Facebook Product Catalogue - Four Frustrations....

[danscape]

I have my Facebook Catalogue and FB Page & Insta page shopping setup OK generally but with a couple of frustrations.

1 - The main one being there is no way to select a particular variation of an item as the main one to be used within the Catalogue. So, for example, I have 20 variations on a single print but I can't see any way to set one type of variation as the primary one for Facebook to use within ads/collections or Instagram Shopping which means anything from a £15 print to a £200 canvas could be shown seemingly at random.

Just wondering if there is anything that can be done in the Square feed setup to select this at all?

2) - Similarly when creating Facebook collections I am having to create them manually rather than being able to use filters as there is no category information transferred from Square to Facebook. So, for example, I want a collection with all prints from Scotland, I have to go through and choose them individually as there isn't any data that I could filter even though they are in a Scotland Category on Square.

3) Again with the variations, Facebook seems to sometimes be restricting a set or collection to 100 variations as a maximum. This would be fine but it doesn't allow you to select only one variation from a product so if you include 5 products with 25 variations then you reach the maximum and so every set if limited to a few products.

4) The description that is included over on the Facebook Product Catalogue shows HTML code as Facebook doesn't convert it to formatted text. I am not sure if the Square data feed uses the description from Square Online or Square POS for this? If it's Square Online, then would there be any way for the feed that Square sends over to remove any HTML coding automatically as it looks very messy over on Instagram shopping?

Thanks

Dan

[tranguyen]

Hi @danscape, thank you for sharing this.

I will definitely try my best to help but we do have limited access into the Instagram & Facebook integration. One thing that might help - if you disable the Item Description sync, it might help with the HTML code.

From looking into the issues above, have you been able to reach out to Facebook or Instagram? They would be more familiar with how the Facebook Pixel and catalogue sync work so may have additional recommendation that we don't know about. 

[allan21]

Hi @tranguyen - re: "if you disable the Item Description sync, it might help with the HTML code"

Nope, even after a feed refresh, Facebook Shops is still showing Description fields full of Square HTML tags.

[allan21]

Hi @tranguyen , @danscape - Square/Weebly's ECOM folks should look into this if they want to continue sending Facebook our Descriptions in HTML format: 

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/catalog/reference/

rich_text_description

Type: string

N/A for dynamic ads. Optional for commerce.

Max characters: 5000.

Rich text (HTML) description for item. Supported tags include <b>, <i>, <em>, <strong>, <header>. Includes all Header tags (<h1> thru <h6>), <br>, <p>, <ul>, and <li>.

If this field is provided, we use it instead of description; however, the description field is still required because it's a fallback.

[tranguyen]

Hi @allan21, I'm currently working with the team on this. If possible, can you share a screenshot or link to an item that's still showing the HTML tags even though the Description sync is turn off? That way, we can get our engineering team to investigate further and see what is causing this issue - whether it is how we are sending the data or how it is being displayed. 

[allan21]

Hi @tranguyen - I needed my Instagram Shopping working by today, so didn't have time to wait for Square to fix:

• HTML in Description (this forum topic)
• Square not pushing updates to Facebook (this topic)
• Square doesn't send sale prices to Facebook (this topic)

...so I 'disconnected' the Square feed and am manually uploading a spreadsheet, giving me total control of the above (and more).

I did make note of some 'Content IDs' when Square was feeding FB - I assume these are created by Square since I didn't. Do these help?

I3RSUWH5AVXTZLWZV3ARWTTO

AL4UIAYNBPIW47QOGSVQ6G25

FXAHJCCXQLZCV4D2QDYHUAHF

BKCZH2RBDDJRMJEMIHYBVHUU

O3DYJKSC7PE7QAKWYIQIFRL2

[tranguyen]

Hi @allan21, I've shared the ID with our team to see if it'll help with the investigation but if you have any past screenshot at all, that'd be much appreciated!