Preview and Live

Every account has a mode: Preview or Live. The mode decides one thing only: whether Stock Sync sends stock to the marketplace. Everything else works the same in both.

What each mode does

	Preview	Live
Reads offers from the marketplace (offer import)	Yes	Yes
Links offers to PIM products	Yes	Yes
Calculates the stock to publish	Yes, exactly as in Live	Yes
Marks offers Waiting to send when the number differs	Yes	Yes
Sends stock to the marketplace	No, never	Yes, seconds after a change
Shows everything on the screens	Yes	Yes

Preview is sometimes called a dry run: a full rehearsal with the last step left out. Reading offers from the marketplace does happen in Preview. It only reads, and changes nothing there.

Every new account starts in Preview. The New account form says so on its first and last steps: "Nothing is sent until you go Live."

Why Preview exists

Preview lets you check that Stock Sync would do the right thing before it touches a real marketplace. On an account in Preview you can:

• see how many offers are Not linked and Orphaned, and correct listings before going Live;
• compare, offer by offer, Stock to publish (what Stock Sync would send) with Marketplace shows (what the marketplace shows today);
• read in the account's status banner how many updates going Live would send.

What you see in Preview

The account's status reads Preview (amber) in its workspace, on the Accounts page and in the Overview's accounts table, and the sidebar shows a PREVIEW tag beside it. Under the account's name, the status banner says:

Preview: everything is calculated, nothing is sent. Going Live would send 454 stock updates now.

The number is how many offers are Waiting to send. Go Live in the banner is the button that starts sending (operators only). The Overview also lists accounts in Preview, in blue, at the end of Needs your attention, with what going Live would send.

If the account is also paused or suspended, its status reads Paused or Suspended instead (the word names what to deal with first), and the banner says what else is needed:

• Go Live still works while paused: sending starts when you resume.
• Resume restarts the account; it stays in Preview until you go Live.
• The account's Activity tab and Recent activity record who paused it.

On the account's Offers tab, the Waiting quick view shows exactly what would go out. Each row's Stock column shows what Stock Sync would publish and what the marketplace shows now.

How to switch

Only an operator can switch. The step-by-step version is in Go from Preview to Live.

The dialog says how many updates would go out, asks you to type the account's name, and only then lets you press Go live.

• Going Live asks you to type the account's exact name. This is on purpose: it is the one action that starts changing a real marketplace.
• Going back to Preview has no confirmation. You press Back to Preview in the status banner of a sending account (or More → Back to Preview) and sending stops at once: "eMAG BG is in Preview; nothing is sent to the marketplace." A sending round that is running stops before its next request.
• Every switch is recorded on the account's Activity tab with the operator's e-mail address.

Safety

• Nothing leaves Stock Sync in Preview. The check is made before every single request to the marketplace, not only at the start.
• Going Live sends everything that is waiting, at once. With 454 waiting, that is 10 requests of up to 50 offers, done in about 5 seconds at the default 2 requests per second. Check the number in the banner before you confirm.
• Changing the API address switches the account to Preview. The API address can only be changed while an account is paused or in Preview. If it changes, the account goes to Preview and an offer import is requested against the new address. It runs straight away, or when the account is resumed if it is paused, so you can look before going Live again. See Account settings: Connection.
• Going back to Preview is always safe. It stops sending and loses nothing: the offers keep waiting, and everything is recalculated as usual.

Examples

Example 1: a new Fashion Days BG account

On Monday an operator creates Fashion Days BG. It starts in Preview and an offer import runs straight away.

• The import finds 12,480 offers: 12,301 Linked, 179 Not linked.
• Of the linked ones, 11,489 already show the right stock (In sync) and 812 differ (Waiting to send).
• The status banner says "Going Live would send 812 stock updates now."
• A tester opens offer 300001: PIM stock (available / on hand) 3 / 5, Stock to publish 3, Marketplace shows 8. Stock Sync publishes available, so 3 is right. Operations agrees.
• On Wednesday, after approval, the operator goes Live. The 812 updates go out in a few seconds. From then on changes are sent as they happen.

Example 2: pulling back after a surprise

An hour after eMAG HU goes Live, operations notices that many offers went to 0. The operator presses Back to Preview in the status banner. Sending stops at once.

Looking at the offers, they all show Eligible: No — 5 days > 2 days: the account's Lead-time limit of 2 days is too strict for the supplier-sourced range. The product owner agrees to 7 days. The operator changes the limit in Settings → Stock rules and presses Save; a Recalculation runs; the offers become eligible again with their normal stock. The operator checks a few offers and goes Live again.

Related

• Go from Preview to Live, step by step.
• Account health and pausing: the other reasons an account does not send.
• Account workspace.