EasyPopulate 4.0 Support Thread

[mc12345678]

Not worth the effort to send a hate message.

The first bit about the missing ‘Tax Class’ and ‘products Price’ my own stupid fault and I have fixed that.

Sorry for the missing understanding. It is terminology that I used when I was a Network manager here in the UK.

I did a backup of my store and with problems beyond my control I had to re-build my store and used that backup to populate my new store.
When you go admin->catalog->CATEGORIES / PRODUCTS – TOP you are presented with column titles of ‘ID’ ‘Categories/Products’, ‘Model’, ‘Price/Special/Sale’, ‘Quantity’, ‘Status’, ‘Sort’ and ‘Action’.

If you have anything written in ‘Categories/Products’ and value in ‘Quantity’ for example 63 of 63, then all of the ‘Categories/Products’ are backed up so that when you need to upload the backup all is put back so you will get ‘Categories/Products’ and value in ‘Quantity’ 63 of 63 and all is well.

However, if you have one product ‘Out of stock the ‘Quantity’ for the ‘Categories/Products’ will display 62 of 63. Then after a backup and you want to use that backup, the ‘Out of Stock’ product is not there and the value in ‘Quantity’ will be 62 of 62. Therefore, the ‘out of stock’ product or then products will be lost (not backed up).

Also, if you have ‘set up’ the drill down of ‘Categories/Products’ for example Shoes->color->blue->sizes but do not put any products under sizes, then the ‘Categories/Products’ sizes is not backed up, so that when you use your backup the ‘Categories/Products’ sizes will not be there.

I hope this helps you.

So, issues described that remain a problem are on the store front, and store front only?

One thing before possibly describing what's going on, again want to say that EP4 is not exactly a backup tool... It's original purpose appears to have been to make import of bulk product such as those provided by a "vendor" easy and quick, then it changed a little to make it easy to manipulate the data in the database in a bulk manner (increase/decrease all prices by a certain amount), but not strictly as a backup tool (there are other more dedicated programs to do that). So, that PA made. :)

The export of the "Full product data" will include all active (v_status = 1) and inactive (v_status = 0) product. The same is true if using the dropdowns at the top of the screen provided the last one (status) is set to "All".

On import, all rows that meet the primary key criteria (default: products_model) will be imported. Based on the settings in the admin configuration->Easy Populate 4 at the setting Make Zero Qty Products Inactive: When uploading, make the status Inactive for products with zero qty (default: false). If this has been changed to true, then on upload of the out-of-stock product, the product will become deactivated and the total quantity of product per category will decrease.

Now, the default for that setting is false, which means that product with zero quantity are to be uploaded and remain "active" to the store visitor(s). Mind you, there is one "issue" discussed over the last couple of pages that relates to populating some other areas of the database (still need to write the other two solutions I have considered for "restoring" from that situation) such as manufacturers. The described issue though seems to be something a little different.

See if setting the Make Zero Qty Products Inactive option to false resolves your issue, otherwise need to find out more about your products table I think. If it does not resolve the issue, could you (maybe again?) post the settings you have for EP4?

[adb34]

So, issues described that remain a problem are on the store front, and store front only?.......

No this problem is in the back office.

I will investigate and get back. It is a pity that EP4 is not for a store backup, it would make a perfect package to do both bulk upload and backup.

[mc12345678]

No this problem is in the back office.

I will investigate and get back. It is a pity that EP4 is not for a store backup, it would make a perfect package to do both bulk upload and backup.

The only time that a product is removed from the database when using EP4 is if the status is set to 9 for the product. Otherwise, whatever is in the file and meets the criteria to be imported will and the total quantity of items currently in the database will not be reduced (unless the status was set to 9 for a product).

[soxophoneplayer]

zc 1.5.5a EP4.0.35 many mods

I've very very noob on this. I've installed and configured the mod in my test site and seems in order to my untrained eye.

I've exported my db and it shows up in my admin/temp folder with filename FUll-EP2016Jul18-xxxxxx (x being numeral)

The file opens in Open Office Calc (which I'm also noob to but have some basic exp with other spreadsheets)

What I want to do is add/populate Meta titles, words, descriptions for existing individual products. No other changes. I see the appropriate columns in the spreadsheet.

I've read the readme, install notes and the wiki but I'm still unclear...

1. Do I delete the columns from the spreadsheet that I am not changing or do I leave them. (ie if I have only model number and meta text columns, and meta on/off columns will I end up overwriting the entire kit and caboodle.)

2. And, if deleting the columns that aren't being changed is ok, what name would I call the new file I make with the meta info. ( I see some sample naming conventions for featured and other type files but not for this particular example)

[mc12345678]

zc 1.5.5a EP4.0.35 many mods

I've very very noob on this. I've installed and configured the mod in my test site and seems in order to my untrained eye.

I've exported my db and it shows up in my admin/temp folder with filename FUll-EP2016Jul18-xxxxxx (x being numeral)

The file opens in Open Office Calc (which I'm also noob to but have some basic exp with other spreadsheets)

What I want to do is add/populate Meta titles, words, descriptions for existing individual products. No other changes. I see the appropriate columns in the spreadsheet.

I've read the readme, install notes and the wiki but I'm still unclear...

1. Do I delete the columns from the spreadsheet that I am not changing or do I leave them. (ie if I have only model number and meta text columns, and meta on/off columns will I end up overwriting the entire kit and caboodle.)

2. And, if deleting the columns that aren't being changed is ok, what name would I call the new file I make with the meta info. ( I see some sample naming conventions for featured and other type files but not for this particular example)

The instructions were written with a slight air of ambiguity about the specific columns because of the way EP4 can be modified and that then the instructions would be "wrong". The first guidance is as you have done, try to see what the code will do if setup to have "just" what you want. Recently a lot was done to only modify the fields of a record that were included in the file. Regarding main products and categories only the products and/or categories in the import file are touched by the code. Uploading product x will not delete products y and z nor modify their data...

As to the filename. The filename is like a configuration setting. Files named one of the "special" filenames are treated uniquely, any other filename is processed as a full import. The important part of the filename is everything up to and including -ep when read from left to right. Best to leave that part unchanged (capitalization does not matter) and as desired/necessary to modify anything/everything after that and leave .csv at the end (extension).