For arlanix/product-feed 1.0.0
Get told when a feed fails
The feed grid says when a feed has stopped delivering, but only to someone who opens it. With Arlanix Notifications, a separate module, the people who look after the feeds hear about it by email, in Slack, Telegram or Discord: when a feed fails, when it delivers again, and when more of its products are left out or refused by Google.
The feed has no setting for this. It tells what happened, and the store's rules in Arlanix Notifications choose what is worth a message and who gets it.
Before you start
Arlanix Notifications is installed by your developer, beside the feed: its Before you start says what to ask for. Once it is in, it has its own place under Arlanix > Notifications, and the feed's events are in its rule form under Product feeds.
Your first rule walks through a topic, a subscription and a rule; Rules has the rest.
What the feed tells
A feed tells a change, not every run: a feed that fails the same way run after run sends one message, then one more when it delivers again.
| Event | When | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| Feed failed | A delivery fails, a feed that would be empty is not delivered, or a run stops responding. Then, as Info, the first delivery that works. A feed that goes on failing another way is told again. | Error; Info when it delivers again |
| Products left out | A delivery leaves more products out than the one before it, such as after a change that empties a field marked Required. | Warning |
| Products refused by the channel | Google refuses more of a Merchant API feed's products than at the feed's last delivery. | Warning |
A message names the feed, its channel and its store view. A failure reads like this, by email or in a chat:
Feed google-us failed. Could not connect to sftp.example.com:22: Connection timed out. Feed: Google US (google-us) · Channel: SFTP · Store: Default Store View
What a delivery left out, and why, is in the feed's products list: see Why is a product not in the feed?. Every field an event has, for conditions and for your own wording, is in Events.
Rules you can make
Make each in Arlanix > Notifications > Rules > Add rule: a Name, the Event, the Topic, then the conditions below. Leave Subject and Body empty for the event's own text. Make the topic and subscribe its people first: see Topics.
Every feed, to the team's Slack
- Event: Feed failed
- Topic: Feed alerts, with the team's Slack channel subscribed
With no condition, the team hears of every failure and of every feed that delivers again.
Failures only
- Event: Feed failed
- Condition: State is Problem
- Topic: Feed alerts
Or keep the rule above and let a subscription take only warnings and errors: the message that a feed delivers again is Info, so it does not get that one.
Google feeds to the merchandiser
- Event: Feed failed
- Condition: Feed type is Google Shopping
- Topic: Merchandising, delivered by email
For one feed alone, the condition is Feed is and the feed's name.
Many products left out at once
- Event: Products left out
- Condition: Newly left out equals or greater than 50
- Topic: Feed alerts, with a Telegram chat subscribed
A few products left out now and then, as new ones come in without a barcode, stay quiet; a mapping that breaks for half the catalogue does not.
Products Google refuses
- Event: Products refused by the channel
- Condition: Channel is Google Merchant Center (API)
- Topic: Merchandising
Google says why it refused each product: see When Google rejects products.