Improved Import, Export & Mass Actions app for Shopware 6 user manual

- E-Commerce, Our extensions, Shopware

 

 

 

 

 

Improved Import, Export & Mass Actions is the Shopware 6 app that is installed on your store, and allows you to import and export products and other entities in and out of your store fast and with the required values.

NOTE: The manual if for the MVP version of the application.

Installation

The application can only be installed from your Shopware 6 backend via Shopware Account for both on-prem and cloud installations.

  1. Log into your store’s backend and proceed to Extensions > Store
  2. Log into your Shopware Account
  3. Search for Improved Import, Export & Mass Actions
  4. Click Improved Import, Export & Mass Actions application
  5. Click ‘Add extension’ button
  6. Tick in the checkboxes and click ‘Subscribe to extension’ button.

This is it, you have just installed the application, which you can find under Extensions menu.

Installation troubleshooting

When installing the application to your Shopware 6 store make sure that:

  1. Your store is accessible by the external URL. Local installation of Shopware 6 is not supported by the app.
  2. That your store URL matches the APP_URL inside the .env file, including HTTP/HTTPS

Otherwise the app won’t work!

Find the extension

The app can be found in the ‘Settings’ section of your Shopware 6 administration panel. Navigate to Settings > Improved Import, Export and Mass Actions.

When at the main page of the app, you will see the Import procedure selected by default.

You can switch between Import and Export procedures by minimizing the system bar.

How to import data

NOTE:

  1. System properties available for Shopware products by default, cannot be excluded from import mapping in the current version.
  2. ‘Active’ product property should be imported with the empty value, if you want to disable the product.

Step 1: Select file

At the first step you are suggested to:

  • Select the entity you want to import. The initial release allows import of ‘Products’ only.
  • Select the CSV file you want to import. Other file type support will be added in the upcoming releases.
  • Select the source of the import.
  • Additionally, if required you can specify the delimiters used in the CSV file manually, or click ‘Auto detect delimiter’ checkbox and let the extension do the job.

Step 2: Configure mapping

In the Configure Mapping section you are suggested to specify which columns from the imported file match properties of the products from your Shopware 6 store. 

Shopware requires the product properties to have a particular name, so the store would understand them. That’s why we want to let you import the files with property names different from the Shopware naming. Hence the mapping section:

  • The first row with the property names – is the properties from the file you are importing.
  • The second row, where you can choose the property – is the properties from your Shopware store.

Match these properties to import any file format.

Mapping templates

To save your time, we introduced the mapping templates, which you quickly save and load the mappings you use often.

The mapping section comes with the ‘Default’ template which is loaded automatically to match the names of the properties from Shopware store with the names of the properties from your imported file.

If you want, you can re-map the properties manually, and save the template of your own. Just click ‘Save’ button and choose the name of the template, to quickly ‘Load’ it in the following imports.

What are product properties and how to work with them

Each of your Shopware 6 products has multiple fields, such as ‘Name’, ‘Product number’, ‘Manufacturer’ etc. These fields are product properties or attributes, whatever you call them. Each of these properties has a related database entity where the property’s values are stored. And each property inside the database has a dedicated internal name which doesn’t allow spaces.

When importing products you are directly addressing the database, so you need to address product properties as they are listed in the database.

Like this, the Manufacturer will be listed inside the database as ‘manufacturer_id’, and Product Number will have a name ‘product_number’. You can check the exported file to see how different properties are named.

This is important because when importing a file you will need to name the columns with product properties as they are named inside the Shopware, to let the extension understand that you are importing proper values for a particular property.

That’s where the Mapping section of the Improved Import, Export & Mass Actions comes into play.

For example:

Your supplier – Microsoft – sends you a CSV file with the products they supply to you. However, instead of ‘product_number’ and ‘name’ properties of the product they use ‘microsoft_product_number’ and ‘microsoft_name’.

If you were to import such a file, your Shopware won’t understand that ‘microsoft_product_number’ column contains the value for ‘product_number’ property of your product. That’s where you can use the Mapping section.

All you need to do is to match the column names you are importing with the relevant product properties. And then you are good to go.

Step 3: Preview results

Before starting the import procedure, the app suggests you preview how the products will actually look before you import them.

This has been done so that you could confirm that the product attributes and properties have the proper values and you can start the import process.

The ‘Preview result’ section allows you to check the first 100 rows from the imported file. When you have previewed the results, it is high time to start the import procedure.

Final step: Import

When you click ‘Import’ button at the bottom of the Preview result step of the import, the extension starts importing the file you have uploaded.

During the import you will see the number of the imported products, excluding the child products of the configurable ones, and the average import time.

Once the process is finished you can check the products you have imported to the Shopware 6 store.

How to export data

The export is much simpler, here you select the entity – currently only ‘Products’ available, – output file type, and hit the ‘Export’ button.

NOTE: ‘Active’ property of the product is exported with empty value, if the product is disabled.

Step 1: Select format

At this step you are suggested to select the output file format and where to export the file. Currently it is possible to export to:

  • file – and get the link for the file download
  • Google Drive – the app will create a dedicated folder at your Google Drive, and will place the file there directly

The default format is CSV, it bears the same settings for delimiters as native Shopware export.

Here you can also manually change the delimiters used in the CSV file you will be exporting. This may come in handy if you are using the exported file for uploads to third party services which require particular delimiter settings.

Exporting to Google Drive

To export your product catalog to Google Drive:

  1. select ‘Google Drive’ from the Output Source dropdown
  2. you will be suggested to proceed by the link, to allow Firebear Studio application access to your Google Drive

To activate the app – simply click ‘Allow’ button. The application will get the write permissions to your Google Drive.

When you activate the app – relogin to your Shopware 6 account. Now, when you select Google Drive as an export source you should not have the link for the activation displayed.

When exporting to Google Drive, the Firebear application will create a folder ‘shopware-import-export’ where all the exported files will be placed.

Final step: Export

Once the delimiters are set you can start the export process.

The exported file can be downloaded by clicking ‘Download’ button at the bottom of the export process recap.

Product properties export and import

Default export and import

By default Shopware 6 exports products without the custom properties that you create for them. In other words, if you have added custom ‘Size’ or ‘Color’ properties to the product, these properties will not be exported along with the products.

You can export custom product properties as a dedicated export entity. However, in this file you will not have any reference to the products they are assigned to. Making importing products back with the relevant values assigned impossible.

Improved export and import

With Improved Import, Export & Mass Actions app you are exporting custom properties along with the products in a convenient format, featuring both the database ID of the custom property and the name displayed in the store’s backend for quick reference.

The exported file can look like the screenshot below:

The columns in green color are the columns with the custom product properties which have the following format:

color#0bde8db993684f8b92a713913aa3d9c3

Where:

color – is the name of the property as it is displayed in the Shopware 6 backend

#0bde8db993684f8b92a713913aa3d9c3 – is the ID of the property as it is written in the database

How can you import products with properties

When importing products along with the properties you can import properties in THREE different formats – i.e. column names.

  1. property_name#property_id – the default column name format as you get it in the export file
  2. property_name – the second possible option is to import property is by naming the column with it as it is named in the Shopware 6 administrator panel
  3. #property_id – the third possible option is to use ID of the property solely, starting with the # symbol

When importing products with custom properties at the mapping step of the import procedure, you need to assign all custom properties from your file to:

  1. Find the custom property, for example ‘color’
  2. In the dropdown with the store properties select ‘propertiesSources’

Assign ‘propertiesSources’ to ALL of the custom properties you are importing. This way Shopware will understand what to do with them. Don’t mind the order or the format you will be using.

Why use both the name of the property and the id

Why use both the name of the property and the id and what is the difference in possible import formats?

In the Shopware 6 backend you can create as many custom properties for the product with the SAME name as you want. That’s why, if you have several product properties with the SAME name you need to identify them from one another.

That’s where you may need to use the property ID which looks like #0bde8db993684f8b92a713913aa3d9c3. The ID of the property is always unique and cannot be shared with any other property.

FAQ & Troubleshooting

1. I get error message “cURL error 6: Could not resolve host”

  1. Make sure your store is accessible by the external URL. Local installation of Shopware 6 is not supported by the app.
  2. Possible solution:
    Change the APP_URL in the .env file from “local_store_url” to “external_store_url”. Make sure you have specified actual HTTP or HTTPS
  3. Uninstall and install the app back. Switching the app on and off will not address the issue
  4. Clear browser cache, or use the incognito window.

2. I get error message “Write access to entity “acl_role” are not allowed in scope “user”

  1. Make sure to change the APP_URL in the .env file from “local_store_url” to “external_store_url”. Make sure you have specified actual HTTP or HTTPS
  2. Uninstall and install the app back. Switching the app on and off will not address the issue
  3. Clear browser cache, or use the incognito window.
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