Data Sync
The Data Sync section is the heartbeat of your SparkLayer integration and gives you visibility of the product and customer data being synchronised from your online store. It's largely used as a way to diagnose any issues and is also useful to review the data being sent from your online store to SparkLayer.
There are a number of reasons why data is synchronised:
Product Sync By synchronising product data, SparkLayer knows what product pricing to display when a B2B customer is signed in and visits a product page on your store. Learn more
Customer Sync By synchronising customer records, SparkLayer can recognise when a B2B customer signs into your store (and subsequently display the correct B2B information to them).
Once you've connected your platform via the Settings section, you'll see your product feed appear in the 'Product Sync' tab within the Data Sync section.
At the top, the status box will notify you of the following states:
Status | Description |
|---|---|
🟢 Green | Products are successfully syncing and data being received |
🟠 Amber | Products are successfully syncing, but errors have been found |
🔴 Red | No product data being received and configuration is required. |
From within the interface, clicking the product feed status box will show further details, such as:
- Products synchronised
- Last import time
- Errors with the feed
Please note By default, SparkLayer will synchronise all products from your online store. Please note, products won't be purchasable until you've set up Price Lists for your products.
SparkLayer will by default perform feed refreshes every 10 minutes, however, if you want to manually trigger a refresh, you can do so by clicking the Refresh button. This is useful if you've updated data on your eCommerce platform and want to ensure SparkLayer is synchronised more rapidly.
The product data lookup is a handy tool that lets you inspect and diagnose the product data you're sending to SparkLayer. The search results will display all relevant data, allowing you to drill into more detail.
To use the Product data lookup tool, you can search by either of the following:
Type | Details |
|---|---|
Variant SKU | Within your product catalogue you will likely have SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) assigned to your products and variants. For example, a product may come in 3 variants with SKUs:
|
Product ID | You can also search by an external product ID. For details on how to find this, click your platform type above |
Stock
Under the product data lookup, you can view the stock data for the selected variant. This can be in 3 states:
TODO: screenshots for each state below?
State | Description |
|---|---|
Stock data found | You have stock information configured for this product. A table of stock information for each location will be shown here |
Stock data not found | There is no data about stock in our system. Variants without stock data cannot be purchased |
Stock not being tracked | Stock/inventory tracking has been disabled on this variant within your e-commerce platform. We therefore have no stock information. This variant can still be purchased |
The Customers Sync section works in much the same was as the Product Sync, giving you visibility of the Customer data that is being received by SparkLayer. As with Products, you'll need to ensure you've configured your platform first and data is being sent. For third-party platforms using the SparkLayer Connector, this will happen automatically.
The feed status box will notify you of the following states:
Status | Description |
|---|---|
🟢 Green | Customers are successfully syncing and data being received |
🟠 Amber | Customers are successfully syncing, but errors have been found |
🔴 Red | No customer data is being received and configuration is required. |
From within the interface, clicking the customer feed status box will show further details, such as:
- Customers synchronised
- Last import time
- Errors with the feed
Customer data It's important to note that SparkLayer will only import customer data that has been specially tagged as a b2b customer or sent through with metafields with the namespace of 'sparklayer'. This is to ensure that you have control over the types of customers that get imported.
Customer data from Shopify For third-party platforms, such as Shopify, this is set up within the platform itself and you can Data Mapping and Metafields on how this works.
As with the product data lookup, you can drill in to the details of the customer data that gets sent to SparkLayer. The search results will display all relevant data in JSON format and you can access the details you need.
Finding the Customer ID
The customer data lookup works by matching on either the internal or external customer ID you send to SparkLayer.
For third-party platforms such as Shopify, you can also find this ID in the URL when navigating a customer within the admin. For example, the URL in your browser may look something like this:
https://your-shopify-store-url.com/admin/customers/5917633347819
In this example, the external customer ID would be 5917633347819
For valid results that are returned, you can also view specific records in your third-party platform such as Shopify by clicking the results returned.