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Flight Control Help Center

Product Feed Mapping Tab

  • Updated

General

The Mapping tab allows you to bring in all columns/headers from the feed and map them to the relevant Flight Control naming conventions. Additionally, it allows you to modify the values in the cells to fit the required format for each type of value. This will ensure that the content you have deemed dynamic will populate in the right places of the creative design Clinch has designated for the content.

Column Mapping

  1. Click Get Fields from File to import the columns defined in the feed. Upon completion, all feed columns will be visible.
  2. Click Auto Map to automatically map the feed columns with their respective Flight Control taxonomy. You can customize the Flight Control taxonomy in your account's settings to meet your needs.
  3. Map columns identified in the source file that you plan to show in the creative(s) or use in the campaign decisioning with its corresponding Flight Control name. You don't need to map all columns at this time since you can always revisit the Mapping tab for additional fields mapping later.
    • Items marked with an asterisk (*) are required.
    • You have the option to map a single source column to multiple Flight Control values.
    • Hover over the informational icon next to each field to see sample values from the column.
    • No limit exists for the number of columns/headers a feed source can contain, and you don't have to map every field from the feed source.

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Apply Rules to Column Values

You can apply "rules" to column values by clicking Rules within the Mapping tab. These rules let you modify cell values during "inventory updates," with rules available such as changing capitalization, replacing values, and removing background images.

Note: Removing background images comes at an additional cost and requires prior enablement in your account's Features Settings.

Removing Background Images

After enabling the Remove Background from Product Feed Images service in the Features Settings tab of your account settings, you can do the following to remove backgrounds from product images:

  1. Click Rules in the Mapping tab.
  2. Click Add Rule.
  3. Select a column containing images you want to remove backgrounds from.
  4. Select the Remove Images Background rule.
  5. Click Update Rules.
    • Note: To keep the original images (before background removal) in the product feed, map the file column containing the images to the relevant field.
  6. Click Save And Update.

Note: If a product image has had its background removed using the background removal rule (when mapping the product feed), you can go to the Products tab, right-click the image, and select Replace Image to swap it with a new one if the current version isn't suitable.

Advanced Parameters

Advanced Parameters allows you to set the following options (Note: these options will vary depending on the feed type):

  • Delimiter character: Allows defining which character will act as a delimiter (separator) between columns (usually a comma for CSV, Tab for CSV, but other non-standard delimiters exist)
  • Quotator character: Allows defining which character is set to wrap cell value (“ is the most commonly used character.).
    • Wrapping with quotator character is not mandatory and is mainly used when there is special character in the cell value such as a character identical to the delimiter character, or new line characters.
  • Escape Character: If the cell value happens to include the same character as the Quotator Character, for example when the cell value is 65" TV. It needs to be escaped by prepending the Escape Character like this : ....,"65"" TV",.
  • Date Time Format:
    • For the Start Date / End Date columns (which define the date range that a product is valid for) this defines the parsing format.
    • Note that the values can also include hours and minutes.
    • Click here to learn about possible Date-Time format parts. 
  • Related Items Delimiter: For Related Items column, which includes multiple values, this defines which character will act as a delimiter (separator) between the values. 
  • Categories Delimiter: For Category column, which might include a value that represent a category ‘tree’ (example shoes > man shoes > man sport shoes) , this define the delimiter between the category levels (in the example above the delimiter should be ‘>’).
  • Exclusions File URL: Allows exclusion of rows from the feed upload/update, by defining the value of specific columns that we want to filter out.
    • The CSV header row will define the column names we like to look for filtering, and the values below it will define the column values, which if they appear, this row will be filtered out.
    • Contact your Clinch Account Manager for further details.
  • External Images Folder URL: Allows you to access images from an external source. If set, it overrides the main product image on the feed source with the image from the external folder.
    •  The folder should contain the images with the following format: <product_id>.jpg or <product_id>.png.
    •  If all product images do not exist in the external folder, the system will just take the ones that exist.
    • You can see how many images has been actually taken from the external folder by looking at the Feed Update report -> 'external image.’
  • Allow comments: When enabled, this allows the CSV to include rows that start with # character and signal the parser that it is a comment row.
  • Copy Original Price: When enabled, during feed inventory updates, if the product sale price value is empty, Flight Control will copy the price value to the sale price field.