Content Experience Suite API Overview and FAQ

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Should I use the Content Experience Suite API?

Suppliers who are considering automating the creation of products, updates to products, and maybe also publications to recipients may consider Content Experience Suite API. Recipients who want to automate the search and retrieval of product data from their own account or from Marketplace may consider the Content Experience Suite API.

 

Things to Ask When Considering the Content Experience Suite API

• Do you have an in-house technical team that can support you during your implementation?
  • Suppliers implementing the Content Experience Suite API require the support of a technical team over approximately 3-6 months. This time frame can expand or contract based on complexity, your resource availability, and your commitment to the project.
  • Recipients implementing the Content Experience Suite API require the support of a technical team over approximately 2 weeks to understand the Syndigo API and to create code to ingest product data from Syndigo. The additional time required to integrate the data into downstream systems will vary significantly based on the customer’s infrastructure but is generally between 2 and 6 weeks. This time frame can expand, or contract based on your resource availability and commitment to the project.

• If you don’t have a technical team, will your business support engaging a partner to complete the implementation?
  • Do keep in mind that some in-house support will be needed for API maintenance over time.
  • Also, an eCommerce representative from your company will need to actively participate for the length of the implementation
  • For data validation
  • To plan for the necessary business processes for ongoing success post implementation

• Supplier API Implementation:
  • You will need to generate code to create the necessary payload structures. Many of our API clients employ middleware to create the output format needed to meet the Content Experience Suite API standards. Some PIMs may be able to create the output format necessary.

• Supplier API Maintenance:
  • Do you have a technical team that can support recipient updates to requirements?
    • Our recipient network is vast, as such there are always updates occurring within the recipient network. After implementation, you will need to have technical resources that can support updates to attribution requirements as the recipients need.
  • You will still need to support business processes around syndication to include checking data quality before publication, monitoring for recipient updates to include new attribution, changes to existing attribution, or changes to validations, as well as checking and actioning recipient feedback post publish.

• Recipient API Maintenance:
  • Recipients should plan for the addition of product attributes, choice values and product categories over time as data collection requirements change.

Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

Q: What can I do with the Content Experience Suite API?

A: Content Experience Suite API is a rest API to facilitate:

• The creation and updating of product records
• Publishing of core marketing content to recipients
• Uploading of assets
• Linking of assets to attribute values
• Creating recipient overrides
• Setting taxonomy
• Linking recipients
• Creating package hierarchies
• Publishing products to recipients
• Search and retrieval pf product records from the product index or from the marketplace
• Progression of workflow steps
• Checking data quality and readiness for publication by recipient*
• Checking post-publication feedback*

*Please note that these are restricted functions. They are not available to customers who have a competitor involved in their integration.

Q: What can I NOT do with the Content Experience Suite API?

A: Content Experience Suite API does NOT provide means to create Enhanced Content nor does it provide access to reporting. For enhanced content automation, you will need to learn more about our Batch XML process. For retrieving analytics reports, you will want our Report Builder API documentation.

Content Experience Suite API is a Rest API. It does not take any action without the customer system triggering it. It cannot consume files that do not conform to the Content Experience Suite API format requirements. It also cannot consume files from your system on a schedule. Any scheduling needs will need to be managed on the customer system side.

Q: What should I expect after I have implemented the Content Experience Suite API? What are the
necessary maintenance considerations?

A: After implementing the Content Experience Suite API to push product data to Syndigo, you should plan to have intermittent updates as recipients update their requirements. Recipients control over the content they wish to receive from suppliers and can make updates at any time. Most updates occur at the category level. You will need to have a resource or team that can make updates to the attribution sent in via API as these changes come across. Having users in the UI can help manage recipient changes while the technical team makes any necessary updates.

Q: What can/should I do in UAT Vs PROD?

A: In UAT, you can prepare your connections, create test products, and validate attributes up to publication. You may publish to a test recipient in UAT; however, it will not reach the external recipient. Our UAT environment is not integrated with our recipient partners’. Full publication to recipient must be performed in production.

Please note that requirements sets and recipient attribute GUIDs may differ between UAT and Prod. These should be reviewed for any differences once in production.

Q: What is the payload size limitation? How many items can be added at once for
product import?

A: You can import one or many products within a single product import call. The payload size is not limited; however, it is recommended to keep it under 200 products in one call. Best practice is to keep your product import call smaller. This improves processing times and facilitates easier troubleshooting when needed.

Q: How many products should be exported at any time?

A: This can be controlled using skip and take parameters in the product search call. It is best practice to keep the take per call small for best performance and easier troubleshooting. Use an asynchronous parallel/threading approach.

Q: What is the file size limit for assets?

A: Asset files, independent of type, have a hard limit of 1 GB

Q: Can I submit my files by FTP?

A: No. FTP is a different process than using the Content Experience Suite API. At this time we do not support FTP import of product data. You must use the format for product import/update as laid out in the documentation for Content Experience Suite API. Syndigo has other methods of consuming customer data if Content Experience Suite API is not right for you. Speak to your Syndigo account team for additional information.

Q: Can I schedule a product updates or publications?

A: Customers will need to manage the necessary code to schedule product updates and publications. These actions will take place at the time the API call is made.

Authorization/Access

Q: How do I get my username and secret?

A: You must have an existing Syndigo account and API access enabled. Only users on the account flagged as Administrator can see the API credentials. For your security, we do not share Username and Secret by email. These must be obtained using the following steps with the UI. Navigate to your User Profile, select My Account, select desired account, select API Credentials.

Q: I keep getting “401 Unauthorized”? What am I doing wrong?

A: For the GET version of the call, ensure that your auth is URL encoded. Make sure your auth is current. Confirm with your Implementation Manager/CSM/AE that you have the correct account access enabled.

You can also use the POST version of the authentication method which moves the parameters into the body of the request to avoid URL encoding issues.

Q: How do I find my dataOwnerID/Company ID?

A: Data Owner ID and Company ID are the same identifier. The fastest way to locate this information in your account is within the UI. User Profile > My Account > if you have access to multiple accounts, select desired
account > API Settings

Customer Vocabulary

Q: Do I need a customer vocabulary?

A: The importexport endpoint is built using the customer vocabulary to translate attribute GUIDs to meaningful aliases. You will need to have a customer vocabulary created to make use of this API endpoint. The vocabulary should be built to your specific needs, using meaningful language to you and your teams.

Q: How do I get my customer vocab created?

A: Ask your Implementation Manager or account team to establish your customer vocabulary and provide you the vocabulary id. Note that the customer vocabulary is unique to your account. It is intended to be built to your needs. While we can create an initial vocabulary shell to begin exploration, a complete customer vocabulary file can only be created one attribute mapping has been completed.

Supplier Activities

GDSN & Product Hierarchy:

Q: Why won’t my GDSN publication go through?

A: Do you have multiple versions of the same GTIN? For GDSN publications, every product must have a catalog registration. Only one catalog registration can exist for a given GTIN + GLN + Target Market. If you have two records with the same GTIN, one will be missing the catalog registration and will not be able to successfully publish.

Q: How do I create product hierarchy?

A: Parent product must be created first. Then child products can be imported and linked within the product import call using the “ImmediateParentDetails” information to note parent and quantity of current product contained in the parent. Child records know their parents but parents don’t know their children. Declaration of product hierarchy is performed within the child product.

Q: Can my product be a part of multiple hierarchies?

A: Yes, a child product can belong to more than one parent. To do so by API, this must be declared within the “ImmediateParentDetails” section of the child product import/update call. Note that this must be declared holistically as all contents of the ImmediateParentDetail section are replaced at any given time that information is sent.

Q: Where do I put my product hierarchy information? Where do I put details about the case, pallet, and each?

A: Each level of the product hierarchy exists as a separate record in the Syndigo platform.

Q: How can I get a flattened hierarchy?

A: You will need custom attribution to capture flattened hierarchy information. Discuss with your account representative. This may warrant separating into a different account if you are also capturing standard GDSN product hierarchy.

Additional GDSN information

GDSN is GTIN based. You must use GTIN as your product identifier for GDSN publications. GTIN must be unique to a single product record. GDSN assumes that all modifications will happen on the same product record throughout the life of the product. Archiving live product GTINs to and making a new record will break the associated GDSN registration.

Importing Products

Q: How do I find the taxonomy node identifier?

A: You will need to ask your Syndigo account team for the top level taxonomy node for each recipient you are trying to reach via API. Once you have the top level node, you can use the taxonomy calls to explore the children and find the identifier for the category you need.

Q: How do I link my assets to a recipient?

A: A supplier cannot link their asset to a recipient but can publish the product to the recipient thus getting a copy of the asset to the recipient. Link your asset to your product by assigning the asset to the attribute and then link your product to a recipient. If you want a specific asset to go only to a specific recipient, you may want to use a recipient override.

Q: How does the Syndigo platform manage assets?

A: Upon initial asset upload (URL or binary), Syndigo downloads and saves a copy of the asset file to our DAM. Publications to recipients create another copy of the asset for use by the recipient in the platform. GDSN recipients receive a URL that points back to our DAM. The recipient can then download the asset using the URL.

To submit additional questions you would like to see covered by the FAQ, email questions to api.knowledge@syndigo.com. Please note this is NOT for support questions and will be reviewed on a monthly basis. API support questions should be directed to your account team or our support request site here: syndigo.com/support.