Add products to collections from supplier categories

Suppliers often sort their products into categories, like "Clothing > Shirts". Everstock can use those categories to add products to your Shopify collections. It can use collections you already have, and it can create the ones you are missing. It only ever adds products. It never takes a product out of a collection, and it never deletes a collection.

What your feed needs

The feed has to carry categories:

• WooCommerce: every category on a product is read, with its parent categories, like Clothing > Shirts.
• CSV or spreadsheet: map the Categories column. Separate several categories in one cell with commas, and the levels of one category with ">". See Connect a CSV file or spreadsheet.
• REST API feed: in Field mapping, map the supplier field that holds the categories to Categories. It can hold one category, like Clothing > Shirts, or a list of them. See Map your supplier fields to your store.

Once the feed carries categories, a Collections section appears on the connection page. If you do not see it, the feed has no categories Everstock can read.

Turn it on

Open the connection and find Add products to collections in the Collections section. It has three choices:

• Off is the default. Nothing is added to any collection.
• Collections that already exist adds products to collections you already have. A category with no matching collection goes to review.
• Existing collections, and create missing ones does the same, and creates a collection when none matches.

When you pick one of the last two, two more settings appear.

Apply to has two checkboxes. On new products adds the products Everstock creates. On existing products adds products you already have. Both start ticked.

If you picked Existing collections, and create missing ones, a Publish new collections to your online store checkbox also appears. It is off by default, so new collections are created unpublished and you can review them first. Tick it to publish each collection Everstock creates to your Online Store as soon as it is created.

Collection title decides which part of the category is used as the collection's name:

• Last category level (Shirts) uses only the last part. Clothing > Shirts matches a collection called "Shirts".
• Full category path (Clothing > Shirts) uses the whole path. It matches a collection called "Clothing > Shirts".

Click Save in the Shopify admin save bar. The next real sync adds the products. Run Preview changes first to see what it would do.

How matching works

Everstock compares the category name with your collection titles. Capital letters and extra spaces do not matter, so "summer SHIRTS" matches "Summer Shirts".

A new collection is created with the category name as its title, following your Collection title choice. It is not published unless you ticked Publish new collections to your online store. When that is off, make the collection available on your sales channels in Shopify yourself once you are happy with it. When it is on, Everstock publishes it to your Online Store only. It never publishes to other sales channels, and it never changes a collection that already existed.

Publishing needs one more permission

Publishing a collection needs Shopify's publications permission, which Everstock added after launch. If your store installed Everstock before then, Shopify asks you to approve the new access the next time you open Everstock in your Shopify admin. Until you do, collections are still created, but unpublished, and the run notes "Couldn't publish: Everstock needs permission to publish collections". Open Everstock, approve the request, and the next run publishes new collections. Collections created before you approved stay unpublished, so publish those in Shopify.

When a product goes to review

Two things send a category to review instead of a write. You can see them in the run's Per-record audit.

No matching collection. You chose Collections that already exist, and none of your collections has that name. The Message column reads, for example, "No collection named Hats in your store". Create the collection in Shopify, or switch to Existing collections, and create missing ones.

Collection adds products automatically. The matching collection is an automated (smart) collection. Shopify fills those by its own rules, so Everstock cannot add a product to one. It also never creates a second collection with the same name. The Message column reads, for example, "Collection Sale adds products automatically". Change the collection's conditions in Shopify, or rename one of them.

Add only, never remove

Everstock remembers which products it has added to which collections. It does not add the same product again on every run.

If you take a product out of a collection by hand, Everstock leaves it out. If the supplier drops a category, the product stays in the collection. If you want a product out, remove it in Shopify.

Read it in the run

A product Everstock adds shows Collections in the Change column. The Fields changed column lists each step, like "Add to collection: Shirts" or "Create collection: Hats".

A revert does not undo these. It never removes a product from a collection and never deletes a collection, because you may have built menus or links on them since. In the revert, those rows read Skipped with the message "Everstock never removes products from collections or deletes collections". See Read the per-record audit trail.

Need help? Visit the support page or email hello@usenormalize.com.