Microsoft Merchant Feed

The Microsoft Shopping Feed plugin generates a product feed that you can submit to Microsoft Merchant Center, so your catalogue can appear in Bing Shopping and across the Microsoft Advertising network. It reads the products in your Orbit store, builds a standards-compliant XML feed, hosts it at a stable URL, and refreshes it automatically on a schedule you choose. The plugin is free to use.

Features

• Microsoft Merchant Center XML feed built to the standard Google/Microsoft product feed format (RSS 2.0 with the g: namespace), accepted by Microsoft Merchant Center for Bing Shopping and Microsoft Advertising.
• Hosted feed URL that Microsoft fetches directly. You register the URL once and the plugin keeps the file up to date.
• Scheduled refresh at an interval you choose, from every 30 minutes up to once a month, with no manual work after setup.
• Manual generation on demand whenever you want to publish changes straight away.
• Variant support, so each size, colour or other variant becomes its own feed item, grouped under the parent product.
• Category mapping from your store categories to Google product category IDs, with a default category fallback so every product is given a valid category even when it has not been mapped individually.
• Product filtering by status and stock level, so you only advertise the products you intend to.
• Sale price handling, automatically presenting a compare-at price as the original price and the lower price as the sale price.
• Built-in feed validation that checks the generated file for missing required fields before you submit it.
• Microsoft Ads custom labels for segmenting products into ad groups inside Microsoft Advertising.

Before you start

You will need:

• An active Microsoft Advertising account with access to Microsoft Merchant Center (sign up free at the Microsoft Advertising website if you do not already have one). A Merchant Center store is where you register and review your feed.
• Products in your Orbit store that you want to advertise, ideally with images, prices and stock levels set.
• Your public storefront URL (for example, your-store.com), which the feed uses to build clickable product links.
• Where possible, product barcodes (GTINs) and brand values on your products. These are not strictly required but they improve how well your products are matched and shown.

Getting started

1. Install the plugin from the Orbit plugin store. Open it from the Microsoft Shopping Feed entry in your dashboard menu.
2. Connect your store. On first use the plugin asks for permission to read your products and categories. Approve the connection so it can build the feed.
3. Create a feed. Select Create Feed and give it a name (for example, Bing Shopping Feed). Set the target country, content language and currency. For a UK store these default to United Kingdom, English and GBP.
4. Add your storefront URL so the feed can generate working product links.
5. Set your filtering and options (status, stock, default brand and the optional Microsoft Shopping fields described below), then save.
6. Map your categories (recommended). Open the category mapper to link your store categories to Google product categories, and set a default category to cover anything unmapped.
7. Generate the feed once manually and run the built-in validation to confirm there are no errors.
8. Copy the feed URL shown on the feed's detail page.
9. Register the feed in Microsoft Merchant Center. In your Merchant Center store, create a new catalogue or feed, choose the option to fetch from a URL, and paste the feed URL. Set Microsoft's fetch schedule to match your plugin schedule.
10. Enable scheduled generation in the plugin so the file stays current between Microsoft's fetches.

How the feed works

When a feed runs, the plugin reads your store's products from a local cache, applies your filters, and writes an XML file containing one item per product or, where a product has variants, one item per variant.

For each item the feed includes the standard fields Microsoft expects, where the data is available:

• ID (and an item group ID linking variants of the same product).
• Title (the product name, with variant options appended, such as "T-Shirt - Blue / Large").
• Description (HTML is stripped to plain text).
• Product link built from your storefront URL and the product's handle.
• Image link, plus up to nine additional images.
• Availability (in stock or out of stock, based on quantity).
• Price, and a sale price when a higher compare-at price is present.
• Brand (from the product, or your default brand if none is set).
• Condition (new by default, or your chosen override).
• GTIN when the product has a valid barcode, otherwise an MPN falling back to the SKU.
• Google product category from your mapping, or the default category fallback.
• Product type from your store category name.
• Shipping weight when set on the product.
• Custom labels and any additional custom attributes you have configured.

The finished feed is saved and served from a fixed feed URL. Microsoft Merchant Center fetches that URL on its own schedule; the plugin's scheduled generation keeps the file fresh, and the served file is cached for up to an hour. Your product catalogue is also re-synced in the background roughly once an hour, so changes you make to products are picked up automatically.

After each run the plugin records how many products and items were included, the run status (completed, completed with errors, or failed), and any error message, which you can review on the feed's run history.

Settings

Each feed has its own settings. The main options are:

• Feed name — a label for your own reference; it also appears as the feed title.
• Target country — the market you are advertising to. Selecting a country sets a sensible default language and currency (United Kingdom gives English and GBP).
• Content language — the ISO 639-1 language code for your product text (for example, en).
• Currency — the currency prices are published in.
• Storefront URL — the base address used to build product links.
• Default brand — used as a fallback when a product has no brand set.

Product filtering

• Include out-of-stock products — off by default, so only in-stock items are advertised.
• Product status filter — Active only (default), or All statuses.

Microsoft Shopping options (all optional)

• MPN — a manufacturer part number applied to every item. Leave blank to let the feed fall back to the product SKU when a barcode is missing. Microsoft recommends sending both a GTIN and an MPN for branded goods.
• Condition override — new (default), refurbished or used.
• Microsoft Ads custom labels — up to five labels (custom_label_0 to custom_label_4) used inside Microsoft Advertising to group products, for example by season, margin or bestseller status.

Category mapping

• Map each of your store categories to a Google product category.
• Set a default category so any product without a mapped category still carries a valid category. Microsoft rejects items with an empty or invalid category, so setting a default is strongly recommended.

Schedule

• Enable scheduled generation to keep the feed up to date automatically.
• Generation interval — every 30 minutes, every hour, once a day, once a week or once a month.

Troubleshooting

Microsoft Merchant Center says the feed has no items, or my products are missing. The most common causes are filters: the status filter is set to Active only, or out-of-stock products are excluded while your items have zero quantity. Check the product's status and stock, adjust the feed's filtering, then regenerate. Use the built-in validation to confirm the item count.

Microsoft reports invalid or missing product category errors. This happens when products have no category mapped. Open the category mapper, map your main store categories, and set a default category as a fallback. Regenerate the feed afterwards.

Product links or images are broken in Merchant Center. Make sure the storefront URL is set correctly (including https) and that your products have images. Links are built from the storefront URL plus each product's handle, so an incorrect base URL will break every link.

The feed URL still shows old products. The served feed is cached for up to an hour and Microsoft fetches on its own schedule. Generate the feed manually to publish changes immediately, and check that scheduled generation is enabled so the file refreshes on its own.

Items are missing a GTIN or brand. These appear as warnings rather than errors. Add barcodes and brand values to your products for better matching, or set a default brand and an MPN at the feed level to provide fallbacks.

Support

For help with this plugin, visit the Orbit Commerce Help Centre, or use the Get support link on the plugin's store page.