Synchronization of BigCommerce with Sales Layer

Phase 1. Data preparation

The connector will use all the time necessary to prepare the data. After that, other queued connectors will get the server’s execution time and the connector will be queued again and will continue the data preparation in his next turn. During the data preparation the following steps are followed:

Step 1. First, when the connector starts the execution it reads all the existing data in the BigCommerce store. This reading step will take more or less time depending on the number of items on BigCommerce.

Step 2. Cleaning data:

• Variants without products.
• Products without valid weight or price.

Step 3. Once the reading step is done, the existing data in BigCommerce is compared with the data of Sales Layer.

• If the data between BigCommerce and Sales Layer coincide, it will be linked.
• If the Sales Layer data does not exist on BigCommerce, the system will create and link it.

Step 4. All the information is ready (data and relations file) and stored in the Sales Layer server for the next execution of the connector that will synchronize the data.

Phase 2. Data synchronization

Step 1. The connector downloads the data needed for the synchronization (data and relations file).

Step 2. For 10 minutes it will be sending items to BigCommerce and removing each item that is processed from the data that still has to be sent to BigCommerce.

Also, after each synchronization, the results will be added to a temporal log file, showing the current synchronization status, too. At the end of the process, a definitive log will be created and included in the user interface of the connector at the “Register activity” tab.

Warning: If you change the value of an additional attribute in Sales Layer for a variant, the BigCommerce API does not allow previously created variants to be updated; in that case, the previous variant is deleted and a new one with the new value is created. Note that, in this case, fields that are not managed by Sales Layer will be left empty. As an example: imagine that you initially sent a size field with the value ‘S’ in a product variant and then you change the value from ‘S’ to ‘Small.’ BigCommerce, upon receiving this new version, tries to delete the previous variant and generate a new one. If this happens and if the ‘Stock’ field is managed by a separate system, when the new variant is generated, the ‘Stock’ field will be created with its value set to ‘0’.

Activity Register

After the connector ends the first synchronization, a new section ‘Activity Register’ will appear with the synchronization record.

This section will include:

• A list of the last 19 synchronizations.
• Results: state of the synchronization process, synchronization start date, process duration, catalog items counters, and number of connections with the BigCommerce API. Here, categories with multiple storefronts will show information separately. Also, the categories to be disabled are shown separately from the categories that have to be created or updated.

Example 1

Synchronization ended correctly.

Example 2

This is a synchronization at the beginning of the process. At this moment, information to be exported to BigCommerce has been prepared in Sales Layer and is ready to be sent. However, at this moment no item has been exported yet.

Example 3

Synchronization ended with some errors.

Synchronization status of the items

The BigCommerce connector provides a detailed description of the last sync status of each Sales Layer item.

Additionally, when a Sales Layer category has a relation with two storefronts, the category will contain feedback for each storefront.