Setting up a Product Catalog for Merchandising

This article shows implementation leads and backend developers how to connect a dedicated Product Catalog to Merchandising, so Boosted Campaigns and Customized Feeds can search, filter, and select your products. 

Why use a dedicated Product Catalog for Merchandising?

Merchandising requires a connected Product Catalog to work: both Boosted Campaigns and Customized Feeds rely on direct access to your catalog to search, filter, and select products. The Recommendation Engine also uses a Product Catalog, but setting up a separate one dedicated to Merchandising gives you two advantages:

• Custom column names: The Merchandising destination lets you define your own column names when creating CustomFields. The Recommendation Engine schema instead uses fixed names like CustomField1 and CustomField2, which can be hard to keep track of inside the Merchandising interface.
• Independent data control: A separate Dataflow gives you full control over which data flows into Merchandising, and in what shape, independently of what goes to the Recommendation Engine or Search.

Prerequisites

• Access to the Data Manager. 
• Familiarity with the Data Manager basics (Sources, Schemas, Dataflows). See Introduction to the Data Manager.

How to set up a Product Catalog for Merchandising 

Step 1: Create a Source and Schema

1. In the Data Manager, go to the Sources tab and create a new Source with a clear name, such as Product Catalog - Merchandising. 
2. Go to the Schemas tab and click Create new schema.
3. In the Select destination dropdown, choose Merchandising.
4. In the Select type dropdown, choose Product Catalog, and give the schema a name.
   
   
5. Add your product fields. Alongside the default fields (ProductNumber, ProductUrl, ProductName, RetailPrice, and so on), the schema lets you add custom columns with names you choose, for example ProfitMargin, SupplierName, or SeasonTag, instead of mapping them to a generic CustomField slot.
6. Click Save schema. 

Step 2: Create a Dataflow

1. In the Dataflows tab, click + Create new dataflow.
2. Give the Dataflow a name, select the Source you created in Step 1, and in Select destination, choose Merchandising.
   
   
3. Follow the remaining setup steps as described in Introduction to the Data Manager.
4. In the Transform & Map step, add the Merchandising schema you created in Step 1, and map your product catalog fields, including any custom columns you defined.
5. For Activate, set the Dataflow to run daily. This is sufficient for most cases, since the catalog is fully overwritten at each run.