WebToffee WooCommerce Product Feed & Sync Manager – Setup Guide

WebToffee product feed and sync manager plugin allows you to sync your WooCommerce store products with Facebook shops and google shops (google merchant center).

Using the plugin you can generate product feeds and connect it with your desired platform (Google shops & Facebook shops) or directly sync (Facebook catalog sync) products whenever needed (applicable for Facebook shops only).

In addition to to the free version features, the plugin allows support to the following features as well.

• Powerful filters for product filtering.
  • Exclude product categories
  • Only include specific product categories
  • Exclude products
  • Only include default variation
  • Exclude out of stock products
• All major additional fields within the product edit page (GTIN, MPN, Unit price, colour, size, and more).
• WPML compatibility for multi-language and multi-currency.
• Multiple auto-feed refresh intervals (30 minutes, 1 hr, 6 hr, and more).

Once you install and activate the plugin, the plugin menu will appear on the dashboard. The main menu WebToffee product feed will have 4 sub-menus,

Create feed, Manage feeds, General settings, and Facebook catalog sync.

To generate Google or Facebook feed and applying filters you may click on this menu.

Following is the opening page.

To create a new feed you may follow the below steps.

File name – It is the name you use to differentiate your generated feeds from one another. Hence, make sure the name is unique.

Country – Choose the country for which you need to generate the feed. This adds country based shipping info into the feed.

Channel – The plugin supports Google shopping and Facebook/Instagram feeds. You may choose as per your preference.

Auto-refresh interval – You may choose from 30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly intervals to auto-update your feed with recent changes made to your products.

Filters

Filters are useful for including or excluding your store’s products from feed based on several criteria.

Exclude categories – Using this filter you can exclude products belonging to specific categories. You may search and choose one or more categories to be excluded.

Only include specific categories – If you don’t want all of your store products to be included in the feed, you may specify only the categories that you want to include. You may search and choose one or more categories to be included in the feed.

Exclude products – Using this filter you can exclude specific products from feed. Search and add one or more products to be excluded from the feed.

Exclude out of stock products – If you want to exclude out-of-stock products from feed, you may enable this checkbox.

Only include default product variation – By enabling this option you can include only default product variation within the feed. If it is not enabled all variations of the variable product will be included in the feed. Default variation can be configured from the product edit page.

Product types – You may use this filter if you want to include only certain WooCommerce product types (simple, variable, grouped, external) in the feed. If you leave it empty all product types will be included in the feed.

Facebook/Google fields are generally called attributes. In this step you can map your WooCommerce store fields with that of Facebook/Google fields (or attributes).

All the required fields of Facebook and Google will be auto-mapped. If you want to add additional data to the feed you can do so by mapping those attributes with that of the store attributes.

In this step, you can map your store categories with that of corresponding Facebook/Google categories. Category Mapping is a one-time process. The plugin will save the preferences for future feed generation as well. Whenever the plugin identifies a new category for mapping, it will be notified in the mapping section for you to map.

Edit category mapping

A previously mapped category can be edited by navigating to the category edit (Products > category) page within WooCommerce.

You can also map categories on product level by navigating to the respective product’s edit page.

This is the final step for creating feed. In this step you can configure the batch count (the number of products the server will process for every iteration) and choose the delimiter for the feed.

Now you may click on the Generate button to start the feed generation.

Once the feed is generated, you may navigate to the Manage feeds page to copy the feed URL.

Within manage feeds section, you can find all the generated feeds. It also provides you with options to copy feed URL, edit, delete, download and refresh the feeds.

Within General settings you can configure the default batch count in which the feed should be processed.

Some google categories for example ‘Apparels and accessories’ require additional data such as age group, color, gender, size to be added to the feed. WooCommerce by default allows adding additional fields within the product edit page. But for the ease of feed generation, the plugin adds all required additional fields to the product edit page which you can use as per your preference.

You can find these additional fields for variations by expanding each variation.

Once you generate a feed for Facebook/Google, you need to copy and paste the feed URL within the respective platforms to ensure upload and auto-update of feed.

Let us see how it’s done within both these platforms.

You may follow the below steps to upload and schedule the feed in Facebook shops.

Step 1 : Copy the generated feed URL for Facebook shops.

Step 2 : Login to Facebook and go to meta business suite from the side panel.

Step 3 : From the opening page click on commerce tab on the side panel.

This will open your commerce manager page on Facebook.

Within the page click the Catalog tab and then the Items tab.

Step 4 : Click Add items drop-down and choose Add multiple items.

Choose ‘Data feed’ from the opening page.

Step 5: Choose ‘Yes’ in the below page.

Step 6: You may enter the feed URL that you copied from the plugin in here. Click Next.

Step 7: Set the interval on which you need the feed to be updated.

Finally, confirm all the settings and make changes if needed by clicking the pencil icon beside each section.

Step 8: Now you may click the Save Feed and Upload button.

It will start the feed import process and once completed will display the product import status.

Step 1: Login to your Google merchant center account.

Click Feeds under products.

Step 2: Click on the ‘+’ icon.

Step 3: On the opening page choose the countries where your products can be sold and delivered, choose the language of content in your feed, enter a feed label (which will be used to specify the Google ads campaign in which the products in the feed will be included).

You may choose the google programs where your products should be displayed. Then click ‘Continue’.

Step 4: Add a descriptive name for the feed and choose ‘Scheduled fetch’. Then click ‘Continue’.

Step 5: Enter the feed file name as within the plugin and choose a fetch frequency of your choice. Paste the copied feed URL from the plugin and click ‘Create feed’.

You may have to wait a few minutes before the products from the feed get uploaded to your Google merchant center account.

Go to All products to view the uploaded products.

Facebook catalog sync is an alternate method to sync your WooCommerce products with Facebook shops.

With this method you don’t have to copy and paste the feed URL. This method works by allowing you to perform on demand sync using which you can sync products whenever any update is made to the products in your store. The changes will be promptly reflected within Facebook shops therefore eliminating the need to rely on Facebook fetch frequency.

Steps to sync WooCommerce products with Facebook.

Login to your Facebook account in which you have set up your Facebook shop.

Click the Connect Facebook button and allow permission for WebToffee product feed & Sync manager plugin.

Now you have established connection with your Facebook shop. You can get started with syncing products with Facebook shops.

In this step you may filter products you wish to sync with Facebook catalog using different criteria.

At first you need to choose the fb catalog you wish to sync your products (if you have multiple catalogs associated with your business account)

Exclude categories – You can use this filter to exclude specific categories from syncing with Facebook catalog. You may search and add one or more categories.

Only include specific categories – You can use this filter to only include specific categories in the sync. You may search and add one or more categories.

Exclude tags – Using this filter you can exclude products associated with selected tags.

Product description type – It is required to send either short or long description to Facebook. You can choose which one should be sent.

Exclude out of stock products – Enable the checkbox if you wish to exclude out of stock products from syncing.

Products per batch – It is the number products that will be processed in a single iteration. You can increase or decrease the value based on your server performance. If you are not sure about it, leave it to the default.

You may map the store categories to that of Facebook/Google categories. You may save the mapping once done.

You can edit the already mapped categories for Facebook by going to the category edit page. Product level category mapping is also possible with the plugin.

Once the sync is completed, click the Check fb catalog button to redirect to the catalog in your FB business account.

There you can view the synced items in your catalog.