[WooCommerce] How Products Are Synchronized with WooCommerce

Autoship Cloud's hosted service, QPilot, regularly synchronizes product data with your WooCommerce store to ensure that the products you've enabled for Autoship are able to be scheduled and purchased accurately. You can think of the product data that your connected QPilot Site creates and synchronizes as a "Product Feed" for Autoship Scheduled Orders.

How QPilot Synchronizes WooCommerce Product Data

  1. To synchronize data, the Autoship Cloud powered by QPilot plugin must be active and the WooCommerce site must be connected to a QPilot Merchant Account
    1. Get started with the Install & Launch Guide
  2. A WordPress Admin uses settings added by Autoship Cloud to enable WooCommerce Simple Products and Variations for Autoship
  3. WooCommerce sends updated product data to QPilot
    1. On Update: each time a WooCommerce Product that is enabled for Autoship is published or updated in WooCommerce
    2. Automatic/Daily Sync: QPilot will request updated product data from your site automatically each day 

WooCommerce Product Data Synchronized with QPilot

  • Product ID (Required)
    • the ID of each product in WooCommerce is used to identify and keep product data in sync
    • Maps to the External ID of the Product in QPilot
    • Learn more about the WooCommerce Product ID
  • Product Title
  • Product Type
    • Supported types are Simple ("Simple Product"), Variable, and Variation
  • SKU
  • Price
    • Regular Price maps to Regular Price of the Product in QPilot
    • Autoship Cloud also provides optional product prices to offer incentivized pricing exclusive to Autoship
  • Stock Status
  • Weight
  • Dimensions
  • Shipping Class
  • Product Short Description
  • Product Image URL

Product Synchronization Statuses

The Autoship Cloud plugin adds indicator statuses and notifications to your WooCommerce Products so that store owners can be aware of any issues that may be disrupting product data from synchronizing.

  • Activated and Synchronized
    • This status indicates that the product is Activated for Autoship and continues to synchronize with QPilot successfully
  • Activated and Invalid
    • This status indicates that the product is Activated for Autoship but appears to contain "Invalid" data
    • In most cases, you should edit and update the WooCommerce Product to see if that resolves the "Invalid" status.
  • Inactive ("Not Activated for Autoship")
    • This status indicates that the product has not been Activated or has been Deactivated for Autoship
  • Sync Status Warning (shown below)
    • This status indicates that the product has been Activated for Autoship but has not synchronized successfully with QPilot within the last 48 hours.
    • In most cases, you can edit and update the WooCommerce Product to update the sync status, but you should run the API Health Check (found in WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Settings) to see if your site is having issues that are disrupting the automatic synchronization.

Resolving Product Data & Synchronization Issues

If your products are not syncing correctly, see this document for the best next steps: Managing Invalid / Corrupted Products

Product Synchronization FAQ's

Can I Synchronize Unpublished / Draft / Protected / Private Products?

No, products must be published and visible to be considered for synchronization by the Autoship Cloud plugin. You may, however, adjust the Catalog Visibility property to hide it from customers in your store. See the next FAQ: Can I Hide a Synchronized Product from Customers in My Store? 

Can I Hide a Synchronized Product from Customers in My Store?

You may elect to have a product you do not want to offer in your store that you want available to synchronize with QPilot (Autoship Cloud's hosted service). To do this you simply need to edit the Catalog Visibility settings of the product for its WooCommerce Product Page. 

The image below displays the Publish options for a product in WooCommerce. See how the Status and Visibility are set to "Published" & "Public" respectively. These are the settings required to synchronize the product with QPilot. However, Merchants may set the Catalog Visibility to any setting they would like (including "Hidden") and synchronize their product successfully with QPilot.