Changelog

When editing prices with a spreadsheet the app will no longer accept prices with a space in between the numbers. If you upload a spreadsheet with a number like “1 234” and try to edit the price, compare-at price or cost fields, the app will show an error instead of trying to process the number:

This will ensure that the prices are updated as intended and will prevent upstream data issues from affecting your pricing.

You can now edit, export, and import ShipperHQ fields with Ablestar Bulk Product Editor. This allows you to quickly and safely manage ShipperHQ fields like such as Origins, Shipping Groups, and Dimensions. To see the ShipperHQ field you will need to enable the integration under Settings -> Integrations. After doing so, the app will show the ShipperHQ fields whenever you edit, export or import data.

Learn more about bulk editing ShipperHQ fields in Shopify.

When you create Shopify products from a spreadsheet you can have the columns named whatever you want, you don’t need to rename them to match a specific convention. Then, when you upload the spreadsheet you can choose which columns matches to which field.

To make this process easier we have an auto-detect button which will attempt to match the column names with the Shopify fields for you. We’ve made several updates to this auto-detect function to save you more time, especially with detecting image, metafield and Google Shopping fields.

We’re very pleased to announce that now the Ablestar Link Manager is now ‘Built for Shopify’. According to Shopify, the “Built for Shopify status is the highest level of recognition and achievement that an app can reach” and requires the app to meet specific design and performance standards. With this milestone you can be sure that the app has very low impact on your store’s speed and will function well within the Shopify admin.

We’ve added several more frequency options for when you generate repeating product exports. Now when you create a repeating export you can have it run:

• Every 4 hours
• Every 12 hours
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly

This should help stores that need to keep their data or product export feeds more up-to-date. Learn more about creating repeating product exports in Shopify.

When you import product images into Shopify you can specify a URL for the new images. In most cases Shopify is able to download these images directly but in some situations this fails and no product images get imported. We’ve noticed this with Dropbox images hosted on the dl.dropboxusercontent.com domain.

We’ve added a work-around to this in the app so now any Dropbox images should import correctly, even if they’re from the dl.dropboxusercontent.com domain.

You can now search for products based on when they were last updated on Shopify. We’ve supported searching on the created date for a while but held off on adding the updated date because the results can be counter-intuitive.

The updated date for a product represents the last time any of the fields relating to the product, including inventory, were changed. Inventory levels can change when the product is ordered which means a popular product could have an updated date that’s more recent than expected.

We’ve updated the app to support editing variant reference list metafields with an in-app edit. Now you can choose from the following options when editing this type of metafield:

• Add a variant reference to the start or end of the list
• Set the metafield to a new list of variant references
• Remove x entries from the start or end of the list

We have made some optimizations to how the app searches for products based on their inventory at a specific location. This should result in faster searches for things like “Inventory at Warehouse B < 1”. The improvements should be most noticable on stores with a large number of products.

We have made improvements to the code to download spreadsheet files from an FTP server with implicit SSL enabled. When you download a file from an FTP server there are two different connections taking place, one for the commands and one for the actual data being transfered. Some FTP servers require the SSL session to be reused between both of these connections.

The app will now reuse the SSL session in these situations. This should not affect any existing FTP downloads in the app but will make it so that the app can download files from a wider range of FTP servers.

You can now edit Shopify metafields that are a list of URLs directly in the app. Just select the metafield from the ‘Field to Edit’ popup and you can:

• Add an URL to the start or end of the list
• Set the metafield to a new list of URLs
• Remove x entries from the start or end of the list

Learn more about bulk editing metafields in Shopify.

We’re happy to announce that the Ablestar Link Manager is now embedded within the Shopify admin. This means that you can access your broken link reports without leaving the Shopify admin and also give you the option to pin the app to the sidebar.

This update involved a significant rewrite of our application. If you encounter any issues while using the app please contact us and we’ll resolve them as quickly as possible.

Ablestar Link Manager now uses app embed blocks instead of script tags to track visits to 404 error pages. App embed blocks provide a better-performing way to track broken link visits and ensure that the app will remain compatible with the newest themes and versions of the Shopify API.

App embed blocks require a store administrator to enable the block within the Shopify admin. For existing users of the app, tracking will continue to work using the script tags but we recommend that you log in to the app and enable the app block instead.

When you export your data to the Google Shopping feed format, the values of the price and sale_price fields depend on whether Shopify’s compare-at price field is set.

Going forwards, if the compare-at price in Shopify is zero, the app will treat that the same as if the compare-at price was not set. This will prevent prices of zero from unintentionally making their way into the Google Shopping feed.

Learn more about the Google Shopping feed format for Shopify.

We’ve add a ‘View Configuration’ button on the product export detail page.

Clicking this button will show you the configuration for the export including:

• The search filters for the export
• The format of the export
• All the fields included in the export

This is similar to the ‘View Configuration’ buttons that already exist for the edit and import detail screens.

We’ve made several optimizations to how spreadsheet edits are processed. Due to this changes you may noticed increased speeds when runnning spreadsheet edits, especially for those that are only updating inventory or that have the ‘skip unchanged rows’ option selected.

When you run a spreadsheet edit the app will go through each row of the spreadsheet, find the matching products or variants, and update them with the values from the row. Many times the spreadsheet will have multiple rows for a single product. For example, if a product has five variants, there could be five rows in the spreadsheet, each with the SKU of one of the variants.

In some situations the spreadsheet might, unintentinoally, only be editing some of the variants for the product. This could be because the spreadsheet is missing data for one of the variants or perhaps the variant is mislabeled in Shopify. Either way, some product data isn’t being updated when it should be.

When you export products with the Bulk Product Editor you have the choice of different formats. We’ve made several updates to the Excel format which should make it easier to use:

• IDs will not display in the scientific notation format
• Wider column widths by default so you can see more data at a glance

Learn more about exporting product data in Shopify.

When you run a spreadsheet edit in the app there’s an option to download a report of the rows in your spreadsheet that didn’t match any products in Shopify. This can be helpful in identifying any Shopify products that are missing or mis-labled.

We’ve updated this unmatched rows report to include the column names from the original file. Previously the columns were numbered sequentially but now you’ll see the actual names of the columns which should make it easier to identify the missing products.

When you look at the details for a spreadsheet edit in the app, there’s a View Configuration button on the top of the page which will show you the column mappings used for the spreadsheet edit. We’ve updated this screen to also show whether the ‘Skip unchanged rows’ option was selected for the edit:

Learn more about skipping unchanged rows in spreadsheet edits.