Let a supplier update your product content (and why it is off)
Every field Everstock can write has two choices: whether it fills in products Everstock creates, and whether it updates products you already have. Updates to products you already have start off for everything except stock. So Everstock never rewrites your titles, descriptions or other content until you turn that field on yourself.
Where the settings live
Open Connections, choose the connection, and scroll down. The settings are split into sections:
- What syncs: Stock, Price and Metafields.
- Supplier price rules: currency conversion, markup and rounding. It appears once Price updates existing products. See Set price rules for a supplier.
- Variants & new products: Create missing products, and New variants on existing products. See Create products for supplier items you do not stock yet and Sync products with variants.
- Collections: appears when the feed has categories. See Add products to collections from supplier categories.
- All fields: everything else, grouped under Product details, Variant details, Media, SEO and Organisation.
Changes save with Save in the Shopify admin save bar at the top of the screen. There is no save button on the page.
A field the supplier's feed does not carry is not shown as a row. It is named in a line that starts "Not in this supplier's feed". Map it first if your feed does have it. See Map your supplier fields to your store.
On new products and On existing products
Each row has two checkboxes.
On new products decides whether the value fills in a product Everstock creates. It only matters while Create missing products is on. It never changes a product you already have.
On existing products decides whether each sync writes the value onto products you already have. Under each row in What syncs, a short line says what that means for the field, for example "When ticked, On existing products replaces the value on products you already have, every sync."
Some checkboxes are locked, and the row says why:
- Price on new products is always on while Create missing products is on, so nothing is created at 0.00.
- SKU on existing products reads "Used to match products, so it's never changed". Everstock uses the SKU and barcode to find your product, so it never rewrites them.
- Barcode and Metafields can only be set on new products for now, so their On existing products checkbox is locked off.
When you map a metafield row and save, Everstock turns on On new products for Metafields for you. A banner headed "Mapped fields are now used on new products" says so. Untick it if you do not want it, and it stays off.
If a save could not apply a change, a banner headed "Some field changes weren't saved" lists each one and why. Everything else you changed is saved.
What "overwrite" means
Once On existing products is on for a field like Title, every sync compares the supplier's value with your product. If they differ, the supplier's value replaces yours. If you edited a title by hand, the next sync puts the supplier's title back. There is no "only fill in blanks" mode. The All fields section warns about this in a banner headed "These fields overwrite your product data".
A blank supplier value is never written. An empty feed value counts as "no value", so a thin feed cannot wipe a field you already have.
Description is written as HTML, exactly as the supplier sends it.
Images are different: they are only ever added, never replaced. See Sync images, SEO, compare-at price, cost and weight.
Tags
Tags have one more setting, Tags on existing products, with Replace and Merge. Choose Replace. Merging tags is not built yet, so a save with Merge keeps tag updates off and tells you why.
With Replace, the supplier's tag list becomes the product's whole tag list. Tags you or another app added by hand are removed. A feed that sends no tags at all leaves your tags alone.
To protect one product without turning a field off for all of them, add its supplier SKU or barcode to Ignore list (optional) in Approval & exclusions. An ignored record is dropped before anything is compared, so nothing on that product is written. See Exclude items and cap quantities.
Products with several variants
Title, description, vendor, product type and tags belong to the product, not to one variant. If two variants of the same product send different values for the same field, the first value is written. The other row gets a note in the Message column saying another variant's values were used.
What it looks like in a run
Open the run from Sync history. A record where only product content changed reads Product fields changed in the Change column. If stock or price changed too, the Change column names that instead.
The Fields changed column lists one line per field, like Title: Old name → New name. The run's CSV has the same detail in its changes column. Near the top of the run page, a line such as "This run did not change: title, description, vendor, product type, tags, images." names the fields this connection does not update.
Turning a field on for the first time
By default, a sync writes what it finds. So a field you turn on starts overwriting on the next real sync. Save, then click Preview changes before a scheduled sync runs. The preview opens a window titled "Preview: proposed changes" with the banner "Nothing has been written to Shopify". Read the Fields changed column, or use Download CSV.
If the connection has Hold changes for my approval turned on, a field you just turned on waits for you instead. Its first real sync holds that field as Planned, while stock and the fields you already sync keep writing. Open the held run and click Approve and sync to let it through.
A field can also be held later, on its own, when a run's changes look unusual. For example, it would touch far more products than normal, or a description would shrink to a small part of its old length. See Held changes and approval.
If you change your mind
Untick On existing products and save. Future syncs stop writing that field. This does not bring back values that were already overwritten. To undo a run's changes, use Revert run on the run page within 30 days. A revert puts back earlier values unless they have changed since. See Read the per-record audit trail.
Need help? Visit the support page or email hello@usenormalize.com.