Importing the eCommerce catalog is done in almost the same way as when importing products into the products module in Service Suite. 

Because all the products contained in your eCommerce catalog will be distributed to your customers, you might however wish to leave out certain products from this catalog.

First of all you have to export all the products that you wish to distribute to your customers in your ERP system to a text file.

When this is done you use Service Suite to define a format that contains information's about which fields the file contains, as well as the position of each field.

 Creating a format for importing the eCommerce catalog.

You can create a format for importing your eCommerce catalog by selecting the menu: "Settings" from the "Main menu" in Service Suite.

The menu now changes and will contain a number of new menus. From this new menu you select the menu: "e-Commerce", which will display the following screen:

The first thing you should do is to select which folder to use for importing the eCommerce catalog. You can select this folder by pressing the button: "Change Folder", which will launch this dialog:

When this folder has been selected we are ready to define the format for importing the eCommerce catalog. This is done by clicking the link: "Change format" besides the "Inventory" ledger, which will launch this dialog:

In order to create a new format, we press the button: "Create new format" and another dialog will appear:

In this dialog you must enter a name for this format, as well as a brief description of the format. You also have to enter the name of the file that you usually will import your eCommerce catalog from. Only the filename itself should be entered, as the path was specified when you selected the import folder.

As many ERP systems have limited export capabilities, you must also select whether the character set used, should be ANSI or ASCII. If you are in doubt try selecting ANSI, and should your local characters be incorrectly displayed, change the format to ASCII.

Which type of file to select depends on your ERP system, but usually comma-separated files are used.

When these information's has been entered you press the button: "Next >", which will take us to the next step of the dialog:

This is where you define which fields that are contained in your text file, as well as the position of each field. For fields that are not included in the file, or fields that you do not wish to be imported, you should enter 0 in the position column besides the field.

The position column is used to specify the position of each field in the text file, in order to match the text file exported from your ERP system. If your text file e.g. contains the "item number" in position 1 and the description in position 2, you should enter 1 in the position column besides the "Item number", 4 besides the "Description" and so on.

When the format has been defined you press the button: "Finish", which will close the wizard and take us to the previous dialog, in which you press the button: "OK".

Now we are ready to import the eCommerce catalog.

 Importing the eCommerce catalog.

The import of the eCommerce catalog is done from the inventory in the eCommerce module of Service Suite. You can find this by selecting the menu: "e-Commerce" from the "Main menu" and then selecting the menu: "Inventory".

Here you click the link: "Import items" from the icon bar, which will launch this dialog:

In this dialog you select the text file that contains your products, as well as the format you have just created, and press the button: "OK". Service Suite will now begin to import your products:

Now all you need to do is to wait for the import to finish, and click the button: "OK".

Now your eCommerce catalog has been imported you can view, and search in, the imported products.

Please note that every time you import your eCommerce catalog, all the existing products contained in your eCommerce catalog will be replaced with the new ones. This is why you must ensure that all the products you wish your eCommerce catalog to contain are exported from your ERP system every time.

Besides importing the eCommerce catalog manually, Service Suite can be configured to do this automatically. You can read more about how to do this in the article: "Can the import and distribution of my eCommerce catalog be automated?".

If you have any questions about how to import the eCommerce catalog in Service Suite, you are always welcome to contact us at: servicesuite@mamut.com