Add Multiple Products to Your Product Catalog

After downloading the bCentral™ Commerce Manager Add-in for Microsoft® FrontPage® and subscribing to bCentral Commerce Manager online service, create a product catalog using the bCentral Commerce Manager. Next, create your e-commerce Web site in FrontPage using the E-commerce Wizard. (see the article "The bCentral Commerce Manager Add-In for Microsoft FrontPage"). Now, using the Mass Upload Utility, you can quickly add multiple products to your catalog all at once.

There are 5 steps to add multiple products to your catalog:

• Create File- create your new products spreadsheet.
• Save File- save your new products spreadsheet.
• Scan File- scan the spreadsheet for errors. If errors are found, correct them, re-save your file, and re-scan.
• Upload File- once your file is free of errors, upload it.
• Check My Catalog- go to My Catalog to verify your new product information.

To quickly add multiple products to your catalog using the Mass Upload Utility, open your Web site in FrontPage 2002 and do the following:

1. From the Tools menu, select E-commerce and then click Add Products….
2. Login to the bCentral Commerce Manager online service.
3. On the Add Products to your catalog page, scroll down to To upload multiple products at one time and select click here.
4. Read the instructions provided on the Multiple Product Upload page and select one or more Product Categories.
5. Click Get Template and select Save this file to disk in the File Download dialog.
6. In the Save As dialog, rename the file (Example: winter_clothing.xls), select a location on your hard drive, and click Save.
   
   Note: You can then modify the file to populate it with your products using a spreadsheet program (such as Excel). Complete your changes, save your Excel File as a Text (Comma delimited) .csv file, and minimize the spreadsheet window.
    
7. Click the <BACK button on the Downloading template… page to return to the Multiple Product Upload page, and click Continue at the bottom of the page.
8. Select Browse to select the spreadsheet file you just populated with products and saved, then click Continue.
   
   Note: This will also scan the file for any errors and return any results to you.
    
9. Review the results and click Done.
10. Return to your catalog to inspect the Products you just uploaded for any errors that may have occurred.
11. To implement the product updates in your FrontPage-based Web site, in FrontPage, run the E-commerce Wizard one more time.

More information

For more information about building a catalog of items to sell online with bCentral, see Microsoft FrontPage 2002 Help.