Overview

Configurators in LinnLive host common data for your listings. Separate configurators are required for each selling channel: eBay, Amazon, Magento, BigCommerce. Configurators are there to speed up the listing process therefore numerous listings can be submitted to a selling channel via single configurator. 

Listing in LinnLive

In order to list items using the same configurator the following requirements have to be met:

eBay

The rest of the data in the Configurator such as Shipping Services, Specifications, Categories, Variations, Store Categories can vary from listing to listing. Extended Properties have to be used for each such attribute to make sure the correct attributes are picked up for listings.

Amazon

The rest of the data in the Configurator such as Browse Nodes, non-mandatory Attributes, Variation Attributes' values can vary from listing to listing. It is important to use Extended Properties over Default Values for each attribute to make sure the correct attributes with the correct values are picked up for listings. 

Magento

BigCommerce

Examples

Here are some examples of how it works:

Using single configurator to list items shipped through different postal methods (Ebay)

You can select to ship certain items using, for example, Royal Mail only, and other items using DPD only and list these items using the same configurator. In this case it is important not to specify Default Values for any shipping service and use Extended Properties instead to set shipping price for each item. You can read more about Extended Properties here.

So if one item is shipped using Royal Mail and another item using DPD and default values for both shipping methods are specified in the configurator, LinnLive will pick up both shipping services with their default values and populate them in both listings. To avoid this happening Extended Properties have to be used.

Using single configurator to list items with different non-mandatory attributes (Amazon)

It is possible to use different attributes in each listing but a single configurator to submit such listings. If some items have Bullet Points and others do not, then "Bullet Points" Extended Property has to be added to relevant items, Bullet Point attribute selected in the configurator and mapped to the extended property. When listing items, LinnLive will add Bullet Points only to items with the respective extended property assigned to them. Items that do not have it, will not have any Bullet Points.

Using single configurator to list items in different categories

If there is an item that belongs to Gifts category and another that belongs to Postcards category, both these categories have to be selected in the Configurator. Extended Property for the respective category has to be added to each item and mapped with the Configurator. When listing these items, LinnLive will pick up the correct category for each item.

Mapping in LinnLive

When creating templates for items listed outside of LinnLive, multiple listing templates can be created using single configurator. Then later when there is a need to update some parameters in your listings, having single configurator for multiple listings will save you a lot of time.

Once listing has been prepared for mapping in the LinnLive Mapping Screen, available configurators will be listed in the Configurator drop-down box.

There will always be an option to create a new configurator for each listing, but it is recommended to do this only, if there are no other suitable configurators.

If there are other configurators in the list, they will be highlighted on a scale of green to red. If the suggested configurator is highlighted in red, it means that this configurator is missing attributes and/or categories for mapping given listing. However you can still use this configurator. During mapping system will update the selected configurator with all the required information.

If you have just started using LinnLive and do not have any configurators in the system yet or all your configurators have got default values for attributes, shipping etc, then during mapping system will only offer new configurator to be created for each of your listings. If you have used Prepare All Listings for Mapping option (available for eBay), then the only option suggested by the system will be to create a brand new configurator for each listing. In this case you should map one listing to a template using new configurator. Once mapping is finished, Prepare All Listings for Mapping option should be selected again. This will refresh the list of configurators available for mapping and the configurator used during mapping the first listing will appear in the list.

There is no limit to the number of listings that can be assigned to single configurator. It is up to you how many new configurators there will be created when mapping listings in LinnLive. Some customers create different configurator for certain categories, others map listings to configurators based on price. E.g. if an item belongs to a specific price range, they allocate such listing to a certain configurator, and for items above this price range there is another configurator. This is done to later ease revision of the listings.

Concluding Remark

Each customer finds his/her own way to use LinnLive configurators. But general recommendation for all LinnLive customers would be not to use a separate configurator for each listing.