way I can see of doing this (semi) automatically in the meantime is:

1. Create an Availability variable for the feed as Lee suggest.
2. Use an external program such as excel or access to look at the available stock in actinic and set the variable to the correct value.

This is going to take a bit of time, effort and knowledge to set up so I'd probably suggest an email to Jan at Mole End is going to be your best option.

Mike

Jans mash already includes the option to exclude out of stock products, has done for many moons.

So im with you mike, speak to jan at mole end