General information

An illustration or an item data sheet for a product almost always has a sales-promoting effect. We thus recommend saving at least one illustration and one data sheet per item in the catalogue. Mercateo supports the formats JPG, PNG, GIF and PDF.

The data is provided via FTP. In addition, the file names have to be stated in the catalogue (BMEcat). The PDF files and the catalogue must be uploaded at the same time so that a correct allocation can take place in our system later on.

Data transfer information

• Please transfer the data sheets for your catalogue into the FTP subdirectory pdf
• Each supplier usually only has one pdf directory in our system
• The data sheets are saved and provided in this directory for all of the supplier’s catalogues
• The FTP server is only used as a transfer location. You are welcome to delete old PDF files there
• If the files are compressed in a ZIP archive, it will be possible to significantly reduce the file size for transmission
• For large amounts of data the use of compressed RAR files is recommended
• Please do not transmit the data or ZIP files including file folders

Information about naming

• Only lower case letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores are permitted in the file names
• Please do not use any special characters, spaces, umlauts and so on (e.g. < > & @ )
• The file name of the PDF and the name within the catalogue must be the same

Technical requirements

• Permitted file format: PDF
• Each PDF can only be sent once
• The same PDFs must not be supplied with several names
• The displaying of only one data sheet per product is activated as standard. If the displaying of several data sheets should be activated, Mercateo must be specially informed of this

Content-related requirements

• The product data sheet must be in the language of the respective market (Mercateo platform)
• The product data sheet should represent value adding information
• The item name should be included as a descriptive text (e.g. “Item data sheet printer XYZ”)
• The product data sheet must be up to date

Implementation in BMEcat

Data sheets are saved in the MIME_INFO area. The following MIME_TYPE is required:

<MIME_TYPE>application/pdf</MIME_TYPE>

As MIME_PURPOSE, please set data_sheet:

<MIME_PURPOSE>data_sheet</MIME_PURPOSE>

Here is an extract from BMEcat:

<MIME_INFO> <MIME> <MIME_TYPE>application/pdf</MIME_TYPE> <MIME_SOURCE>copypaper.pdf</MIME_SOURCE> <MIME_DESCR>Copypaper white</MIME_DESCR> <MIME_PURPOSE>data_sheet</MIME_PURPOSE> <MIME_ORDER>1</MIME_ORDER> </MIME> </MIME_INFO>

Implementation in the Mercateo workflow

The referenced data sheets can be stated from column AR (MIME_SOURCE7):

We recommend using columns AR to AT to state the product data sheet. Columns AU to AW are intended for the safety data sheet and you can enter the product images in the columns Z to AQ.

PDF download via URLs in BMEcat

It is possible to download PDFs during catalogue processing using URLs. However, this must be coordinated with Mercateo Catalogue Management and set up within the system.

Implementation in BMEcat would look as follows:

<MIME_INFO> <MIME> <MIME_TYPE>application/pdf</MIME_TYPE> <MIME_SOURCE>http://www.lieferantenhomepage.co.uk/pdf/copypaper.pdf</MIME_SOURCE> <MIME_DESCR>Copypaper white</MIME_DESCR> <MIME_PURPOSE>data_sheet</MIME_PURPOSE> <MIME_ORDER>1</MIME_ORDER> </MIME> </MIME_INFO>

Please note:

• The URL must be stated in the BMEcat field MIME_SOURCE
• The URL must lead directly to a data sheet, downloading from overview pages does not work
• application/pdf must be set as MIME_TYPE and data_sheet as MIME_PURPOSE