Schedule Product Imports for a WooCommerce Store at Regular Hourly Intervals

The products in an e-commerce store require frequent imports to add new products and updates. The Product Import Export Plugin For WooCommerce lets you export and import products with ease. To schedule product imports at regular hourly intervals:

1. Select the post type as Product.
2. Select an import method.
3. Map the import columns.
4. Use advanced options/ batch import.
5. Click on Import/ Schedule > Schedule.
6. Choose the Schedule type and set the custom interval.
7. Click on Schedule now to finish.

To begin, click on WebToffee Import/Export (Pro) > Import, from the WordPress admin panel.

As a first step, you need to choose the post type as Product.

Choose Advanced import from the below options to continue with your import. The advanced import option allows us to select a particular column for import. This option will take you through a detailed process of filtering/column selection/advanced options that may be required for your import. 

• From the Product fields listing, one can map the required single field with the column. Then select the corresponding mapping.

• If the field needs to append a value/expression to an existing item while importing, Click on the transform Icon and enter the expression. It basically selects/maps the particular column from the input file and computes the values with expressions and creates output.
  • Expression: Any of the operators +*/-()&@ or string constants can be used along with the attributes to manipulate the respective value. 
  • Input: Select the column from the dropdown which has to be modified.
  • Output: Sample value will be created based on the first record from input file.

• Click on Step 4 to proceed.

• On reaching Step 4, the following window will appear, from where you can update products by setting the If the product exists in the store option to Update.
  • If the product exists in the store: One can either Skip or Update the entry.
    On updating the existing products, you can even choose to update the product data even if some of the columns in the input file contain empty values.

• Click on Import/Schedule to finish.

You can either import the products directly into your store or schedule it.

1. Hit the Schedule option, and you will be taken to the cron schedule window as shown below:

The plugin supports two different schedule types:

• WordPress Cron: Upon a visit, WordPress Cron will check to see if the time/date is later than the scheduled event/s, and if it is– it will fire those events.
  • schedules your job at the specified time. 
  • is dependent on your website visitors.
• Server Cron: You may need to trigger the URL every minute depending on the volume of data to be processed.You can use this option :
  • to generate a unique URL that can be added to your system in order to trigger the events. 
  • if you have a separate system to trigger the scheduled events.

Also, the import/export can be scheduled on a daily, weekly, monthly, or custom basis. One can also configure the time at which the import has to be scheduled.

2. Click on the Custom option, and Enter the required hours (X) in minutes. You can also specify the Start time to schedule the import. This will import the products every ‘X’ hours.

3. Now click on Import/Schedule and select Import. Now the products are imported every ‘X‘ hours.