ChannelAdvisor

The ChannelAdvisor feed creates a feed file that contains the products from your shop. ChannelAdvisor contains up to 44 pieces of information about each of your products, the majority of this information is taken from the Actinic database. Any additional information can be defined on a shop basis (for all products) or on a product basis (using custom vars).

Output Filename

Type in the name of the file to store the ChannelAdvisor information to (including the directory). This is the name of the file that ChannelAdvisor will be expecting on their website (name registered when your ChannelAdvisor account was set-up). This file must end with .csv (e.g. channeladvisor.csv).

Products to Include
You can choose which products to include based upon a custom variable. This is very similar to the Exclude from Froogle Feed/Google Product Search Data Feed setting within Actinic.If you tick Check value before including you can choose a custom variable (clicking on the Set button) you are shown the following dialog:



You can then select the custom variable to use to determine if you want to include this product in the feed. You can set the default value to True (include in feed) or False (don't include in feed). This value will be used if a custom variable value has not been assigned to a product.

Note: When you create a custom value you should set its type to True/False.

Server to upload ChannelAdvisor feed to

The default server and the main ChannelAdvisor server is ftp.channeladvisor.com. Leave the connection type as Use passive FTP unless you have problems connecting to the server.

The Username and Password are the name and password that were created for you when you set-up your FTP access on the ChannelAdvisor website.

Delivery Costs

Delivery costs are an optional value to send to ChannelAdvisor. If you want to send delivery costs add the ShippingPrice property with a value of !!DeliveryCost!!.

The options in this section are used to define the possible shipping costs for each item. There are 3 main categories of delivery options.

            Free Delivery

            No additonal amounts are added to the item’s price.

            Fixed Price Charge

            You always add this amount to each item’s price. You can enter a price at which the

            delivery is free.

            Calculated Delivery Charge

The delivery charges are calculated using the settings that you specified within Actinic. You must select a single option for Calculate by, Zone, Class and any Free delivery.

Properties

You can Add, Edit or Amend your property. When you Add or Edit a property the following dialog is displayed :

Variable

The property type can either be a standard ChannelAdvisor type or you can specify your own. In the example, a shop is selling items from different manufacturers so the manufacturer is picked up from the product’s Manufacturer Custom Variable.

NOTE : If you want to override the default values generated from your Actinic product details you can do this by supplying your own values (fixed or from a CustomVar). You can override the following values by selecting the relevant Standard Variable (in the Variable section). For example,  to use a different image for the product when displayed in ChannelAdvisor (from your Actinic shop) you would select the ReferenceImageURL Standard Variable. You would then define a fixed value or use a CustomVar to get the image to display (for example, http://www.ObeliskHoldings.TV/graphics/house3.gif).

OfferName

Name of product. This defaults to the product name provided in Actinic.

OfferDescription

Description of product. This defaults to the main product description defined in Actinic.

ReferenceImageURL

Image to use for the product. This defaults to the image defined in Actinic for the product.

CurrentPrice

Cost of the product. This defaults to the calculated price within Actinic.

Value

To have the same value for all of your products select the Use Text option. To have a different value for a shop section select Section under Type. To have a different value for each product select Product as Type. If Use CustomVar has been selected you should select a CustomVar (defined within Actinic and values assigned for each product) to retrieve the information from.

If you are using Actinic V8 you would create CustomVars by creating Variables in the Design Library. You would normally create these in the General Group. Also add in a Default value to use for the product. This will be used if a Custom Var hasn’t been used for a product.