In your FTP or SFTP server, you might have many files that you need to import into Shopify.
With Matrixify you do not need to manually upload and import each file, you can create an import that will upload all of your files from a whole directory at once.
Quick summary on how to create a batch import from FTP/SFTP directory
- Save your FTP/SFTP server in Matrixify.
- Create a Batch job by importing from directory.
- Inspect your import and adjust options if necessary.
- Press the “Import” button to start your Batch import of the whole directory and follow its progress.
Once you have gone through these steps, the app will create a “child” job for each file in a directory and group all those sub-jobs under one Batch job.
You can track all your file import progress right from this Batch job or you can click on each individual child job to see more details about it.
Important Notes:
- Importing the whole directory in a Batch import is only available for shops that are on Matrixify Big or Enterprise plan.
- The file(s) you import need to be in any Matrixify supported format so the app can understand its contents.
Let’s go through each step to import your server’s directory.
1. Save your FTP/SFTP server in Matrixify
First, you would need to save your server in Matrixify settings.
You can open the Matrixify app and head into the Settings page.
On this page, you can find the section “Servers” and there you can create a new server to save your user credentials.
Find more details about how to set up a server in Matrixify “Set up Servers for importing files to Shopify” tutorial.
2. Create a Batch job by importing from directory
Once you have the server set up, you can go into the Matrixify app and create a batch import job from the directory.
In the Home page of the Matrixify app, in the “Import” section click on the drop-down menu and select your server to import from.
Next to the drop-down, you can fill the “path to file” field. In this field, you need to list directory that you wish to import from.
If you are importing from the root directory then simply type slash character in this field – /
If importing from a sub-directory then list the path to this directory.
Optionally
You can also import from Full URL without saving the server by constructing the full URL in the following templates:
For FTP server the link would be:
ftp://user:[email protected]:port/path/to/directory/
For SFTP server the would be constructed almost the same:
sftp://user:[email protected]:port/path/to/directory/
3. Inspect your import and adjust options if necessary
Once the new import page opens you will see that the app starts analyzing the directory and each file in it.
Each file as a sub-job will start to appear here.
Inspecting and understanding the Batch import
At the top, you will see various details about the whole batch import.
Such as our internal job ID, your subscription plan, Shopify API Call Limits, and other details.
Further below you will see the counts of how many items in total the app has found across all the files in your directory.
As in this example, since all the files contain Products, then you can see that total as 40 Products.
It will import files only from that exact directory and will ignore any deeper sub-directories.
If within the list you find a file that you do not wish to import, you can click on the “Cancel” button for that file, and the Matrixify will not import it.
Files will be imported in alphabetical order.
Adjusting import Options
At the very bottom of the new import page, you can see options that you can adjust.
First, you have the option do to some action with the file on your server upon importing it:
- Do nothing – nothing will happen to your file on your server, it will just get import and stay there.
- Delete that file on SFTP server – the app will delete each file it imports, so it will disappear from your FTP/SFTP server.
This is useful if you do not need the file after import, but have repeated import set up for this file and do not wish for next import to import again the same file. - Move file to directory by Import status – moves the file to a different directory based on its current status within this batch job.
If you have automation set up in your server that should pick up what happened with the file or just wish to be in control of your files then this is an option to select.
For simplicity, we will do nothing with the files in this tutorial if you wish to learn more about it, check out Matrixify import from SFTP tutorial.
After that, you can see various usual import options, a more detailed list of what each option does you can find in Matrixify “How it works” page.
At any typical import, you usually do not need to change any options – the default ones will work just fine.
At the very end, you see options to set up scheduled and repeated imports. With these, you can set up a system that app will automatically import any file that appears in the FTP/SFTP server directory.
We have a specific tutorial that will explain how to set up the Matrixify to automatically monitor your server directory.
4. Press the “Import” button to start your Batch import of the whole directory
Once you have double-checked your new import page, we can finally start the import.
At the bottom or top bar on the page, you can press the “Import” button to start your import.
Once started, you will see that all files will go into “Queued” status, and one by one they will automatically import.
At the top, you can see the total progress of the import across all the files.
Good to know!
- In Matrixify app Settings, you can set to receive notification emails about specific job statuses. Decide – in which cases you want to receive an e-mail, and when not, to not overload your mailbox.
- Read Matrixify “How it works” page to understand other important basics about the Matrixify.
- Check out Matrixify “Tutorials” page for more FTP/SFTP related tutorials.
