Manual Personalized Interface File and Catalog from Icecat

With Icecat, you can generate personalized or customized CSV or Excel files that only contain product data for products that are relevant for your company. It helps to simplify your implementation process. The personalized interface file and catalog file generated by Icecat in CSV or Excel format contain both the basic information and rich media assets of the Icecat product data-sheets matching your catalog. To obtain personalized files, you first need to upload your product feed via the User Login area.

Open Icecat Fair Use Policy

The user of Open Icecat product data (in a free Open Icecat subscription or as part of the Full Icecat data) is required to respect the Open Icecat Fair Use Policy.

Explicitly relevant for website development is:

• to mention explicitly the “Specs: Icecat” on all product datasheets, with a link to the Icecat.biz web site
• to include explicitly an “AS IS” disclaimer, an example of which can be found https://icecat.biz/ssr/en/menu/disclaimer (available in several languages).

Advantages of upgrading to Full Icecat

The CSV interface may be accessed by all Icecat Data (XML) users – free or paid. Open Icecat users can access the data of the sponsoring brands.
Full Icecat users can access the data of all brands in the Icecat database.

However attractive the free Open Icecat database is, the Full-Icecat database still contains many, many more brands: 10,000s. If you are interested in subscribing to the Full Icecat database, please contact us via the website. If you want specific brands to be included in free Open Icecat, please, recommend Icecat to your manufacturer contacts. To sum up, what are the main advantages of Full Icecat over free Open Icecat?

• Firstly, all product data of all 10,000s of brands are available. If you don’t see the brand logo, the brand’s product data is only available in Full Icecat.
• Second, Icecat can also provide service levels, like coverage guarantees for your portfolio, support missing brands, and help defining new categories.

Read more about the main advantages of Full Icecat over free Open Icecat. In case you need higher catalog coverage, you will need Full Icecat. For more information, see the Icecat Subscription Plans.

If you want to upgrade to Full Icecat, please contact us via the contact form, or click on the “request Full Icecat access” link after the User Login.

1. CSV conventions used

The following CSV conventions are followed in Icecat’s CSV output files:
Column separator: , (comma)
Line break: \n
Quote symbol: “
Escape symbol: “
Optional quotation: N

Value separators:

• Links separator – pipe (|)
• ReasonsToBuy – contains a headline (text), picture link (URL) and the RTBs (Reasons-To-Buy) itself. An RTB is text that is separated by a pipe (|) symbol. Different RTBs are separated by line breaks.
• GTIN (EAN/UPC) – links to image galleries and other multimedia objects, comma-separated.
• Specifications – colon + space

2. Main requirements to your product feed

To generate unique personalized CSV files, the Icecat system requires a product feed (a product catalog or price file) from a user. It could be a CSV, XML or Excel (XLS or XLSX) file, with at least the main product identifiers for matching purposes:

• Brand/manufacturer part code (alphanumerical value)
• Brand name (alphanumerical value)

and/or

• GTIN (EAN/UPC/JAN) code (numerical value)

The quality of your product feed is one of the main factors that determine the quality of the Icecat match.

NOTE: uploading XML product feeds might require support from Icecat. CSV or Excel product feeds hardly ever require support.

You can read more here about relevant product feed file formats and structures for CSV and Excel.

Based on the product identifiers described above, the Icecat system is performing a match between your product feed and the Icecat database. After that, Icecat automatically adds product information to your matching data and generates customized files that can be downloaded from the user interface (after loging into the Icecat.biz website) in CSV or XLS and can be used for your e-business purposes. The download can be manual or fully automated.

3. Types of personalized output files

Icecat generates the following types of personalized output files:

• Personalized Index File (PIF)
• Personalized Catalog File (PCF)
• Images

Personalized Index File (PIF)

Using the PIF might simplify your implementation process by outsourcing the matching process to the Icecat platform. The PIF is a customized index file that contains basic information about matched product data-sheets, links to product XML files, and some additional columns, listed below:

PIF content:

Column title	Description
prod_id	unique manufacturer product code
supplier_name	name of a product’s brand or manufacturer
ean_upc	column that contains GTIN (EAN/UPC) numerical product code(s)
Path	link to XML product data-sheet
timestamp	Last modification time
Your product ID	Your product ID if set during the matching process
error_message	error of why product XML was not found or matched

Your product ID can simplify product identification if when matched, it actually contains a different product identifier on our side, and the product was matched according to product mapping rules. It allows you to match an Icecat data-sheet with your company’s own internal product ID.

The path column will contain links to product XML files depending on the language you’ve selected during PIF creation at the Import\Export tab.

Personalized Catalog File (PCF)

In short, the PCF is a customized file with detailed information per matched product. This type of file is available only to users with an Icecat Data subscription. Icecat supports two different options of this file:

– Firstly, PCF without spec names as column headers

Spec 1	Spec 2	Spec 3	Spec 4
Colour of product: Black	Auto focus: Yes	Display resolution: 3840 x 2160 pixels	Sensor type: CMOS
Colour of product: Grey	Auto focus: No	Display resolution: 2560 x 1440 pixels	Sensor type: CCD
Colour of product: Silver	Auto focus: Yes	Display resolution: 1136 x 640 pixels	Sensor type: CMOS
Colour of product: White	Auto focus: No	Display resolution: 1080 x 1920 pixels	Sensor type: CCD

– Secondly, PCF with spec names as column headers (default option)

Colour of product	Auto focus	Display resolution	Sensor type
Black	Yes	3840 x 2160 pixels	CMOS
Grey	No	2560 x 1440 pixels	CCD
Silver	Yes	1136 x 640 pixels	CMOS
White	No	1080 x 1920 pixels	CCD

PCF content:

Column title	Description
Requested_prod_id	Manufacturer’s product identifier used from your product feed
Requested_GTIN(EAN/UPC)	Requested numerical GTIN (EAN/UPC) code from your product feed
Requested_Icecat_id	Requested numerical internal Icecat identifier from your product feed

The first three columns contains the information for your information that allows you to understand on what basis Icecat system found a matching between an item from your file and product from Icecat database.

Column title	Description
ErrorMessage	Contains a textual explanation (not an error code!) why the system did not provide information on requested identifiers
Supplier	Product’s supplier name
Prod_id	Manufacturer part number
Icecat_id	Internal numerical product identifier used in Icecat Database
GTIN(EAN/UPC)	GTIN (EAN/UPC) codes that corresponds to a product
Category	Category name
CatId	Numerical identifier of a product’s category
ProductFamily	Product family name
ProductSeries	Product series number
Model	Product or model name
Updated	The date of the most recent change of the product data-sheet in Icecat
Quality	Data-sheet quality indicator
On_Market	On market indicator
Product_Views	Numerical value that shows number of data-sheet views in Icecat
HighPic	Link to high resolution version of main product image
LowPic	Link to low resolution version of the main product image
Pic500x500	Link to medium (500px) resolution version of the main product image
ThumbPic	Link to main product image thumbnail
Folder_PDF	Link to the PDF leaflet
Folder_Manual_PDF	Link to the PDF manual
ProductTitle	The product title
ShortDesc	Short editorial description of a product
ShortSummaryDescription	Automatically generated short summary description based on general data and key specs
LongSummaryDescription	Automatically generated Long summary description based on general data and key specs
LongDesc	Marketing text
ProductGallery	Gallery of product images
ProductGallery Resolution	Resolution of the product gallery images (separated by | symbol, if several)
360	Content type regarding a 360 degree (or so called 3D) product view
EU Energy Label	EU Energy Label
EU Product Fiche	EU Product Fiche (PDF or html data-sheet)
PDF	PDF files
Video/mp4	Product videos
Other multimedia	Other multimedia content types
ReasonsToBuy	Reasons to buy (feature or bullet descriptions)
Spec	Column contains feature name, feature value, and measure unit (if present)
ErrorMessage	error of why product XML was not found or matched

Images

You can download all the images you need with just one click, based on your product feed, language, and format selection. Integrate them in your webshop or PIM system, enrich your website, and improve the shopping experience of your customers.

4. How to create and download personalized CSV files

This section provides a step-by-step guide to get personal CSV files.

• Please, login to your user panel
• Go to the “Import/Export” tab and upload your product feed from your PC or a web URL

• When the preview is ready, please assign the columns of your product feed to Icecat attributes (please, also assign the column with your internal unique product identifier if applicable), and click on “save settings”. A “Matching Status” bar will appear to indicate the percentage of the matching process. Once it is finalized, click on “go to my downloads and results”

• On “My downloads”, you will be able to see the results of the matching between your product feed and the Icecat catalog. And you will be able to download the different CSV/Excel files available.
• Choose your desired output file, language, and format (if applicable) and click on “generate”
• You will once again see a status bar indicating the percentage of the process, once this process is finalized, you will be able to download the file.

Request daily file generation

If you want to have a daily regenerated PIF and PCF, please hit the request button. Once that is set by Icecat account management, you can daily access the updated PIF or PCF from the same address. In order to access or download your PIF or PCF without login to the User Panel, please use the deeplink formats below: 

PIF: https://icecat.biz/index.cgi?login_form=user_import_report;type=match;layout=csv;login=XXXXX;password=XXXXX

PCF: https://icecat.biz/index.cgi?login_form=csv_content;csv_file=/products_csv_lists_new/IcecatUserID_LangCode(.csv/.xlsx);login=XXXXX;password=XXXXX 

where XXXXX should be the login name and password respectively of your Icecat account. IcecatUserID can be found on the PCF user interface on www.icecat.biz. Using these deeplinks helps you to automate and simplify the process of data import from Icecat.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us.