WebToffee WooCommerce Product Feed & Sync Manager -Setup Guide

WebToffee WooCommerce Product Feed & Sync Manager plugin allows you to sync your WooCommerce products with Facebook shops and Google shops (merchant center). The plugin allows to Generate Facebook/Instagram product feed and Google feed that can be used to upload products into the Facebook catalogue and Google merchant center respectively, thereby making the products available for user searches.

With the plugin you can choose from two options to sync products with Facebook shops.

1. By creating feed
2. By direct sync achieved by connecting your Facebook account with the store.

Major features offered by the WebToffee WooCommerce Product Feed & Sync Manager plugin are the following:

• Create Facebook/Instagram feed, Google shop feed
• Attribute mapping
• Category mapping
• Category filter
• Auto feed refresh intervals (daily, weekly, monthly)
• Direct sync with Facebook shops
• Multiple product filter options (filter by product category and tags)
• Save and edit previous mapping preferences
• Batch sync
• View product sync log for detecting failed syncs and to troubleshoot

You can refer to the article How to Install a Free Plugin to learn about the installation process of the plugin. On installation two menu’s added as shown in the image below. The first image shows the product sync menu and the second one shows the product feed menu.

• Create the necessary business accounts with Facebook or Google shop.
• Use this reference to view the product fields that will be synchronized via this plugin.

Product feeds are managed through three tabs. They are,

• Create new feed
• Manage feeds
• General settings

This page allows you to configure a new product feed in four steps and they are:

• Creating new feed
• Attribute mapping
• Category mapping
• Generating feed

In this step, the user can create a new feed for Facebook/Google. The basic feed settings are configured in this step. The image shows configurable options in step 1.

• File name – Unique name given to the feed.
• Country – Allows choosing a country for the feed.
• Channel – Allows users to create feeds based on channel. Different channels will have different requirements in terms of product data, structure, etc. The available options are Facebook/Instagram and Google shopping.
• Exclude product categories – WooCommerce categories that should be excluded from the list.
• Auto-refresh – Choose from available options to enable automatic feed refresh.
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • Monthly
  • Manual (The feed won’t be auto-refreshed. You will have to manually refresh the feed by navigating to the Manage Feeds section within the plugin)

Store owners can choose the corresponding WooCommerce field for the Facebook/Google product field on the left side. The Attribute mapping page of the Facebook shop is given below.

Store owners can choose the corresponding Facebook/Google category for the WooCommerce categories in their store. The category mapping page of Facebook is shown below.

This is the final step in creating the feed. The image shows the final step configurations which generate the feed. Here we specify the batch size and delimiter.

• Process in batches of – Sets the number of products to be processed at each iteration while generating the feed.
• Delimiter – Allows setting the separator for differentiating the columns in the CSV file. Assumes ‘,’ by default.

This page allows store owners to manage the existing feed and offer several other options. The image shows the manage feed page.

• Copy URL – The URL point to the product feed created. This can be copied and pasted into the Facebook or Google business account to establish the feed.
• Refresh -This option allows refreshing the feed manually. If the intervals don’t match users specific requirements, they can update the feed manually whenever they want.
• Download – The feed can be downloaded by clicking this link. The files can latter be uploaded to the Business account.
• Edit – The feed settings can be updated by clicking on this button. Such as feed interval.
• Delete – The feed can be deleted by clicking on this link.

This page allows setting the default options. The image shows the general settings page.

• Default feed batch count – Sets the default number of products to be processed at each iteration while generating the feed.

From the WordPress dashboard, go to WooCommerce > Facebook Catalog menu.

Facebook catalog menu opens up the Manage connection window.

The user can click on the Connect with my FB product catalog button to start the syncing process.

Following which a notification window will appear as shown below. 

You can continue with the logged-in user.

If you have multiple business accounts or Facebook shops associated with your account, you will have to click on Choose what you allow to select the Facebook shop that you want to sync with your WooCommerce store.

On clicking Choose what you allow, the following window appears where you get to choose the shop you wish to sync by deselecting the others.

As shown in the below screenshot, deselect the shop(s) you don’t wish to sync.

Click Continue.

The plugin will then redirect you to the Manage connection window with two new tabs along with it and a message indicating that the connection with the FB shop has been established. You can also view the catalogs associated with the connected FB shop. 

You may click on the catalog, if you would like to view it in the Facebook Catalog Manager window.

A disconnect from the Facebook option has also been provided on this screen. 

The next step is to filter the products in your store that you don’t want to sync with Facebook shops/catalog.

Firstly, select the FB product catalog, here, the catalog for the chosen Facebook shop will appear.

Then, choose to exclude certain product categories or tags from the respective drop-down.

Next, input the Products per batch count in the field provided. Batch count refers to the number of records processed by the server for every iteration. It solely depends on your server’s timeout interval. Specify the batch count ranging from 10 to 5000. Facebook limits 5000 as the maximum number allowed. 

The next section is the Category Mapping window. 

Category Mapping is a one-time process. The plugin will auto-detect the saved preferences for future syncs as well. Whenever the plugin identifies a new category for mapping, it will be notified in the mapping section for your confirmation. Furthermore, you can always edit your preferences under the respective products->categories.

Proceed with the sync by clicking on the Map FB categories and a Sync button. You can view the progress of sync and its status as shown below. 

Following this, you can also cross-check with your FB catalogs to see if the products have been updated. In this case, you can see that all the products have been synchronized into the FB catalog.

Log section records product sync status. It provides reasons for failure in sync if any, besides each record.

Log records are used for debugging purposes. In case of any product sync failure, you can refer to the log file by clicking on View Status. 

WebToffee WooCommerce Product Feed & Sync Manager is a simple plugin that allows you to auto-sync your WooCommerce store with Facebook Shops and Google shops/merchant center. When it comes to Facebook shops the plugin lets you sync your store either via feeds or through direct sync.