Walmart has launched a new product taxonomy structure, taking into use Product Type Groups and Product Types, which has required Linnworks to restructure the categories and attributes inside the Walmart Listing Tool within Linnworks.
With this release, all existing Walmart configurators and templates have been marked with an appropriate validation error, to highlight the requirement to update their categories and attributes.
To begin solving these errors and moving onto the new product taxonomy, you will need to go through the following steps:
- Navigate to your Walmart configurators via the Settings -> Configurators - Others menu, and choose Walmart as the channel
- Categories- For each Walmart configurator that has been marked as outdated, click on the Category button and in the menu de-select your current category and from the bottom list find a new matching category/product type.
- After saving the configurator, after a brief moment, the new category name should now be visible in the grid, giving you better visibility on the select category.
- Attributes- Now your attributes for the given configurator have also been refreshed as per the new category specification from Walmart. This requires you to review your attributes and re-map any new required ones that have been automatically added.
- Any existing attributes where the name did not change has been left as-is, but for any optional ones where names have changed, will need to be re-added and mapped again.
- Variations - If you have created variation listings, also double-check your variation attributes and make sure they are mapped as before.
- Categories- For each Walmart configurator that has been marked as outdated, click on the Category button and in the menu de-select your current category and from the bottom list find a new matching category/product type.
- After updating your configurator(s), the next step would be to revise your templates, which you can do in multiple ways:
- Revise the configurator, by selecting it and then in the top-right corner click on the cog icon -> Revise selected -> Then choose "Update Extended Properties", "Add New Attributes From Configurator" and "Reload Categories". Alternatively can also click on the check box on the column header to choose all.
- Or you can revise specific templates either by opening them via the configurator template count or via My Inventory. Choose the same revision options as above.
- After your templates have been updated with the new categories and attributes, you might encounter validation errors related to new categories requirements or incorrect values - the error will indicate to you what attribute value is missing or incorrect.
If you encounter any issues with the above process or with the listing on Walmart, then please report the issue with an example item to Linnworks technical support, together with screenshots if the issue is on Walmart