microsoft live search cashback

[Afishinado]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

So, I assume this means that I am unable to participate in Microsoft Live Search. FYI, you could save others like me a lot of time by having them go thru some kind of process that would eliminate them from participation BEFORE they take all the steps necessary to join. Bummer!

[motox5874]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

well i'd like to once again share my thanks for all the help, we've been up on live for a while, and the new miva updates are a great help.

my only other question is, our products seem kind of hard to find on cashback...how can i make them more accessible?

[Rick Wilson]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

Afishinado,

Can't you put a note in your checkout flow that Microsoft Cashback users have to click Return to Merchant to qualify for their rebate? People won't click back to you for nothing, but usually will if it means money for them.

[Afishinado]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

I think that is the only solution for now. Can you tell me how to find the right page so that I can insert the text message?

[Mark Johnson]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

I think that is the only solution for now. Can you tell me how to find the right page so that I can insert the text message?

That would basically be any page that has the Google Checkout button on it. You could look for "Google Checkout Button Insertion" in the Versions drop down on the template for each page.

I went through all the pages in one our test stores and only found it in BASK, OCST and OSEL.

[2CDev]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

Some feedback about how Partner Phone Support is handling this -

I called today about a problem that I have not yet seen addressed on this forum, or in the PDF instructions made by Miva that Microsoft is emailing out, and was basically given the "help-yourself" hand-off to the announcement thread to "please use this new module" as my answer:
http://extranet.mivamerchant.com/forums/showthread.php?p=87731#post87731


When I mentioned that this was not a helpful answer and that by the way, this was the same instructions I was given by Microsoft that didn't work, I was given nothing more as an answer. I had to insist on talking to someone else.



Finally I was able to talk to someone on the support team longer than 2 months, and after some discussion was told something more than this is a "do-it-yourselfer" issue. I was finally told that phone support really has not been trained to support this yet and that is why I have to contact Mark through the forums only.


I told one person at support that I had the choice of voicing my concerns over the lack of proper explanation from phone support to someone on the phone, or publically via the forums and was told that I HAD to contact Miva about this on the forums only.



So please note that if the truth is that phone support, or even top engineers have not yet been trained in something new to Miva, THAT should be their given reason for sending you for support in a "self-help" manner on the forums, NOT some feeble explanation that sounds obnoxiously scripted or rude.


That is NOT what I expect from partner support after all the strides your whole company has made in this area, which I applaud.


Hear is what the rep is telling us:


1. "You were correct earlier - the Merchant's Category and CATEGORY_CODE are the same thing, and yes you will want to put the products in the same categories that they are in at your Miva Store. "
(Note, the Miva module doesn't export this info, and if you have 1000's of items this will be a huge manual task to add.)

(Question - Why don't the instructions mention that this is a required field and give instructions on how to capture the data in someother fast way, or why does the module not export that field since it is required?)

3. "We believe the reason why only 3801 of the products are getting to us could be because the full 4310 have not been published to be sent to us. If they are not published we will not receive them."
(Question - the store having this issue is current on streaming updates. Is this still a bug - exporting/pulbishing more items than Micorsoft seems to end up with?)



4. "Again, hopefully soon there will be a new PDF released to address this issue. The lead of the project here has already contacted about this issue today."
(Question - do we have an ITA for more thorough instructions and explanations about required and non-required fields, etc?)


Thanks for your help on this and please let phone support know a better way to give people "the brush off" when they really need to. A quick honest little explanation goes a long way for most reasonable people. None at all will make even a nice person frustrated.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

Holly,

Did you call us and get this response or Microsoft? I'm sorry I'm a little confused.

[2CDev]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

I called Miva Partner Support and got this answer. Happy to email offline if you like.

[2CDev]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

I should mention that the last three items in quotes are what the Microsoft rep is telling us. Everything else was from Partner Support.

[Mark Johnson]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

1. "You were correct earlier - the Merchant's Category and CATEGORY_CODE are the same thing, and yes you will want to put the products in the same categories that they are in at your Miva Store. "
(Note, the Miva module doesn't export this info, and if you have 1000's of items this will be a huge manual task to add.)

(Question - Why don't the instructions mention that this is a required field and give instructions on how to capture the data in someother fast way, or why does the module not export that field since it is required?)

3. "We believe the reason why only 3801 of the products are getting to us could be because the full 4310 have not been published to be sent to us. If they are not published we will not receive them."
(Question - the store having this issue is current on streaming updates. Is this still a bug - exporting/pulbishing more items than Micorsoft seems to end up with?)



4. "Again, hopefully soon there will be a new PDF released to address this issue. The lead of the project here has already contacted about this issue today."
(Question - do we have an ITA for more thorough instructions and explanations about required and non-required fields, etc?)

Let me attempt to address your issues.

1. the Merchant's Category and CATEGORY_CODE NOT are the same thing. The Merchant's Category is a Microsoft field and the CATEGORY_CODE is a Miva field. The CATEGORY_CODE can be found in the modules export file and is what you as the merchant set. The Merchant's Category will be calculated and sent to Microsoft when you do a publish. As an example, assume you have a Miva category Jewelry with a sub-category Watches that has a sub-category Women's Watches. For a product in the Women's Watches category you set the CATEGORY_CODE to Women's Watches. But the Merchant's Category in the data feed will be set to Jewelry > Watches > Women's Watches.

3. I expect that if you examine the 509 missing products you will find them all to be inactive. The module will not publish inactive products.

4. The revised PDF is being worked on now. It will be sent to Microsoft for review before the end of the day. You should be aware that it will not include anything that's not been covered on the forums.

[Red Flare]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

Let me attempt to address your issues.

1. the Merchant's Category and CATEGORY_CODE NOT are the same thing. The Merchant's Category is a Microsoft field and the CATEGORY_CODE is a Miva field. The CATEGORY_CODE can be found in the modules export file and is what you as the merchant set. The Merchant's Category will be calculated and sent to Microsoft when you do a publish. As an example, assume you have a Miva category Jewelry with a sub-category Watches that has a sub-category Women's Watches. For a product in the Women's Watches category you set the CATEGORY_CODE to Women's Watches. But the Merchant's Category in the data feed will be set to Jewelry > Watches > Women's Watches.

What happens if an item is assigned to multiple categories within MIVA?

[Mark Johnson]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

What happens if an item is assigned to multiple categories within MIVA?

You have to pick which one you want to show up in Live Search.

[Meander]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

Now, this is starting to address the issue that I'm having with MS Cashback. Specifically, my MIVA category codes do not appear to be directly matching the MS Cashback category trees. In the few cases where I do have something "mappable", I see my MIVA CategoryCode (ie. "Ornaments") being mapped to something like "Holiday > Christmas > Ornaments". But for categories that do not match, the mapped Cashback Merchant's_Category is simply my MIVA CategoryCode (ie: MIVA Category_Code "BagTags" maps to MS Cashback Merchant's_Category "BagTags").

This appears to cause a delay in getting my items published since it must be done "manually" according to the cashback rep I have been e-mailing with. (I'm still not having products show up 4 days after a successful publish to MS).

I was given a link to the lost of categories that MS Cashback uses (http://datafeeds.jellyfish.com/categ...tegorylist.txt). Does this mean that we have to set our Merchant'sCategory manually to use one of these categories for each product in our store? Mind you, I only have a couple of hundred products, but I know there are many others here with 1000's of products, this would require quite an effort.

[2CDev]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

Yes, I am still lost along with Steve on this category issue. In using Method 3, the Bulk Method, Miva does not export any categories, so how will Microsoft create any when there is nothing there to start with?

I am dealing with a store that has over 4000 items. We cannot assign cats one by one manually, and it would appear there is no way to export them via Miva before publishing to Live Search.

Ideas on how to get those exported or added during export or publish? Our Live Search Rep says they are missing and they cannot activate the items.

[Meander]

Re: microsoft live search cashback

Holly,

What I did to populate the Manufacturer'sCategory field was to export MS Cashback to a flat file and then do a regular product export to a flat file. Then I opened both files in Excel and copied the MIVA category code from the product export and pasted it into the Merchant'sCategory field in the MS Cashback file and saved it back as a tab delimited file. Then I imported the MS cashback file from Excel into MIVA and re-published.

After the publish, I downloaded and looked at the cashback.txt fiile and noticed the mapping discrepancies I mentioned in my earlier post. That's at least how I populated the Merchant'sCode field for cashback.