Sync and publish
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      2. 2 - Product management in Bluestone PIM
      3. Sync and publish

      Sync/publish product information (new version)

      Please be aware that this new version of the Sync feature will replace the deprecated version. Organizations currently utilizing the deprecated version will transition to the new version upon mutual agreement. The new version will automatically be enabled for all new organizations.

      You need to be given explicit permission to sync product information.
      Managed roles having this permission: System Admin, PIM Admin and PIM Write.

      General

      Sync new products

      Sync updates for a single published product

      Sync updates for some published products    Sync updates for all published products

      Start sync    View sync progress and status

      View the sync report    Handle sync issues

      New version highlights

      The main goal of the Sync/Publish redesign project was to optimize the performance. This has resulted in a faster and more efficient sync process.

      The main functional differences from the former version are:

      General

      To make your product information available externally, it must be synchronized/published to the public API (PAPI). The Sync feature is utilized for publishing new products, updating information for already published products and de-publishing products.

      Product information must be flagged for publishing in PIM to ensure that product information is not published before being ready. Therefore, only the following products can be synchronized to PAPI, allowing for information to be published in relevant channels:

      • Draft products in status 'To be published'.
      • Published products with unpublished changes. 

      Note! Information about catalogs/categories, attributes and relations is automatically made available/updated/made unavailable in PAPI when any product sync is performed.


      Please refer to Public API reference and/or Get started with Public API for details on how to retrieve product information via PAPI.

      Sync new products

      New products are initially in status Draft. When such a product is ready to be published, do the following:

      1. Update the status to 'To be published' either by selecting Publish from the grid:



        or by selecting Publish from the details panel:

      2. The status is now updated to 'To be published' and marked by an orange dot added to the draft icon. The product will be published during the next Sync session.

      3. If you need to get an overview of all draft products ready for publishing, use the Status filter:



        Tip! Please see Find a product on how to set up your Filters.
      4. To sync one/more products, select the relevant products from the grid and click Sync from the menu:

      Please see Start sync for the next steps.

      Sync updates for a single published product

      If you have made changes to a product, and want to publish these updates as soon as possible, do the following:

      1. Click the 3-dots menu at the top of the product's details panel:

      2. Select Sync.

      Please see Start sync for the next steps.

      Sync updates for some published products

      Already published products updated in PIM since the last sync are automatically marked by an orange dot added to the published icon.

      To publish changes for one/more of these products, do the following:

      1. Get an overview of these products by using the Unpublished changes filter:



        Tip! Please see Find a product on how to set up your Filters.
      2. Select relevant products from the grid and click Sync from the menu:



      Please see Start sync for the next steps.

      See also how to Sync all changed products in one operation.

      Sync updates for all published products

      All published products that have been updated in PIM since the last sync was performed (products with unpublished changes), can be synchronized in one go.

      If you want to look through these products on beforehand, use the Unpublished changes filter. Please see Find relevant products for more information.

      Do the following:

      1. Click the Sync button in the upper right corner of the Products page.

        The Sync changed products button presents the number of products updated since the last sync. You can also see information about the latest (pending/in progress/completed) sync sessions:
         

        Tip! Click View all to go to the System monitor for viewing details about all pending/in progress/completed sync sessions.

      2. Click Sync changed products.

      Please see Start sync for the next steps.

      Start sync

      The sync/publish process can be triggered from different starting points. Once a sync  is initiated, the following window is presented: 

      If one or more products selected for sync have validation errors, the following warning will be presented in addition:

      Please see Handling validation errors for more information.
      1. If your organization has more than one context, select one/more Contexts to sync product data for. 
      2. Click Sync to start the session. The following information is presented for an org. having one context:

        For an org. having more than one context, the pop-up includes information about the number of contexts:


        Note: Depending on other sync sessions and the number of products included in the sync, new/updated information might not be immediately available in PAPI.

        You can follow up on the sync session from the System monitor. Please see View sync progress and status on how to find details about your sync session.
      3. When all products are successfully synced, the following pop-up is presented:


        If one/more products were not synced due to some validation error, the pop-up will contain information like this:

        Please see Handling validation errors for details

        If the sync session failed due to some system error, the pop-up will contain information like this:


        Please see View the sync report on how to find and utilize the sync report.

      Handling validation errors

      Before a product can be synced, it must be valid according to the requirements defined in PIM. An asynchronous validation process checks the validity of a product once an update is done. 

      If one or more products selected for sync have validation errors (e.g. a missing a mandatory attribute value), the following (yellow) warning is presented when starting the sync process (example from an org. having more than 1 context):

      The warning states "might not be synced" because these errors might be corrected before the sync is run.

      Now you have two options; Correct the validation errors (Cancel) or Ignore the validation errors (Sync). 

      Correct validation errors

      Click Cancel to correct the errors before performing sync. Then do the following:

      1. Go to Filters to find the relevant products by using the Errors field. Please see Find relevant products for details.
      2. For each product, open the details panel and go to the Product issues tab. Find information about the validation error(s) in the Other validations section.

      3. Click the pencil icon (Edit) to make corrections. E.g. for a missing attribute value, the following page is presented:

      4. When all errors are corrected, the sync process can be started again.

      Ignore validation errors

      Click Sync to start the sync even though one/more of the products have validation errors. Products having validation errors will be omitted.

      Please see Start sync for the next steps.

      View sync progress and status

      You can follow the progress and view details of each sync from the System monitor. Do the following:

      1. Go to the System monitor and find the relevant Sync products entry:



      2. Click the sync session you want to inspect. The details panel is opened:



      3. Click Show sync report to view details about the sync.
        Please see View the sync report for details on how to utilize the report.

      View the sync report

      A Sync report is created for each sync session and is available from the System monitor. Please see View sync progress and status for details.

      The report consists of two parts:

      1. An overview summarizing:
        • The total number of products the sync was initiated for.
        • The number of products that were successfully synced.
        • The number of products that failed to be synced.
      2. For each selected context:
        • The number of added (new) products.
        • The number of modified products.
        • The number of unpublished products.

      Please see Handle sync issues for details on how to fix any reported issues.

      Handle sync issues

      There are two different sync issues. In the System monitor you will find the Status of each initiated sync session:

      • With issues
        The sync session was successful, but one/more products could not be synced for some reason. Please see Syncs with issues.
      • Failed
        The sync session failed. Please see Failed syncs.

      Syncs with issues

      In some cases, the sync session finishes successfully, but one or more products were not synced for some reason. 

      We will be using the example from the section Handling validation errors where one product has a validation error.

      Do the following to fix issues with products that could not be synced:

      1. From the System monitor, open the relevant Sync entry having status With issues. Please see View sync progress and status for details.

      2. Click Show sync report. The following page is presented:



        In this example, sync was initiated for 1 product, but this product could not be synced. At the bottom of the page you will find a summary per context.

        Tip! Click the arrow button in the top right corner to Download the sync report in XLSX or CSV format.

      3. Click the View issues button for detailed information about what went wrong. The following page is presented:



        Each type of issue found is listed together with the number of products this applies to. You can hover the question mark icon to get more details:

      4. Click the Go to products button on the right-hand side to open these products in the Products grid.
      5. Go to the Product issues tab for each product to correct errors. Please see Correct validation errors for details.
      6. When all issues are catered for, the sync can be initiated again.

      Failed syncs

      Sometimes the sync session itself might fail. In these cases, no products are synced and a pop-up like this will be presented:

      In the following, we will use an example of a product selected for sync residing in a category missing translation in the context selected for sync.

      Do the following to fix issues causing the sync to fail:

      1. From the System monitor, open the relevant Sync entry having status Failed. Please see View sync progress and status for details.

      2. Click Show sync report. The following page is presented:


        The information given states that the sync session failed due to missing translations.
      3. Click the View details link. The following page is presented:



        Each issue found will be listed together with the number of products this applies to. In our example, there is 1 translation error for Categories. 
      4. Click the Go to button on the right-hand side to open the relevant page for fixing the issue. In our example, the link routes to the Translations page.
      5. Correct errors/missing information, e.g. missing translations for categories in the given context. 
      6. When all issues are catered for, the sync can be initiated again.