Data Feeds

In order to run properly, Samba requires integration with the following data feeds:

• Products
• Customers
• Orders
• Categories (optional)

If you created your e-shop via one of the supported e-commerce platforms, you don’t have to bother with data integration. Just follow the step-by-step guide here. If you use a different, unsupported platform, do not despair, we’re working on integration of other popular platforms. Until then, please, follow the step-by-step guide, which you can find below.

Links (publicly accessible, or containing access data in the format https: // username: password@youreshop.com/feedname.xml) to these feeds can be provided in the section Settings – Integrations – Data integration – Connection settings in Samba.

To save the changes, press Save configuration.

Once you have filled in all the data, press Refresh. Samba will download the feeds immediately according to your settings. You’ll usually see the output from our validation in minutes, so you can fix the errors.

Properities of the data feeds

• XML format
• UTF-8LE coding
• do NOT use unicode control characters (except the CR and LF characters)
• make sure, that product ID is the same in the feed of products and orders. The same applies to the customer ID in orders and customers feed.

Feeds are usually updated once a day.

Products feed

This feed contains the database of all your products, that you offer on your e-shop. For the best results, we recommend to include as many optional parameters as possible. Thanks to this data feed, Samba is able to recognize the parameters of the products (type, brand, category, price category, color, size,….) and then offer this product to the right customer. Samba works with the stock informations and special offers as well, so it doesnt offer a product, that you dont have in stock and on the other hand, offers a product, that is on sale, more.

Supported parameters

Name	Type	Optional?	Description
PRODUCT_ID	String	no	product ID
TITLE	String	no	product name
PRICE	Float, >=0	no	price (tax included, without shipping and handling)
URL	String	no	product URL
IMAGE	String	yes	product picture URL (approx 300x300 px)
DESCRIPTION	String	yes	detail description of the product (without HTML tags)
BRAND	String	yes	product brand
STOCK	Integer, >=0, default:1	yes	number of pieces in stock
PRICE_BEFORE_DISCOUNT	Float, >0	yes	price before discount (tax included)
PRICE_BUY	Float, >0	yes	actual price displayed on e-shop
CATEGORYTEXT	String	yes	categories that include the product, seperated by "|"
PRODUCT_LINE	String	yes	product line
VARIANT	Products list	yes	see product variants below
SHOW	Boolean, default: TRUE	yes	can we show this product?
PARAMETER	[par1,par2]	yes	other parameters of the product, see the example below

Example of the products feed

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<PRODUCTS>
           <PRODUCT>
                     <PRODUCT_ID>D45S8741545SD</PRODUCT_ID>
                     <BRAND>Značka</BRAND>
                     <TITLE>Name of the product</TITLE>
                     <DESCRIPTION>Detail description</DESCRIPTION>
                     <PRICE>42.1</PRICE>
                     <PRICE_BEFORE_DISCOUNT>40.1</PRICE_BEFORE_DISCOUNT>
                     <STOCK>60</STOCK>
                     <URL>http://www.mujeshop.cz/way/to/product</URL>
                     <IMAGE>http://www.mujeshop.cz/way/to/image.jpg</IMAGE>
                     <CATEGORYTEXT>Clothes | Women | T-Shirts</CATEGORYTEXT>
                     <PARAMETERS>
                               <PARAMETER>
                                         <NAME>Color</NAME>
                                         <VALUE>White</VALUE>
                               </PARAMETER>
                     <PARAMETERS>
                     <VARIANT>
                              <PRODUCT_ID>D45S8741545SD-XXL</PRODUCT_ID>
                              <TITLE>Name of the product</TITLE>
                               <DESCRIPTION>Detail description</DESCRIPTION>
                               <PARAMETERS>
                                         <PARAMETER>
                                                   <NAME>Size</NAME>
                                                   <VALUE>XXL</NAME>
                                         </PARAMETER>
                                         <PARAMETER>
                                                   <NAME>EAN</NAME>
                                                   <VALUE>467891186861118</VALUE>
                                         </PARAMETER>
                               <PARAMETERS>
                               <PRICE>42.1</PRICE>
                               <STOCK>10</STOCK>
                               <IMAGE>http://www.mujeshop.cz/way/to/productXXL.jpg</IMAGE>
                               <URL>http://www.mujeshop.cz/way/to/product?variant=xxl</URL>
                     </VARIANT>
           </PRODUCT>
 </PRODUCTS>

Customers feed

Customers feed should contain the whole database of your customers. Samba can adjust its personalization based on other metaparameters, such as gender or the date of registration.

Samba is able to distinguish 3 levels of newsletter subscription.

• every day
• special occasions
• never

Supported parameters

Name	Type	Optional?	Description
CUSTOMER_ID	String	no	Customer ID
NEWSLETTER_FREQUENCY	Enum: every day | special occasions | never	no	Subscription frequency (never = unsubscribed)
EMAIL	String	yes	A valid email address
REGISTRATION	Date & time (as a String)	yes	Date and time of registration in the following format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD (more info)
FIRST_NAME	String	yes	First name
LAST_NAME	String	yes	Last name
ZIP_CODE	String	yes	ZIP code
PHONE	String	yes	Phone number with the Incl. plus sign and country code (e.g. "+420xxxxxxxxx" for Czech Republic, or +11234567890 for USA)
SMS_FREQUENCY	Enum: every day | special occasions | never	yes	SMS subscription frequency (never = unsubscribed)
DATA_PERMISSION	Enum	no	full | do_not_personalize | anonymized_only default: full
NLF_TIME	Datetime (as string)	no	Datetime in the YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD format (more info) Time of the customer's subscription change
PARAMETERS	[par1,par2]	yes	Other parameters (please see example below)

Example of customers feed

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CUSTOMERS>
           <CUSTOMER>
                     <CUSTOMER_ID>D45S8741545SD</CUSTOMER_ID>
                     <EMAIL>jan.novak@email.cz</EMAIL>
                     <REGISTRATION>2014-12-31T03:53:43.962Z</REGISTRATION>
                     <FIRST_NAME>Jan</FIRST_NAME>
                     <LAST_NAME>Novák</LAST_NAME>
                     <NEWSLETTER_FREQUENCY>every day</NEWSLETTER_FREQUENCY>
                     <ZIP_CODE>15000</ZIP_CODE>
                     <PARAMETERS>
                               <PARAMETER>
                                         <NAME>Bonus points</NAME>
                                         <VALUE>100</VALUE>
                               </PARAMETER>
                               <PARAMETER>
                                         <NAME>Gender</NAME>
                                         <VALUE>female</VALUE>
                               </PARAMETER>
                     <PARAMETERS>
           </CUSTOMER>
 </CUSTOMERS>

Orders feed

Orders feed should ideally contain history of your orders, that happened on your eshop (we recommend the history to be at least 2 years old, but whole history is preffered or you can also use increments, as explained below). Samba uses this feed to analyse purchase patterns of your customers, which is then being used to personalise. All products in this data feed must be present in the product feed, or they will be marked as “Invalid orders” and ignored by the system.

Samba currently supports 3 order states:

• finished – finished order, customer has paid or received the goods. This is the only state Samba is actually working with.
• created – order has been created and is waiting for finishing (payment, delviery, etc.).
• canceled – cancelled or deleted order (by the customer or the eshop).

If you allow customers to create orders without registration, use the EMAIL element instead of CUSTOMER_ID and, if you can, PHONE and ZIP_CODE aswell. Samba will create audiences, which you can then use for targetting purposes during campaign creation.

If an unknown CUSTOMER_ID is specified (or is not specified at all) in the specific order and there is a customer (in customer feed) with the same EMAIL as used in this order, the order is then automatically assigned to the customer based on the  EMAIL element. However, if there is no such EMAIL  in the customer feed, then the value in EMAIL will be temporarily used as a new CUSTOMER_ID  so that the order can be processed. Orders without valid EMAIL and CUSTOMER_ID will not be proccessed at all.

Based on your customer terms and conditions you can select the following option in the Connection settings for these customers:

Incremental order feed

After the first one-time load of the whole order data feed (based on the information above), it is possible to use increments for further order feed data loading, as you can see in the picture below:

If an unknown CUSTOMER_ID is specified (or is not specified at all) in the specific order and there is a customer (in customer feed) with the same EMAIL as used in this order, the order is then automatically assigned to the customer based on the  EMAIL element. However, if there is no such EMAIL  in the customer feed, then the value in EMAIL will be temporarily used as a new CUSTOMER_ID  only as long as the order is part of the increment. At any time later, the customer is no longer generated and therefore the order is not processed, until a customer with a CUSTOMER_ID  equal to EMAIL appears in the customer feed. Orders without valid EMAIL and CUSTOMER_ID will not be proccessed at all.

While using the increments, generally speaking only those items with their respective products in the product data feed will be processed. If you choose to use incremental data feeds, the loading will work as shown below in the following example:

• Samba has succesfully loaded the complete order data feed once and now we are using one-day increments.
• In ther example, we have order “Ord1” in the increment (from January 1st), which contains product called “Prod1”:

1. On the january 1st, an increment of the order feed will be downloaded, which contains order “Ord1” and in the same time there is a “Prod1” in the product data feed. The order will be processed in this case.
2. A day later (January 2nd) the order “Ord1” is no longer in the increment and the product “Prod1” is no longer in the product data feed. The order will not be processed in this case.
3. The following day (January 3rd) the order “Ord1” is still not in the increment, but the product “Prod1” is again shown in the product data feed. The order will be processed again in this case.

As we can see, the determining moment for Samba is, whether the product is contained in the product data feed within the time of the last process of the increment – only in this case the data history is correctly saved. In the following days, the order will be processed again only in case the product is currently residing in the product data feed.

Supported parameters

ITEMS

Name	Type	Optional?	Description
PRODUCT_ID	String	no	ID of the product or its variant
AMOUNT	Number (integer, >0)	yes	Quantity of the product (default: 1)
PRICE	Number (>=0)	yes	Subtotal of all of the pieces of the product, tax included, without shipping and handling.

Example of orders feed

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ORDERS>
       <ORDER>
             <ORDER_ID>5ds465d</ORDER_ID>
             <CUSTOMER_ID>d4s5a6sd6as</CUSTOMER_ID>
             <CREATED_ON>2014-12-31T03:53:43.962Z</CREATED_ON>
             <FINISHED_ON>2015-01-05T03:53:43.962Z</FINISHED_ON>
             <STATUS>finished</STATUS>
             <ZIP_CODE>15500</ZIP_CODE>
             <COUNTRY_CODE>CZ</COUNTRY_CODE>
             <ITEMS>
                    <ITEM>
                          <PRODUCT_ID>DAS656</PRODUCT_ID>
                          <AMOUNT>6</AMOUNT>
                          <PRICE>36</PRICE>
                    </ITEM>
              </ITEMS>
        </ORDER>
        <ORDER>
             <ORDER_ID>35DS45</ORDER_ID>
             <EMAIL>jan.novak@email.cz</CUSTOMER_ID>
             <CREATED_ON>2014-12-31T03:53:43.962Z</CREATED_ON>
             <FINISHED_ON>2015-01-05T03:53:43.962Z</FINISHED_ON>
             <STATUS>finished</STATUS>
             <ZIP_CODE>15500</ZIP_CODE>
             <COUNTRY_CODE>CZ</COUNTRY_CODE>
             <ITEMS>
                    <ITEM>
                          <PRODUCT_ID>DAS656</PRODUCT_ID>
                          <AMOUNT>6</AMOUNT>
                          <PRICE>36</PRICE>
                    </ITEM>
              </ITEMS>
         </ORDER>

 </ORDERS>

Category feed

The category feed should include the tree of categories used in products feed. TITLE in this feed must correspond to CATEGORYTEXT  in product feed.

Supported parameters

Example of category feed

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CATEGORY>
     <ITEM>
          <TITLE>Category</Title>
          <URL>http://www.myeshop.cz/way/to/category</URL>
          <ITEM>
               <TITLE>Subcategory</Title>
               <URL>http://www.myeshop.cz/way/to/Subcategory</URL>
          </ITEM>
     </ITEM>
     <ITEM>
          <TITLE>Category A</Title>
          <URL>http://www.myeshop.cz/way/to/categorya</URL>
          <ITEM>
               <TITLE>Subcategory A</Title>
               <URL>http://www.myeshop.cz/way/to/Subcategorya</URL>
               <ITEM>
                    <TITLE>Subcategory B</Title>
                    <URL>http://www.myeshop.cz/way/to/Subcategoryb</URL>
               </ITEM>
          </ITEM>
     </ITEM>
</CATEGORY>

This post is also available in: Čeština (Czech)