When using a Data Source to import jobs and keep products updated you may run into some issues.
The following article goes over some common troubleshooting steps.
Product availability on Data Source
This is a quick tip on how to check if a product is available on the Data Source and also double-check the product properties that are available there.
To check that right from within CF, you would want to go over to the Jobs View and from here create a job using the “scan” function:
If you get the following error message it is very likely that the product is not part of the Data Source file(s) and we suggest double-checking the file itself to confirm the product availability:
While, if the product is available on the Data Source file you will get the following view after scanning/manually inputting the code:
On the left side, you will see all of the properties that are available on the data source allowing you to double-check the property values.
Property updates
You may have noticed that once a product reaches the 'Done' status, some properties are not getting updated while others do. A reason for that might be that the properties you are trying to update are system properties. While you can update a custom property even after the product reaches the Done status, properties that are set as 'standard' in the system can no longer be changed after the product has been delivered to the Asset Delivery location.
Note:
The system properties are properties that you cannot delete
CF only supports encoding UTF-8. If you data is Latin encoding, for example, the data will not be displayed properly in Gamma
Add new columns to the Data Source file
The data you would like to ingest in the system may change from time to time and it's possible to add additional columns to the Data Source file. There are different ways to achieve that and different steps you would like to follow based on the file type you use.
We’ll guide you through the different scenarios below:
Update by using JSON file:
When using a JSON file to import and keep products updated and wanting to add a new property that needs to be mapped, you need to ensure that on the updated Data Source file the very first product on that list, contains a value for the new property you are adding. These changes will then reflect on any new product that is getting imported into the system.
If you want to have the newly added property available on products that already exist in the system you may want to perform a manual update on a product or jobs level:
Update without Delta updates:
If you want to add a new property to your existing Data Source file and in order for Creative Force to sync the new property through, you would either need to upload a new Data Source file or if you want to keep the existing one, change the Data Source settings, save and then change them back in order for CF to resync the data.
Note: We suggest changing the file path (by, for instance, adding a space to the file name), saving, changing back, and then resaving.
Update with Delta file:
You may have updates coming through a Delta file (further information here). When using this method and wanting to add new properties, you would need to consider the following:
The filename must always have an increment for Creative Force to know which file is the latest. We suggest naming the files with a date/time stamp in the format YYYYMMDD. For example Delta_20230602.
The headers of each column in the delta files must exactly match those of the original file.
The new property columns need to be added on the latest Delta file plus the original(main) file.
Note:
After updating the file path or new source file, you will need to re-map the existing columns for CF to validate the file.
Error messages
There are two common error messages that can come up when working with Data Source and using the Delta upload.
Product code not found
Despite having the Delta files named correctly you can see this error. That usually means that the columns of the Delta files and the Main file do not match. Please make sure to always use the exact same naming convention (eg. the capital and lowercase letters can not be switched)
No new Delta file
When seeing the below error message, it can be an indication that the file name of the Delta file has not been set up correctly.
Please make sure to follow the naming as described under the section “Update with Delta file”.
