In Icecat Release Notes 205-206, we are excited to introduce a range of new features, significant updates, and performance optimizations across our platform. From the introduction of the Data Health Score to enhancing the Forgot Password page with SSR, each development focuses on improving user experience, data accuracy, and system efficiency. This release also includes new functionalities in Icecat Vendor Central, refined search filters, and essential technical debt resolutions, ensuring our partners benefit from faster, more reliable services. For additional details, please refer to the previous Icecat Release Notes.
We are excited to announce that with the completion of this sprint, we have successfully developed and implemented the autotests for the basic functionality of our new Data Health Score. This marks the official launch of this enhanced functionality.
The new Data Health Score is now live and can be accessed in the Vendor Central in the Administration menu. Users with special access can create and modify the Icecat Data Health Score. This new functionality offers significantly more flexibility compared to the previous version. It allows the inclusion of additional parameters in the score bucket, where each specific parameter has its own settings. This adaptability ensures we can adhere to the latest standards in product data completeness.
One of the key upgrades is the ability to create multiple Data Health Scores. This feature is particularly useful when our partners provide specific instructions regarding data-sheet assets’ quality and quantity. This improvement will bridge the gap between our editorial team and our partners’ needs, leading to increased user satisfaction.
The interface for managing Data Health Scores has been designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. The first page displays a list of all Data Health Scores added to Icecat Vendor Central. The main Icecat Data Health Score is highlighted with a special icon, signifying its primary status as the standard for Icecat data quality.
Adding a new score is possible by clicking the “Create” icon. Scores can be activated or deactivated, with the main score being the only one that cannot be deactivated. Newly created scores are deactivated by default, allowing users to carefully configure settings before activation. Once a score is activated, the system will calculate it for the entire Icecat product database. Similarly, any changes to a score will trigger a recalculation.
To configure a score, users can click on the “Create” or “Settings” icon, opening a new window. The interface retains the principle of mandatory and optional parameters from the old completeness score. Users can name their score bucket and add parameters (product parts or assets) from the “Parameters” or “Taxonomy parameters” sections.
The following parameters are now available for inclusion in the Data Health Score:
Parameters can be easily moved between the “Mandatory” and “Optional” columns. Each parameter also has a maximum percentage setting, with the total needing to sum to 100%. Some parameters include advanced settings:
The settings interface also includes a history of score changes, allowing users to track modifications and identify who made them.
The new Data Health Score is currently available on the product page and accessible by a limited group of users for initial testing and configuration. Users can view the new score details by clicking on the score bar on the product page. The pop-up that appears provides detailed information on product data completeness, with clickable parameters that lead to the relevant product block.
Moreover, parameters with “Local Dependent,” “Quantity Dependent,” and “Quality Dependent” settings include hints to guide editors in optimizing their scores. It’s important to note that until all mandatory points are filled in, data health counts only mandatory points ignoring optional ones.
Our new Data Health Score is now in the final configuration stage and is set to replace the old system. This significant upgrade reflects our commitment to maintaining the highest standards in product data quality, ensuring our partners and users receive the best possible service.
In the latest sprint, we have introduced an important feature named “Publish date” which aims to enhance product data control within the Icecat Vendor Central platform. In this release, we have also improved the user experience for managing public restrictions on the Icecat Vendor Central product page.
The Publish Date feature allows users to schedule when a product becomes accessible. Until the set publish date arrives, the product remains inaccessible to all, including authorized channel partners. This feature now has a priority over all other publication settings, giving brands more control.
In the previous sprint, the publish date was integrated into product export files – XML, JSON, CSV, Personal Catalog File (PCF), and Index files. In this sprint, we have expanded the integration of this feature into the remaining output levels:
When a product’s publish date is set in the future, the product becomes inaccessible. The Matching System catches these products, displaying them in the “Of which you are not authorized” section of matching statistics. This information signals channel partners about products not yet ready for distribution or closed by other brand restrictions.
After a matching process, the PIF file will display the error message: “Product data-sheet is not public; publish date is not coming yet”. This message appears for all products that have a future publish date.
These functionalities adhere to the publish date settings. If a product’s publish date hasn’t been reached, its images or multimedia files won’t be available for download. The download archive will exclude assets of unpublished products.
Any product that has a future publish date will be hidden from search results. Even if a user has a direct link to such a product, they will be redirected to the search page until the publish date is reached.
In addition to the Publish Date feature, we’ve made significant improvements to the “Public Restrictions” section on the Icecat Vendor Central product page:
To improve clarity, each restriction now includes informative messages explaining how the setting impacts product visibility:
The introduction of the Publish Date feature, along with the user experience improvements for managing product visibility, offers Icecat users greater flexibility and transparency. These updates streamline the publication process, ensuring products are launched on time and under the correct conditions.
As part of our ongoing effort to improve user experience, we dedicated this sprint to re-engineering the “Forgot Password” page on Icecat.biz. The primary goal of this re-engineering was to improve both the user experience and the technical metrics of our “Forgot Password” page. Server-side rendering (SSR) was chosen to speed up initial page loads and improve SEO, while the redesign aimed to ensure visual consistency across the entire Icecat.biz platform. The results are reflected in significant improvements across Lighthouse metrics, particularly for accessibility and SEO.
Old Metrics:
New Metrics:
The new SSR approach boosted performance by delivering faster initial page loads and rendering, pushing our mobile performance score to an almost perfect 99. More notably, accessibility saw a dramatic rise from 68 to 95, reflecting enhancements in ease of use for all users, including those with disabilities. Similarly, our SEO score jumped from 67 to 92, thanks to improved page structure and metadata optimized for search engines.
The desktop version also saw significant gains. Performance improved to a perfect 100, demonstrating that SSR made a noticeable difference in page rendering speed. Accessibility climbed to 96, ensuring a more inclusive experience, while SEO improved from 69 to 92, increasing visibility on search engines.
Re-engineering the “Forgot Password” page with SSR has not only improved the page’s technical performance but also aligned it visually with the rest of the Icecat.biz platform. These changes have delivered a more responsive, accessible, and SEO-friendly page, benefitting both users and search engines alike.
In this sprint, we’ve released a significantly improved Product History functionality in Icecat Vendor Central. With a new backend powered by Clickhouse instead of MySQL, the revamped Product History delivers faster performance and a host of new features that make it more powerful and easier to use than ever before.
The key to this speed improvement lies in our transition from MySQL to Clickhouse, a columnar database designed for high-performance querying. This change allows us to handle large volumes of product data much more efficiently, resulting in dramatically faster load times and smoother interactions for our users.
Beyond speed, the new Product History comes packed with additional features designed to give users more control and clarity over the data. Here are some of the major improvements:
Users can now filter product history by a variety of criteria, including:
To enhance the user experience, we’ve redesigned how product history is displayed:
The new Product History in Icecat Vendor Central marks a significant leap forward in both performance and usability. With Clickhouse driving faster queries and an enhanced UI providing powerful filtering and data presentation options, users can now track product changes more efficiently and with greater precision. This new functionality will continue to evolve, ensuring it meets the growing demands of our users.
In Release Notes 200, we announced a key development that allows Icecat to automatically retrieve the EPREL ID from EPREL links and include this information in our XML and JSON data sheet files. In this sprint, we have completed the final phase of this project by adding the EPREL ID to both our product CSV files and the Product Catalog File (PCF).
The EPREL ID (European Product Database for Energy Labelling) is a unique identifier required for products sold in the EU that need to comply with the latest energy labeling regulations. By ensuring that this information is readily available in Icecat’s product files, we help our partners meet these legal requirements more efficiently.
In the updated CSV and PCF formats, the EPREL ID field is now included for each product. Specifically, it is placed after Bullet points and before the Specs block in both file types.
This placement ensures that the EPREL ID is easily accessible without disrupting the overall structure of the product data, helping partners quickly find and use this critical information.
By adding the EPREL ID to CSV and Product Catalog Files, Icecat further supports partners in adhering to the latest EU energy labeling laws. This update provides all the necessary product information in one place, streamlining compliance efforts and ensuring partners have access to the latest and most accurate data.
In this sprint, we focused on improving a crucial functionality used by the Icecat Taxonomy Team for creating and modifying product features (specifications) and their settings. Previously, a feature could be created without specifying the “Input type”, which caused challenges and errors for the Icecat editors.
The “Input type” defines how data for a feature should be entered or displayed (e.g., text, dropdown, or numerical, etc.), and it is essential for ensuring proper feature configuration. When a feature lacked an input type, it created confusion, resulting in errors during data entry or product specification updates.
To address this issue, we made a small but significant improvement by making the “Input type” field mandatory. When creating or modifying a feature, taxonomy specialists must fill in the “Input type” field. If they attempt to save the feature without specifying an input type, the system will prevent saving the feature, display an error message prompting the user to provide the missing input type, and guide the user to add this essential information before proceeding.
By making the “Input type” field mandatory in feature creation and modification, we’ve resolved a long-standing issue that caused unnecessary errors in the feature management process. This small but impactful change ensures that Icecat’s taxonomy specialists input all necessary information from the start, leading to better data quality and a more seamless experience for the entire team.
In this sprint, we have made key enhancements to the Vendor Central Search page filters, improving their behavior and offering users more precise control over their search results. These changes address the “Asset” and “Feature” filters, providing greater flexibility and accuracy when searching for products.
One of the significant changes relates to the “Asset” filter – specifically when searching for videos by locale.
When users selected the “Video” value in the “Asset” filter and chose “International” in the “Language” filter, the search results included all products where a video was available, regardless of the locale. This behavior had been carried over from our old search page.
Now, when users select “Video” in the “Asset” filter and “International” in the “Language” filter, the results will only display products where the video is specifically available in the International locale.
To search for videos across all locales, users need to leave the “Language” filter empty. The system will then broaden the search to include all products with videos, regardless of the locale. This provides users with a more intuitive and targeted search experience.
The second improvement is related to the “Feature” filter, offering more flexibility in searching for products based on features:
Users could only search for products by features that had predefined values (such as Yes/No or options from a specific list). The “Value” filter allowed users to select these predefined values.
We have added the ability to search for products by features that do not have predefined values. In this case, the “Value” filter will remain disabled, and the search results will include all products where the selected feature is filled in with any value. This improvement enables users to search more broadly across products with varied or undefined feature values, improving the search process for products with complex attributes.
The Vendor Central Search Page Filters Improvement delivers better search accuracy and greater flexibility for users. Whether narrowing down results by locale or searching for products with diverse feature values, users now have more powerful tools at their disposal.
Icecat’s XML S3 service allows users to retrieve product data sheets through simple requests. During this sprint, we enhanced the service by adding 404 error responses to HEAD requests, enabling our channel partners to utilize the service more efficiently.
The XML S3 service supports two methods for retrieving product data:
We encourage users to incorporate HEAD requests into their workflows for several reasons:
GET requests to remain the primary method for retrieving the full product data-sheet. In cases where a data-sheet is not accessible, the GET response will provide a message explaining why the XML data sheet is unavailable for a specific user, such as access restrictions or missing product data.
With the addition of 404 errors in HEAD request responses, the XML S3 service becomes more efficient. Now, partners can check the availability of a product before fetching the full data, reducing unnecessary GET requests and optimizing system performance.
The XML S3 service is designed to provide quick and easy access to product data-sheets through GET and HEAD requests. By adding 404 error responses to HEAD requests, Icecat has enhanced the service’s efficiency. Which allows channel partners to streamline their workflows and retrieve product information more effectively.
In this sprint, we completed other developments: enhanced our Live HTML service by adding the Repairability Index and addressing critical technical debt by removing outdated systems and improving monitoring for Distributor Feeds Import functionality.
The Repairability Index is a multimedia object available in all Icecat export outputs except for Live HTML until now. In this sprint, we successfully integrated this Multimedia object into the Live HTML format. This index is crucial for providing transparency regarding a product’s repairability, and aiding consumers in making informed choices.
The Repairability Index is now available in the “Manuals” section of the Live HTML output. This update aligns Live HTML with all other export formats, ensuring consistency across data outputs for partners.
We also took important steps to resolve technical debt, focusing on retiring outdated components and enhancing system stability:
We officially removed the Perl Reporting Engine, which had been used for generating reports. After transitioning to the new PHP Reporting Engine, which has proven to be stable and widely adopted by Icecat users, the Perl version was no longer necessary. This cleanup helps reduce maintenance costs and system complexity.
We cleared out the “product_overview.txt” files from our data.icecat.biz/export/ storage. These files were outdated and no longer in use, and their removal helped declutter our data storage and maintain a more efficient system.
We added logs for our Distributor Feeds Import functionality to our health monitor. This improvement allows us to review the import status and settings, ensuring that this critical functionality works properly at all times. Monitoring the health of this feature ensures reliability and timely troubleshooting in case of issues.
The updates in Icecat Release Notes 205-206 highlight our ongoing commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions that improve product data quality and system performance. Whether it’s streamlining workflows in Vendor Central, enhancing search capabilities, or ensuring data compliance with the latest legislation, these enhancements serve to empower our partners and users with better tools and faster systems.
Read further: Icecat, Icecat, release notes
