Giving the assistant your product catalog

1. What the assistant does with it

A visitor can ask "which fridge under 60,000 lekë is A++ and in stock?" and get the products that match, with how many matched, the cheapest first if they asked for that.

• Prices and stock are as of the last reading. The feed is read when you save it and then once a day. The assistant says a price or stock is as of that reading, and the product's own page has the current one.
• It never fills a gap. A specification your feed does not give is not invented, and when it compares products it names a value that is missing.
• It recommends and links; it never sells. Each product it recommends is a link to that product's page, drawn under the answer as a card with its picture, price and availability. It never makes a basket, cart or checkout link.
• It knows the page a visitor is on. On your website, when a visitor asks while looking at a product page, the assistant is told which product of your feed that page is, so "is this one in stock?" is answered about it. The address is used for that alone and is not kept.
• Delivery, warranty and returns still come from you. Those answers come from your manuals and business context, never from the feed.

2. What a product feed is

A product feed is one file listing every product with its id, title, link, picture, price and availability, in the format of Google's product data specification. Sonela reads the same file Google Merchant Center reads with a scheduled fetch:

• XML: RSS 2.0 or Atom with Google's g: fields, such as g:price.
• A text file of tab- or comma-separated columns whose first line names them as Google does: id, title, link, price, availability, image_link.
• Either of them compressed with gzip.

A price is a number and a currency code, such as 12990 ALL or 129.90 EUR. A picture is drawn only when its address starts with https://. The address must be one anyone can open: no password and no sign-in.

3. Finding your feed's address

What you need is the address of a file. Several shop platforms connect to Google over an interface instead, and give you no file at all: the Google channel or extension a platform offers sends your products to Google directly, so there is nothing to copy from it. Whatever platform you use, look for the address you would paste into Merchant Center as a scheduled fetch, often shown as a feed URL beside a copy button.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce does not make a feed file by itself, and the Google for WooCommerce extension sends products to Google without one. Install a product feed plugin that publishes a Google Shopping feed at an address, create a feed for all products, and copy its feed URL.

Shopify

Shopify's Google channel sends products to Google without a file. Install a feed app from the Shopify App Store that publishes a Google Shopping feed at an address, and copy the feed URL it shows.

PrestaShop

Install a module that publishes a Google Shopping feed at an address, generate the feed for your catalog, and copy its feed URL.

Magento / Adobe Commerce

Some Google extensions for Magento send products to Google directly and make no file. Use an extension that generates a Google Shopping feed file and publishes it at an address, schedule it to regenerate daily, and copy the file's URL.

OpenCart

Install an extension that publishes a Google Shopping feed at an address, and copy its feed URL.

A shop of your own

Ask whoever built it to export the catalog in Google's format to a fixed address, rewritten at least once a day. Sending a correct ETag or Last-Modified header lets an unchanged file be skipped.

4. Saving it in Sonela

1. Open Context, then the Products tab.
2. Press Set the feed, paste the address and press Save and read the feed.
3. The feed is read at once. The tab follows the reading and shows how many products it read when it finishes.

The catalog is offered to every assistant of the workspace, the public one on your website included, and to every key, except a key set to knowledge base mode, which answers from its documents alone.

5. Checking what it read

• The readout says how many products were read and in which currency, how many have no picture served over https, how many are priced in a second currency (which no price filter compares), and how many items were left out and why.
• Try a search runs the search the assistant runs and draws the results as the cards a visitor sees. Search with a word from a product's title and a highest price.
• Read now reads the feed again at once, for example after a price change; otherwise it is read daily.

6. When it does not work

• "The feed ends before its last product." The file was cut off while it was being sent, or your plugin was still writing it. The catalog read before is kept; read it again in a few minutes.
• "…names no id column." The address is a file, but not a product feed in Google's format. Check that the first line names the columns as Google does.
• "The feed answered HTTP 403" or "404". The address needs a sign-in or no longer exists. Copy it again from your plugin or app.
• "…redirects to another site." Give the address the file is finally served from.
• "…more than 20,000 products." A catalog holds up to 20,000 products, and a larger feed is not read in part. Make a feed of the products visitors should be offered.
• Items left out without a price. Each price needs its currency code: 12990 ALL, not 12990.
• A card without a picture. Its image_link is missing or starts with http://. The card still links to the product.

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Something here wrong or missing? Write to hello@sonela.ai.