Leverage Feed for recommendation based on Category Affinity in Personalization

[JyotiSharmaV]

Hi, I am new to building up recommendation activities in Target. I have gone through all the documentation given in Experience League and followed it well. However, one problem I am facing is with the feeds which is an important step to run recommendations. I think the best possible way for us is CSV format to feed product data to Target. However, I am unable to understand the fields in the CSV file format that I downloaded from Target. Here is the sample I am pasting for reference.

## RECSRecommendations Upload File
## RECS''## RECS'' indicates a Recommendations pre-process header. Please do not remove these lines.
## RECS
## RECSUse this file to upload product display information to Recommendations. Each product has its own row. Each line must contain 19 values and if not all are filled a space should be left.
## RECSThe last 100 columns (entity.custom1 - entity.custom100) are custom. The name 'customN' can be replaced with a custom name such as 'onSale' or 'brand'.
## RECSIf the products already exist in Recommendations then changes uploaded here will override the data in Recommendations. Any new attributes entered here will be added to the product''s entry in Recommendations.
## RECSentity.id	entity.name	entity.categoryId	entity.message	entity.thumbnailUrl	entity.value	entity.pageUrl	entity.inventory	entity.margin	entity.custom1	entity.custom2

Can you suggest what these fields mean? Does this need a developer to be involved in accomplishing this? What is the best practice/method for feed?

Fields	Description
## RECSentity.id	?
entity.name
entity.categoryId
entity.message
entity.thumbnailUrl
entity.value
entity.pageUrl
entity.inventory
entity.margin
entity.custom1
entity.custom2
entity.custom3
entity.custom4
entity.custom5
entity.custom6

[Gokul_Agiwal]

Hello @JyotiSharmaV 

Here the Entities refer to the items you want to recommend. Entities can include products, content (like articles, images, videos etc). 

So as per CSV format you can mapped the Product information like below 

entity.name	Product .name
entity.categoryId	Product.categoryID
entity.message	Product.message
entity.thumbnailUrl	Product.thumbnailURL
entity.value	Procut.value
entity.pageUrl	Product.pageURL

And more on you can include upto 100 custom attribute. 

Here is the more information on Entities for you and Video to watch.

[JyotiSharmaV]

Hey @Gokul_Agiwal , the hyperlink for Entities is not working. The video link you shared just tells how to create a feed but not the CSV file that will go in it. If possible Can you fill the First Row as an example till "entity.custom1" for my reference as it's a little unclear? 

## RECSentity.id	?
entity.name
entity.categoryId
entity.message
entity.thumbnailUrl
entity.value
entity.pageUrl
entity.inventory
entity.margin
entity.custom1

Also, Regarding the URL link in the CSV upload what exactly is that? How to create that feed CSV link and where?

[Gokul_Agiwal]

Hi @JyotiSharmaV  - Here you go as sample record and the link for the page - 

Below table is like 1 record in your CSV file  ..

entity.id	67833
entity.name	GIANTS VS ROCKIES 5/12
entity.categoryId	BASEBALL, GIANTS, SF BAY AREA
entity.message	/help/baseball/giants-tix/giantsvrockies5.12.2000-67833
entity.thumbnailUrl	/help/baseball/giants-tix/giants-136px.gif
entity.value	15.99
entity.pageUrl	/help/baseball/giants-tix/giantsvrockies5.12.2000-67833
entity.inventory	1
entity.margin	12.00
entity.custom1	Sports

Basically you need to connect with your IT team who can provide you all product related database as per your project alignment. 

Hope this helps.  

[JyotiSharmaV]

@Gokul_Agiwal I got a little bit of an idea and will connect with my IT team on this. I will keep you posted on what i find.

[JyotiSharmaV]

@Gokul_Agiwal One question that came up is In the CSV file the order of column before "entity.customN" is mandatory to be uploaded or can we remove some entity columns and upload if we don't have any relevant data for that column entity?

Also, Regarding the URL link for the CSV upload, Where and How to create that feed CSV link?

Fields	Description
## RECSentity.id	What Info will go here? is it the entity.id
entity.name
entity.categoryId
entity.message
entity.thumbnailUrl
entity.value
entity.pageUrl
entity.inventory
entity.margin
entity.custom1
entity.custom2

[Gokul_Agiwal]

@JyotiSharmaV 

I believe ## REC is nothing but a Record. 

So the column name would be entity.id only - that's need to be filled with your Product Id. 

entity.customN is nothing but you can include up to 100 custom entity attributes to define additional information about items in your catalog. 

if you don't have any additional data about the items that's fine. You can go with mandatory attributes only. 

[JyotiSharmaV]

Okay, @Gokul_Agiwal  that means column before entity.custom1, .... are mandatory right?

Also, you missed answering my one question twice about the CSV URL. Where and How to create that feed CSV link?

[Gokul_Agiwal · Accepted solution]

HI @JyotiSharmaV 

This is the link which shows all steps to create a feed.