Best Practice / Home Extension Installation/Upgrade. Help & Support

Transcription

1 Best Practice / Home Extension Installation/Upgrade To start using M2E Pro Extension in your Magento, it should be installed first. However, M2E Pro Extension is being improved on a constant basis, so the releases of the new versions are rather frequent. You can find a detailed information about each version in our Release Notes. Every new version is carefully checked and tested. Moreover, each release contains fixes and improvements comparing to previous versions along with the new functionalities added. Thus, to achieve the best result from working with M2E Pro, it is strongly recommended to use the most up to date version. Please note, no data can be lost during an upgrade process. However, please, always back up your system prior to any upgrade related activity. Moreover, there are several methods how the M2E Pro Installation/Upgrade process can be executed: via M2E Pro Installation Tool; Manually by downloading the archive; via Composer/GitHub. Each of these methods has its own specific. So, depending on the particular aspects of your own system, you can select the one which suits your needs the best. If you face any issues with the upgrade process, you can check whether it is caused by the configuration of your system following the points described in this article.

2 Best Practice / Home M2E Pro Performance Tuning/Optimisation Always keep your M2E Pro updated Disable options/features that are not in use Use Conditional Revise Features Do not Enable Track Direct Database Changes Option if in doubt Disable Product Description Information Duplication of the same Product in M2E Pro Listing Usage of M2E Pro Models to Update Magento Products Plugin integration with Magmi Import Tool Maintain more than one M2E Pro Listing Use New Policy rather than Custom Settings when possible (only for ebay Integration) In this article, you will find recommendations that may help you to improve your system performance Please take a time and read our tips. Also, we suggest you keep regularly checking this article for further updates. Always keep your M2E Pro updated Unlike many other multi channel providers, we release updates for our software quite regularly and it s your responsibility to ensure your system is up to date. Regular updates contain fixes, new features, and system enhancements. Please, visit Home to read a more detailed information. Some of our merchants signed up for hosted Magento+M2E Pro solution and get their systems updated regularly (free of charge) by the hosting partner. Disable options/features that are not in use

3 Following initial configuration please review your M2E Pro config and disable options, channels, and features that you do not intend to use Please note: if you are selling on Amazon you may still have Rakuten enabled by default. to check active channels: go to System>Configuration>M2E Pro>Channels to check geographic locations: For ebay go to Sell on ebay>configuration>ebay Sites

4 For Amazon & Rakuten go to Sell on Multi channels>configuration>markeplaces

5 Please do not forget to review among others the following settings: 3rd Party Listing Import, Magento orders creation, Synchronization Policy, Selling Settings. Please remember that you can always enable/disable various options whenever is required. Use Conditional Revise Features

6 Starting from the version 6.3.x M2E Pro has Conditional Revise option implemented for both Quantity Revise and Price Revise in Synchronization Policy. What is Conditional Revise? The main purpose of the Conditional Revise is to limit a number of Revise actions performed. It allows improving M2E Pro Performance. How Conditional Revise for Qty works? Consider the following scenario: Conditional Revise for QTY is enabled, Product Quantity on hand is 105 and value for Revise when Quantity is less or equal is set to 5. Given this setup, M2E Pro will not attempt to revise Product s Quantity until QTY on hand in Magneto falls below 6. This will allow a system to avoid performing 100 unnecessary revisions. Clearly, this option is useful if a merchant carries large volumes for individual products. Our recommendation is to Enable Conditional Revise for Qty and to set "Revise When Less or Equal" to some value. You can change this value at any time. How Conditional Revise for Price works? Sometimes merchants change prices in Magento but prefer these changes not to be reflected across marketplaces. For that very reason, M2E Pro has a Conditional Revise for Price functionality. The value to be set is a percentage of a maximum deviation between Magento Price (taken from Selling Format Policy settings) and a channel Product Price (ebay, Amazon or Rakuten). Consider the following scenario: a Product Price in Magento is 10 $, Conditional Revise for Price is Enabled and "Revise When Deviation More than" value set to 10%. If the price in Magento changes (increase or decrease) by less than 10% (absolute value of 1$) then no price change across marketplaces occur. If the price changes (increase or decrease) by more than 10% (absolute value of 1$) then the price will be synchronized with marketplaces. If Conditional Revise for Price is disabled then any price change in Magento will trigger a price update on linked channel. Bulk price revision may cause delay to all other data synchronization tasks including order import. Remember: too many unnecessary updates (or revisions) may slow down your system and may cause your inventory go out of sync. Note: for sellers who synchronize Magento Inventory and Pricing with their suppliers automatically or through data feeds these options ( Conditional Revise for Price and Conditional Revise for Qty ) are critical. Do not Enable Track Direct Database Changes Option if in doubt

7 Track Direct Database Changes feature is normally used to detect changes that were made by direct SQL updates or by various import/export/update tools. However, enabling Track Direct Database Changes makes a huge negative impact on M2E Pro Performance. We ONLY recommend enabling Track Direct Database Changes if you are fully aware of the benefits this will bring to you given reduced performance. Please do not use "Track Direct Database Changes feature if you wish to interact with M2E Pro using some in house/3 rd party build tool/script. For better integration with M2E Pro, we have developed a Simple M2E Pro API and integrated Magmi Import Tool Plugin. Disable Product Description Information

8 In most of the cases, there is no need to continuously update Product related information such as Title, Subtitle, Images or Product Description in real time mode. For improved performance, M2E Pro recommends disabling these options under Synchronization Policy. For ebay Integration: You can set partial Revise of Title, Subtitle, Description, Images to no ; You can set Full Revise of Description to no.

9 For Amazon Integration: You can set Partial Revise of details and Images to "no"; You can set Full Revise of Description Policy to no.

10 Disabling of above mentioned options will make an extension to work faster, especially if your Magento Products Price and Quantity related data updates very often. Synchronize Data option under Relist Rules in Synchronization Policy has a slightly different purpose. Enabling this option makes sense only in a few cases, disabling is strongly recommended and will increase the speed of M2E Pro Synchronization. The main difference between Enabled and Disabled states: If it is Disabled, then an Item relist gets triggered by a Price and /or a Quantity update; If it is Enabled, then an Item relist gets triggered by a Price, Quantity or any of a Product Description Information update; We recommend to Enable this option only if you really (!) need M2E Pro excessive synchronization, which is in many cases very rare. Note: for Amazon Integration only in very rare cases (i.e. Description Policy has been added to a large number of Products and urgent synchronization with Amazon is need) we recommend Enabling Details and Images updates under Partial Revise Synchronize Data in Relist Rules of Synchronization Policy Description Policy update in Full Revise mode But please be aware that due to technical restrictions of an Amazon API additional submission of a product related information cases issues with Price and Quantity Revisions. In case you have Enabled any of above mentioned options, please make sure that Product Description Information had already been sent to Amazon. Correct usage of Product Details update options: Most of the time Disabled ; One off update Enable and the revert back to Disabled ; Note: if your Catalog is small (i.e. less than 1000 products) then the impact by setting option Enable will very small, however for systems with larger inventory (i.e ) a serious consideration should be given when Enabling these options as it may cause significant time delays for Price and Quantity Revisions.

11 Duplication of the same Product in M2E Pro Listing Some sellers maintain more than one duplicate of the same product (from Magento Catalog) in M2E Pro Listing and then list these duplicates on the same marketplace. This bad practice always results in multiple revisions for every copy of the same product which makes synchronization process very time consuming. Our recommendation is not to list duplicates of the same Magento Product. Usage of M2E Pro Models to Update Magento Products Advanced users can observe data changes triggered by M2E Pro by subscribing to a data change actions which are different to that of Magento Core Models. Frequently Magento Products, Categories, Attributes, etc. are changed without a usage of Magento Core Standard Functionality (Magento Core Models) which leads to these changes being ignored by M2E Pro. M2E Pro cannot identify changes that were made using: Direct SQL injections changes of any data made via direct SQL requests; Changes made via side models of side modules; Changes made via Magento API; Any other means, that are not these of a Magento Core Functionality. If a data in your Magento system gets updated by any of above described methods, you will need to notify M2E Pro about such changes to make your extension work properly. There are 2 different methods of alerting M2E Pro extension regarding changes: Object uses all possibilities of M2E Pro (slower); Structural only for tracking data changes in existing Magento Products (fast). These models are available in the following path \app\code\community\ess\m2epro\model\publicservices\product. Detailed information about the usage of above mentioned models you can find here. Plugin integration with Magmi Import Tool

12 Data changes actioned by other means than Magento Core Models can be identified by M2E Pro in a number of different ways. Track Direct Database Changes feature has already been discussed but very often sellers use Magmi Import Tool which makes Product changes in a form of SQL injections. If the latter is the case, then M2E Pro needs to be alerted in some appropriate way. For that, we have developed a Plugin for Magmi Import Tool. This plug in notifies m2e pro extension about changes made from Magmi Import Tool. You can find this plugin using the following path \app\code\community\ess\m2epro\model\publicservices\magmi. Detailed information about M2E Pro Plugin for Magmi Import Tool you can find here. Maintain more than one M2E Pro Listing You can create a number of M2E Pro Listings and add Products. There are several advantages of spreading Products across several M2E Pro Listings: you can maintain different listing settings; Products can be grouped accordingly depending on their price, quantity, listing conditions, categories, etc. If you add all your Products to one M2E Pro listing, this will make an interface work slower. Use New Policy rather than Custom Settings when possible (only for ebay Integration)

13 When you create your M2E Pro Listing, you can define custom values for Selling Settings, Payment and Shipping Settings, Synchronization Settings, etc. On the other hand, it is much more convenient to define Policies which can be reused multiple times. Please note: by reusing existing Policies across multiple M2E Pro Listings you can make your M2E Pro system to work faster.

14 Best Practice / Home Programmatic Possibilities to work with Extension Overview Object method Recommendation Structural model Recommendation Overview M2E Pro allows observing data changes triggered by various Magento Core Models. However, very frequently: Magento Products, Categories, Attributes, etc. are updated without a usage of Magento Core Standard Functionality (Magento Core Models), so M2E Pro may not detect these changes. M2E Pro may not detect changes if: Data is manipulated via direct SQL requests (Direct SQL injections); Changes made by side models of a side module; Changes made through Magento API; Any other approach that is not using a Magento Core Functionality. If a data in your Magento system gets updated by any of above described methods, there is a requirement to notify M2E Pro explicitly. There are 2 options to do that: 1. Object method uses all variations of M2E Pro (slower); 2. Structural model only tracks data changes in existing Magento Products (fast); These models can be found in your Magento File system in the following path: \app\code\community\ess\m2epro\model\publicservices\product. Object method

15 Object method notifies M2E Pro about all Magento Product changes and facilities: 1. automated addition/removal of products from M2E Pro Listings (Auto Add/Remove Rules); 2. synchronization (List, Relist, Stop and all available options of Revise Rules); 3. tracking of changes in all attributes used in Magento products settings. Usage of Object Model(sample): $model = Mage::getModel('M2ePro/PublicServices_Product_ObjectChange'); // you pass a product ID for observing $model >observeproduct(561); // you have 'catalog/product' object for observing $product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product') >setstoreid(2) >load(562); $model >observeproduct($product); // make changes for these products by direct sql $model >applychanges(); A snippet of the code above demonstrates the creation of an M2E Pro Object Model. Then 2 products are registered and changes to these products are observed in 2 different ways. Once products have been registered, data for these products can be manipulated using SQL injections or any other method. After a data is changed, the method applychanges() must be called. While method applychanges() is running, M2E Pro will automatically observe all the changes that have originated outside of Magento Core Models.

16 Recommendation For multiple Magento product data change: 1. create M2E Pro Object Model 2. register in products to be updated Products 3. apply changes 4. trigger method applychanges() We do not recommend (!) creating individual M2E Pro Object Models for each product. Note: the Object Method is not suitable for a large number of product changes (i.e. in s) because Object Method is very resource consuming. It observes all automatic features of M2E Pro and slows down your code execution making import/update tools (if any) to work at unsatisfactory speed. Structural model

17 Structural Model notifies M2E Pro about changes made to a particular attribute/option (only price, quantity, status) of a Magento Product. This model is different from the Object method: Object Method catches changes from the moment of registration to the moment of execution Structural Method requires only notification confirming changes of a particular product data Structural Method triggers some of an M2E Pro automation features (List, Relist, Stop Rules of Synchronization Policy and Price/Quantity Revise Rules). All other features will not work if Structural model is used. Usage of Structural Model (sample): $model = Mage::getModel('M2ePro/PublicServices_Product_SqlChange'); // notify M2E Pro about changes in price, qty or status in the product with ID 17 $model >markproductchanged(17); // make price change to the product with ID 18 and then notify M2E Pro $model >markpricewaschanged(18); // make QTY change to the product with ID 19 and then notify M2E Pro $model >markqtywaschanged(19); // make status change to the product with ID 20 and then notify M2E Pro $model >markstatuswaschanged(20); // change attribute 'custom_attribute_code' value from 'old' to 'new' to the product with ID 21 // in store with ID 1 and then notify M2E Pro $model >markproductattributechanged(21, 'custom_attribute_code', 1, 'old', 'new'); $model >applychanges();

18 A snippet of the code above demonstrates usage of an M2E Pro Structural Model in respect to Price, QTY, Status changes. Recommendation M2E Pro Structural Model usage: 1. create an instance of M2E Pro Structural model 2. make changes to Magento Products data (i.e. direct SQL requests) 3. reflect these changes in the model 4. trigger method applychanges() of the structural model We do not recommend (!) creating individual M2E Pro Pro Structural model for each product Note: always utilize the Structural model for a high number of Magento products changes. This method works fast (vs Object method) and not resource consuming. We do not recommend to use this method if your system is making use of all automatic features of M2E Pro. By combining M2E Pro Object method and Structural model in your code you can greatly improve resource consumption of your system(s) and completely avoid using Track Direct Database Changes function of M2E Pro.

19 M2E Pro is developed to work based on core Magento functionality, meaning the Module correctly identifies all of the product updates made through Magento interface and synchronizes them on the Channel accordingly. In case 3rd party modules are used to update such information as Product Quantity, Price, status, etc. in Magento, then programmatic adjustments are required to ensure that the product updates are caught by M2E Pro. Magmi Import Tool provides product changes via direct SQL injections (i.e. not through the standard Magento functionality). So, M2E Pro needs a notification about modified data to reflect it correctly. Therefore, if you are using Magmi Tool, you have to set up M2E Pro Plug in for Magmi Import Tool. Steps to proceed: Step 1 Copy the content of the folder stored by the path: Step 2 app\code\community\ess\m2epro\model\publicservices\magmi Place the copied data in Magmi root directory. The M2E Pro Plug in option will appear within Magmi interface: Configure Current Profile > Itemprocessors > Common section

20 Step 3 Select M2E Pro Plug in option and save the Profile changes. Be attentive, you must enable M2E Pro Plug in within Magmi Profile you are using for the data import.

21 If M2E Pro Plug in is installed and works properly, Magmi extension will keep a log of product updates. You will notice a message similar to the one below: plugin;m2eprochangescatcher;std:ess M2ePro Product Changes Inspector v Will be checked products. plugin;m2eprochangescatcher;std:ess M2ePro Product Changes Inspector v Not presented (skipped): ## Existed (skipped): 0 ## Processed: 13. Also, after the Products are updated using Magmi Tool, the table 'm2epro_product_change' must contain appropriate records about these Product changes. Note, with Plug in enabled, M2E Pro will catch the product changes that trigger the automatic List, Relist, Stop and Price/Quantity Revise actions according to Synchronization Policy Rules. Note, the packet of the new M2E Pro version may contain an updated version of the Plug in for Magmi tool. After you upgrade your M2E Pro, it is important to ensure that the latest version of the Plug In is used in Magmi extension. Compare the Plug in versions: in Magmi extension and in M2E Pro packet app/code/community/ess/m2epro/model/publicservices/magmi/plugins/extra/itemprocessors/essm2epro/m2eprochange In case they are different, M2E Pro Plug in for Magmi Import Tool must be updated too. Follow the steps of the setup instruction above. Please consider, if you are using M2E Pro Plug in for Magmi Import Tool, the Track Direct Database Changes feature is not required. We recommend you to disable the 'Track Direct Database option'. It allows using your Magento resources more efficiently.