GroovePacker Support

For instructions on how to connect GroovePacker and Shopify so that Orders and Products can be imported please see this article. 

If you are importing only products from Shopify and Orders are imported from an order manager (Shippo, Shipping Easy, ShipStation) you will want to disable the "Active" switch. Products can still be imported while this switch is off.

 To begin importing products from Shopify to GroovePacker just click on the "Import Product Catalog" button. By default, only products that have been created or modified since the last time the import ran will be imported. This greatly speeds up imports so that you can very quickly sync any products that you've recently changed. 

There may be some cases where products do not sync correctly and you would like to extend the range of the import. To do this you can select the "refresh the entire catalog" option and this will allow you to specify the number of days that should be checked for changes. For example, if you would like to import all products that have been created or modified in the last year you can enter 365 in the field before running the import.

Larger product catalogs can take some time to import. So you will be able to leave the page while Groove Packer continues to import in the background. Groove Packer will email you a summary of the import. Once it has completed. If you decide during the import that you would like to change the import options you can click the "cancel all product imports" button to stop any imports that are in progress.

 When Groove Packer imports your products it will bring data such as the product name SKU barcode and even the product images. In some cases, the product images will be relocated by Shopify which will cause the location of the image saved in GroovePacker to become incorrect. This will result in a broken image and GroovePacker will be unable to display the product images to the scanner during verification. The "fix broken images" button can be used to remedy this.

Broken images can only be repaired for products that have been created by a Shopify import. In cases where some products have been imported from CSV files or created automatically during an order import from an order manager, you will need to associate the product records in GroovePacker with the products in Shopify before images can be updated using the Shopify API. This is done using the "Re-associate all products with Shopify" button.

The "Re-associate all products with Shopify" button has two options. The default is "Associate unconnected items". With this option, Groove Packer focuses on products that have not been associated with Shopify previously. Likely those created by another import source. When this option is used your Shopify account will be searched for SKUs matching the products in GroovePacker with no prior Shopify associate. If found, the association will be created. 

The other option is to "reassociate all items with Shopify". When this is chosen GroovePacker will ignore any previous associations and go through your entire product catalog item by item and search Shopify for each SKU. Associations will be created for every product found in Shopify. The second option can be helpful if some items that were previously associated with Shopify are no longer syncing properly. This option also takes considerably longer, especially with very large product catalogs so it's best to use it only when SKUs have been changed in Shopify or after other operations that have prevented the sync from working.

Product Related options

The following options appear just below the Re-Association option and relate to product imports:

• Permit Shared Barcodes
  When enabled the check that prevents the same barcode from being associated with multiple products is disabled. This should only be used in rare cases when it is known that existing products with the barcode are no longer active and will not be confused with the new SKUs importing with a matching barcode.

• Import updated SKUs from Shopify
  When enabled changes to the SKU in Shopify can be synced to GroovePacker. This option should only be used if SKUs in Shopify are unique. If multiple products share the same SKU in Shopify this setting may need to be disabled to prevent unexpected behavior. When enable a new section will appear below called "Updated SKU Handling". This will allow you to choose whether new SKUs add in Shopify replace the SKU in GroovePacker or are added to the SKU in GroovePacker.

• Fix Product Images Across All Stores
  Normally the Fix Broken Images option will only affect items that have broken or missing images and are associated with the Shopify store where the Fix Images button is clicked. Enabling this option will include items associated with other Shopify stores as well. If the products with broken images were not imported by Shopify it will be necessary to use the “re-associate items with Shopify” option before attempting to fix the images.

Below the Shopify connection settings there are options for Modified Barcode Handling. These control how GroovePacker should behave if the barcode saved in Shopify does not match the barcode saved in GroovePacker. 

A number of options also exist for Generating Barcodes. The second option requires some explanation. When selected a numeric barcode will be created for each item that does not have a barcode saved in Shopify. The system settings page provides a field that can be used to create a starting value. Once set the value will be incremented for each new item found. Please note that these barcodes, like barcodes created from the SKU are for internal use and are not guaranteed to be unique as GS1 registered barcodes are.