Catalogs

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A Catalog is a lookup table with one primary key item_id that can be used in various ways. E-commerce websites typically use catalogs for storing products and their related information. Publishing businesses, on the other hand, use catalogs for their articles and section details.

Watch this short introductory video about this feature:

To see your catalogs, go to Data & Assets > Catalogs

To import a new catalog, follow the guide to imports.

There are two types of catalogs in Bloomreach Engagement:


General Catalog	This type of catalog can serve as a generic lookup table for your project. `item_id` is the only required column as the primary key, and there are no further predefined ID's.
Product Catalog	Product catalogs are designed to store information about your products. They have a specific data structure that helps Bloomreach Engagement identify the most important information that will be used for recommendations, inventory management, and stock level calculation.

You can define the type of your catalog during the first import.

Full list of recommended product catalog columns

Column	Type	Description
item_id	string	Unique identifier of your product variants (sku, ean - considering sizes, colors, etc.) Note that to enable edits using our Catalog API, it is recommended to use `item_id`'s that do not contain `/`. Due to the way the endpoint is decomposed, edit attempts will not work with `item_id`'s containing `/`. Notice that using `/` also affects edits via the platform UI.
product_id	string	Product identifier not considering sizes, colors, etc. More products of the same type have different `item_id`, but the same `product_id`.
title	string	Product name, e.g. Black fitted crew neck t-shirt
description	string	Description of product.
active	boolean	Information about product availability. Options: true/false; 0/1
brand	string	Brand of product. E.g.: Nike, Adidas...
category_ids	list	Internal id of category from your e-commerce tool. E.g.: 12345
category_level_1	string	Name of first level category, where the product belongs, e.g.: Shoes
category_level_2	string
category_level_3	string
category_path	string	Full path of category tree, where product belongs delimited by pipe “\|". E.g.: Tops \| T-shirts \| V-neck t-shirts
color	string	Main color of product. E.g.: red
gender	string	Gender for which is product designed. Options: Male / Female / Unisex
image	string	Url to main product image (not thumbnail). E.g.: http://…
lead_time	string	Time needed for re-stocking of the product from the supplier. E.g.: 7
supplier	string	Identification of supplier for this product (name / id).
size	string	Size of product for current EAN / SKU. E.g.: XL / 12 / ...
url	string	Direct url to product on your site. E.g.: http;//
stock_level	integer	Number of product of given ean in stock.
cost_per_unit	float	Price of product without your margin (cost of product).
discount_percentage	float	Percentual discount. E.g.: 50
price	float	Final price displayed to your customer (already discounted by “discount” field)
returned_products	string	Number of returned products of this type (per ean / sku).
date_added	timestamp	Time of first occurrence on your stock.

🚧
Catalogs should never contain PII (personally identifiable information) such as emails and/or phone numbers etc.
Catalogs that have not been used in the previous 90 days (i.e., no access from app/UI and no import) will be automatically deleted. All respective scenarios will remain editable. This change will be introduced on April 4, 2023. On that day, all catalogs unused since January 1, 2023 will be deleted.
We also want to encourage fair usage of catalogs with the following limits:
Max number of catalogs per Project: 50
Max number of items within one catalog: 6,000,000

Importing a Catalog

Read our guide to imports to learn how to import your catalog.

Downloading a Catalog

Downloading/exporting catalogs is not possible.

Common use cases

Showing a Web Layer with the last visited product on the homepage

Requirements

catalog with required columns (item_id, picture_url, link_url, price, available).
event tracking (Track event view_item on every page visit of a product page. Track with property item_id that matches the item_id in the product catalog)

Design a new Web Layer where you can show an item based on the last viewed item. Create an aggregate to get last(view_item) 'item_id'. In personalization, find your aggregate and use it in catalog lookup personalization.

{% set item = catalogs.products.item_by_id(aggregates['586e0b8d830434e7cc369263']) %}

To check if an item is available and print values from the catalog:

{% if item and item.available == "true" %}
    {{ item.picture_url }}
    {{ item.link_url }}
    {{ item.price }}
{% endif %}

Recommendations

A catalog is required when using a recommendation engine. The resulting recommendations will be presented in a list of item_ids. To use these recommendations in an email or web layer you can use a catalog lookup as in the example below.

<ul id="recommendations">
  {% for item in recommendations['58aee25afb6009bfe0852332'][:8] %}
  <li> <a href="{{ item.link_url }}">{{ item.title }}</a> </li>
  {% endfor %}
</ul>

Updated about 1 month ago