Overview

A catalog provides the ability to personalize campaigns with dynamic information in messages from product prices to inventory levels. You can create a new catalog by uploading a file with one row for each item in your catalog. A catalog can be uploaded directly on the CleverTap dashboard via a CSV file that is generated by your inventory management system on your servers.

Download a Sample Catalog

To download a sample catalog, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to Settings > Catalogs.
2. Click on the Sample Product Location csv or Sample Product csv link.

The sample files help you get started with creating your catalog.
In a product location catalog, the identity represents the location ID. The following is the sample product location catalog:

The following is the sample product catalog:

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Mandatory Fields

The following are the mandatory fields for each catalog type:

• Product location: identity, latitude, and longitude.
• Product: Identity, Name, and ImageURL.

Create a New Catalog

To create a new catalog, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to Settings > Catalogs.
2. Click + Catalog.
3. Select Product or Product Location.

4. Click Browse to search and upload a new catalog. The catalog file must be in a CSV format.

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Upload Limit

You can insert up to 10,000 rows from the dashboard; however, you can insert up to 5 million rows from our API. For more information, refer to Catalog API.

5. Enter the Catalog name after the Catalog preview displays.
6. Click Upload.

7. Click Save Catalog.

The new catalog is now displayed on the Catalogs page.

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Key Points to Consider

• The catalog file must be in a CSV format.

• You can add a maximum of 20 columns in a catalog.

• Product Catalog

  • You can upload a maximum of five catalogs.
  • Each catalog can have up to five million rows.

• Product Location Catalog

  • You can upload a maximum of five catalogs.
  • Each catalog can have up to one million rows.

• You can upload the catalog with columns having accent marks and emojis, but you cannot view these characters at the time of catalog send-time personalization or downloading the catalog.

Map Catalog Columns

After uploading the catalog, you must map the catalog column with the associated event and property on CleverTap (for example, map the Name field of the catalog to the event property Product Name of the event Product Viewed).

1. Navigate to Settings > Catalogs and select the uploaded catalog.
2. From the map catalog section, select the catalog columns to map.

The following is the sample mapping of the Product Location Catalog where the identity column from the catalog must be mapped to any other column in any product catalog:

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Required Location Column in a Product Catalog

A product catalog must have a specific field that can be mapped to the identity column in a product location catalog. Also, there can be multiple mappings that can be done with the same product location catalog.

The following is the sample mapping for the Product Catalog:

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Key Points to Consider for Product Catalog

• You can map multiple catalog columns to a CleverTap event property.
• A mapped event property can only belong to the same event.

3. Click Save Catalog after the mapping is complete.

Catalog Best Practices

When uploading a catalog, consider the following best practices: some items are mandatory, and others are recommendations.

Mandatory Practices

The following are some of the mandatory practices when working with Catalogs on the CleverTap dashboard:

• The first row in the file must contain the header fields separated by commas. The subsequent rows are fields with your individual catalog items in them, also separated by commas. Each row identifies one item in your catalog.

• There are three mandatory columns for each catalog type.

  • For a product catalog:

    • Identity: This is the unique identifier associated with each item.
    • Name: This is the name of the item.
    • ImageURL: This is the item image.

  • For a product location catalog:

    • Identity: This is the location ID, such as a store ID.
    • Latitude: This is the geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position.
    • Longitude: This is the geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position.

• There can be a total of 20 columns in your catalog. The following are some tangible benefits of adding a large number of custom fields when uploading your record:

  • Every field in the catalog can be used for sending personalized messages to your users.
  • Also, every field could be used to create recommendations for a filtered set of items in your catalog. For example, you could have a field that identifies the things that are the flavor of the season.
  • You could create a recommendation to serve only the flavor of the season from the catalog. You could also exclude items that are not best suited to be recommended to a wider audience (for example, rated content).

• The catalog must be in a CSV format.

• The images added within the ImageURL field must adhere to the following guidelines to render correctly:

  • Aspect Ratio for In-App Campaigns.
  • Others: The aspect ratio of images must be 16: 9 or 1:1, depending on your campaign requirement.

Recommended Practices

The following are recommended practices:

• You can add custom fields in addition to the mandatory fields.
• It is highly recommended that you keep your catalog updated to ensure that:
  • The recommendations are accurate and useful to users. Also, it is important to avoid showing recommendations for items that have expired or are currently out of stock.
  • The Catalog Data Ingestion is accurate.