Integrations

Pull

A pull is the PIM reading a connected integration on its own schedule to write down what it found, so your own product stays exactly as you left it.

A pull is the PIM reading one of your connected integrations and writing down what it found. It runs on a schedule. It needs nothing from you, and no button anywhere starts one.

Most people come to this page for one of two reasons. Something changed on the integration and they are waiting for it to show up in the PIM. Or a colored dot turned up on one of their products and they want to know what the last read found.

What a pull does with what it finds is the part to learn, and the answer is the same on every integration. A pull reports. It writes down where your listing stands, what the integration thinks of it, and how much stock is there, and it leaves everything you typed alone. Your catalog here is the version that counts, and the publishing is what sends it out.

You see the results in two places. Click a card on Integrations in the left sidebar, and the dialog that opens shows you a Last pull time. Open a product from Catalog and hover an integration’s logo at the top of the editor, and a panel tells you what the last pull found about that one product.

Before you start

One thing decides what you can see here. Everything else on this page can wait until you need it.

What your role lets you do

Role	Open `Integrations`	Read the panel on a product	Turn `Sync` off for one product
Admin	Yes	Yes	Yes
Manager	No	Yes	Yes
Editor	No	Yes	Yes

Integrations is not in your sidebar at all below Admin, so most of your team cannot open Last pull. The panel on a product is not. Anyone who can open a product can hover a logo and read what the last pull found there. Roles are set in team, roles and permissions.

How to see what a pull brought in

Open the product
Click Catalog in the left sidebar, which opens on Products, and click the row you want. The editor opens over your table.
Find the integration logos
They are in the top row of the editor, to the right of your title and the score badge. You get one logo for every integration your organization has connected, whether or not this product ever went there.
Hover the logo you care about
A small panel opens under it, with one card for each account you have on that integration.
Read the rows in the panel
Sync status tells you where this product stands with the PIM. Integration status tells you what the integration itself says about the listing. Last pull tells you when that integration was last read, and Advisories appears only when there is something to say about a field.

That is the whole flow. The colored dot on the logo says the same thing at a glance, so a green dot means nothing on that account needs you.

Everything below explains what each integration sends back, and what to do when a line in that panel tells you something went wrong. You do not need any of it to read a panel.

Every option in detail

When a pull runs

A pull runs every 30 minutes, once for each destination you have switched on. A destination is the part of one of your accounts that actually syncs. It means something different on each integration, which integrations sets out for you.

A pass is skipped for a destination you switched off, and for an account that is paused, needs re-authorizing, or has failed. A lapsed subscription on your organization stops every one of them at once. You will find the table of account states, and what clears each one, in integrations.

Where an integration can announce a stock change the moment it happens, that count arrives in seconds instead of half an hour. The PIM then re-reads only that one thing, not your whole store.

Integration	What it announces the moment it happens
Shopify	A stock count that moved
BigCommerce	A stock count that moved
Square	A stock count that moved
Amazon	Nothing. Every read waits for the scheduled pass
Google	Nothing. Every read waits for the scheduled pass

Reading an integration’s panel on a product

Hover an integration’s logo at the top of the product editor and you get a panel about that one product on that one integration. Which rows you get depends on what happened. A healthy product shows you three or four of them, and a product with a problem shows you more.

Row	What it tells you
`Sync status`	Where this product stands with the PIM, in one short phrase
`Integration status`	What the integration itself says about the listing
`Variant status`	One line per variant, giving its SKU, the state the integration reports, `FBA` or `FBM` on Amazon, and where its push stands
`Listed`	How many of your variants got there, like `3 of 4 variants`. It appears only where one variant is one listing, on a product with more than one
`Last push`	How long ago the PIM last wrote to it
`Last pull`	How long ago that integration was last read
`Restrictions`	A rule on the integration is stopping this product from being shown, and the line says which
`Push issues`	One line for each field the last publish could not send as it stood
`Advisories`	One line for each field that needs looking at but stops nothing
`Pull error`	The last read failed on this product, and this is the reason

Your name for the account is at the top of the panel, with a Sync switch next to it. That switch is about publishing and not about reading. Clicking the logo itself opens your listing on the integration in a new tab, which is the quickest way to see whatever the pull was reading.

What the panel looks like when you have two accounts on one integration

With one account, the top line of the panel is that account. It reads like the integration’s name and then your name for the account, and the Sync switch is on that line.

With two or more, the top line is the integration alone. Each account then gets a line of its own under it, with its own dot, its own status, and its own switch.

The dot on the logo is the worst state among your accounts this product actually got to. An account of yours it never got to does not drag the dot down, so a gray account never hides a green one. Clicking the logo opens the listing on one of your accounts, not a choice of them.

What each integration reports back

No integration’s pull writes into your catalog. They all report, and what each one reports is where they differ.

Integration	What a pull writes into your catalog	What it only reports
Shopify	Nothing, once the first sync is done	Whether the listing is still there, the store’s stock, and the store’s locations
BigCommerce	Nothing, once the first sync is done	Whether the listing is still there, and the store’s stock
Square	Nothing, once the first sync is done	The counter’s stock, and the merchant’s locations
Amazon	Nothing	The offer’s state, its ASIN, who ships it, and the stock Amazon has
Google	Nothing	Whether each product may be shown, and why not

The PIM decides what your products say, everywhere. So a pull reads back the outcome and stops there. An item someone creates in your Shopify store, in your BigCommerce store or on Square after you connected never turns up in your catalog on its own. If you want it here, create it here.

Amazon reports your offer and nothing about the product. It reads back how healthy your offer is, the ASIN for that marketplace, and whether Amazon ships the listing or you do. On a listing Amazon ships for you, it also copies Amazon’s own quantity in as a read-only number. That stock is Amazon’s, and the PIM never writes it.

Google reports a verdict. Publishing to Google answers right away even when your product cannot be shown, and the real decision comes minutes later. So the pull exists to go and fetch it. Whatever Google objects to names the field it is about. A product Google will not show at all reads under Restrictions, and one it shows less prominently reads under Advisories.

The five answers Google gives about a product

What `Integration status` says	What it means
`Approved`	Your product can be shown
`Limited`	It is shown, less prominently, and the reasons arrive as lines in `Advisories`
`In review`	Google has not decided yet
`Rejected`	It cannot be shown, and the reasons arrive as lines in `Restrictions`
`Unknown`	Google answered with something the PIM does not recognize

A problem with your account instead of a product does not appear here at all. It goes into a card headed Account setup at the top of your account’s dialog, and integrations covers reading one.

What a first sync does not bring across

Stock is left out everywhere, and the section below explains where it goes instead.

A Square first sync does bring the merchant’s images into your assets. It turns Square categories into PIM categories too, so your publishing after that reuses the same ones instead of building a second set beside them.

A BigCommerce first sync brings the images that are on a product in your store, and it leaves two things behind. Custom fields do not come across, because a flat name and value cannot be turned back into a PIM specification. Images attached to one variant do not come across either, only the ones on the product itself.

What the first sync brings in

A first sync runs once when you connect an account, and it cannot be run again. It starts by itself the moment the connection exists. A dialog opens and counts what happened, and integrations covers that dialog. What it does to your catalog is different on each integration.

Integration	What the first sync does
Shopify	Reads your whole store, matches what it can to products you already have, and imports the rest. Every Shopify status comes across, so drafts and archived products arrive too
BigCommerce	Reads your whole store once. A product it can match by SKU, and then by barcode, is linked to yours, and anything it cannot match becomes a new PIM product
Square	Reads the merchant’s items once, matching the same way
Amazon	Imports nothing. It reads your listings and takes over every offer whose ASIN already matches one of your variants
Google	Imports nothing. Google has only what the PIM sent it, so a new account reads back an empty answer

A match links the two and changes nothing of yours. Your version is the one that goes back out after that. So connecting a second store to a catalog you already built here does not overwrite what you built. Only a product the first sync could not match at all becomes a new product in your catalog.

An item the first sync cannot decide about is skipped instead. That happens when one item’s identifiers point at two different PIM products, or when the PIM product it matched was already taken. Those come to you in the error report you download from the first sync dialog. A currency that does not match stops the whole thing before it starts, and integrations gives you that warning.

Nothing that arrives on a first sync brings its stock with it. An imported variant arrives with Track Inventory switched off, in the Inventory section of the product editor. The integration’s real counts show up beside it as read-only numbers you cannot edit. Turn Track Inventory on when you want the PIM to publish a quantity of its own, which inventory works through.

This is the one and only time an integration’s own content becomes your content. Everything after it runs the other way.

Where the stock a pull reads ends up

A pull never writes your stock number. Everything an integration reports about quantities goes next to your number instead of into it. Your number stays the one you set, and the two are side by side so you can see the gap.

Open a product from Catalog, scroll to the Inventory section, and under Track Inventory you get a table with one row per location. The columns you get are Location, Integration, Available, Committed, and Incoming. Every number in it is read-only, and nothing you type anywhere changes it.

Which locations you see in that table comes from the pull as well. Shopify, Square, and BigCommerce report the locations you keep with them. Amazon adds one for each marketplace where it has your stock. A location the integration stops using is marked inactive here instead of disappearing on you.

Whether a location counts toward the on-hand number the PIM publishes is yours to decide, from the Locations list in the account dialog, which integrations covers.

Limits

What	Limit
Time between scheduled reads	30 minutes
First syncs on one account	1
Products one pull reads	No limit

What a pull cannot do

You cannot	Do this instead
Read an integration on demand	Wait for the next pass
Run a first sync a second time	Nothing re-runs it. A fresh connection runs a first sync of its own
Look back at what earlier pulls did	Read `Last pull` in the integration dialog, and `Advisories` on the product
Stop the reading without stopping the publishing	Switch the destination off in the account dialog, which stops both directions
Bring an edit made on the integration back into your catalog	Make the edit here, and let the publishing send it out
Bring in an item created on the integration after you connected	Create it in your PIM catalog and let the publishing send it there

What happens to what you typed

When somebody edits on the integration

Your version is the one kept, always. An edit somebody makes in Shopify Admin, in your BigCommerce store, on Square or on Amazon is never read back into your catalog. It stays on that integration until the PIM next publishes that product, and the publish writes your whole product over it.

So there is no race to win and no timestamp to compare. If you want a change that somebody made over there, make the same change here.

Brands and tags the first sync creates

A Shopify product has a vendor and a set of tags, and your catalog has Brands and Tags of its own. So a first sync that finds a vendor your catalog does not have creates the brand for you. The same goes for a tag: one your catalog has never seen gets created too. You will find both under Catalog, in Brands and in Tags, and their Created by column reads Integration instead of a person’s name.

Categories never move in this direction. A Shopify collection does not become a PIM category, however many syncs run, so your category tree is only ever what you built.

A vendor or a tag over 100 characters is skipped instead of created, and you get a line in Advisories on the product saying so.

A product you deleted here stays gone

Deleting a PIM product on an account whose delete setting is Archive or Keep leaves your listing alive on the integration, which is what you asked for when you chose that setting in integration settings.

What the PIM does then is forget it. The link between your deleted product and that listing goes, nothing here points at the listing any more, and no later pass reads it back in. So a product you delete stays deleted, whatever you told the integration to do with what it was publishing.

A listing deleted there comes back on its own

Every completed pull queues a publish for each product of yours whose SKU is missing on that integration. So deleting a listing in Shopify Admin, in your BigCommerce store, or in Square is not how you take a product off an integration. It goes back within half an hour, and integrations explains the same behavior from the publishing side.

The way to take one product off one account is the Sync switch in that account’s card of your product’s panel. Products covers what that switch asks you when your listing is already live.

Switching Sync off stops the publishing. A product you took off one account stays out of everything the PIM sends there. The listing you left behind keeps its place in the panel, so you can still click through to it on the integration.

When something goes wrong

The badge on a product

The dot on an integration’s logo is one color, and the Sync status row in the panel spells that color out for you in words. These are the ones a pull gives you.

What `Sync status` says	What it means
`Synced`	Nothing on this account needs you
`2 fields need attention`	That many fields have something to say, and `Advisories` lists them
`Read failed`	The last read could not take this product at all, and `Pull error` gives you the reason
`Listing needs attention`	The integration says your listing is not fully live
`Rejected by the integration`	The integration would not show it

The worst one is the one shown, so a red state hides an orange one under it. Every other phrase you can see in that row comes from the publishing side or from your account’s own state, and products and integrations cover those.

The notes on a field

Advisories gives you one line for each field that needs looking at. Each line opens with the field’s name, spelled the way your product editor spells it. So a title that ran long on the first sync reads Title was too long (max 300 characters); shortened to fit.

How the line ends	What happened
`shortened to fit.`	The value came in, cut down to the limit
`not imported.`	The value could not be used, so the field arrived empty
`a unique one was assigned.`	Another product already had that `URL handle`, so yours got a different one
`temporary SKUs were assigned.`	Another product already had those SKUs
`that were removed.`	Invisible characters were taken out, and the rest came in
`skipped.`	A file could not be downloaded, so the product arrived without it

Where the line came from decides how it clears. On Shopify these are all first sync notes, and they clear the next time that product publishes successfully, because the publish sends your version of the whole product. On Amazon and on Google the line is the integration’s own verdict, so fix the value there and the next pull clears it for you.

When the PIM emails you

A pull that keeps failing on an account emails you under the subject Sync issue with {channel}, with your integration’s name in place of {channel}. It asks you to do nothing. The next pass tries again, and the first pull that completes closes it without you touching anything.

An authorization that expired or was revoked emails you a different one, asking you to reconnect. Both are under Notifications in your settings, in the group Integrations & Sync, as Sync errors and Connection issues. You can switch either of them off there.

Two things that happen with no message

Nothing on screen tells you about either of these, so they are worth knowing.

A Shopify product whose pictures the store is still preparing waits rather than arriving without them. If they are still not ready after a while, the product comes in with the pictures that are, and a line in Advisories names what was left out. Nothing fetches the rest later, so those are files you upload here yourself.

While a catalog import of yours is running, the PIM holds back the publishes a pull would queue for products missing on a channel. They are queued once your import finishes, so a quiet half hour after you upload a big file is expected.