Setting up a Walmart API

Walmart is one of the largest American supermarket chains, with more than 10,000 stores in 27 countries today.

The setup of the Walmart API in Channable is quite intuitive, but there are a couple of good-to-knows, and you can find them in this Help Center article.

Step 1: Add a new Walmart connection

You first have to create a Walmart client ID and secret that can be retrieved in the Walmart Developer Portal. During this process, you will have to indicate which integrator you work with, but also which rights you want to give us. We need at least the rights that are highlighted (choose Access) in the screenshot below:

After giving us the correct permissions, you will receive a client ID and secret, that you can copy/paste into the connection in the Channable interface. So when you received the client ID and secret, go to "[Your company] settings menu (in the top right corner) > Connections > Add connection". Click on "+ Add a new connection" and you will see a screen, where you can select Walmart. Fill in the label for your connection, for example, Walmart, and copy/paste the client ID and secret you received from Walmart. Click on "Create" to finish creating your Walmart connection. 

Step 2: Add a new Walmart API in Channable

Now go to the API's overview, in your project. And click on "Add new API", select the Walmart connection you just made, and give your new API a name.

Select the field you want to use for Unique ID per item (we recommend the 'id' field) and you can also add a master rule group here if you would like. Click on "Continue" to finish creating the new Walmart API. 

Step 3: Create your product listings in Channable

Once you have created the Walmart API you can set up your product data by following the steps of the API.

1. Categories
   For your product data to be created your products need a category. Add categories to your products by using the generate categories feature or create new categories from scratch.
   
   
2. Rules
   Create different rules to optimize your product data. Take a look at our common rules help center article for some examples.
   
   
3. Build
   Here you can find our preset template for the product listings. All you have to do is to fill it out by clicking on the field itself and selecting what you would like to go in there. For example, the field 'Title' should display the title of your product and so on. When you have finished setting up the product listings, just click 'save' at the bottom of the screen.
   Tip! Notice the question mark behind every field, if you hover over the question mark you will see the description of the field and suggestions for possible values.
   Shipping Template ID and Fulfillment Center ID:
   In "Build > Shipping templates", you can find the optional section for mapping Shipping Templates and Fulfillment Centers to an item’s SKU.
   
   
   Important: In order to make use of this option, you will need to fill in both IDs.
   As explained in this Walmart Seller Help article (if the article is not displayed right away, please wait a few seconds), you need to create and maintain customized Shipping Templates for your products on Walmart. As you are done setting up a template, Walmart generates a Shipping Template ID (see screenshot below). 
   
   Filling in the Shipping Template ID in the Build step enables Channable to automatically match your products to their specific Shipping Templates. If you wish to use different Shipping Templates, create a dynamic field that you fill in with a rule to divide your products and give them the right Shipping Template ID. 
   
   Now, you need to fill in the Fulfillment Center ID. According to this Walmart Seller Help article, the Fulfillment Center indicates from which US-based location you will ship your orders. The process is similar to the aforementioned one. The creation and maintenance of these Fulfillment Centers must also be done on Walmart, which will give you an ID that you can use in Channable. 
   
    
4. Attributes
   Almost done! Next up is filling in the fields in the Attributes step. Select the category you want to optimize first. An example of what should be in front of you now can be seen in the screenshot below. A more detailed explanation of what to do in the Attributes step can be found in our Attributes support article.
   
   Walmart’s categories are very generic (e.g. “Baby Clothing”), but you can specify a deeper category in the attributes - for example, by filling in the field “Pajama Type” for Baby Clothing Pajamas, or the field "T-Shirt Type" for Baby Clothing T-Shirts.
   
   Creating variants
   Managing item variants is a little bit different for Walmart compared to other exporters. Variants are part of the attributes, meaning that when you don’t categorize, you can't set up variants. In addition, fields that are necessary to create variants can be unavailable in specific categories where Walmart doesn’t offer variants, making it extremely important to choose the right categories.
   After selecting the correct categories, you need to fill in the following three values:

1. A variant group ID: an ID that is shared by all variants in a group. You can use, for example, parent_id or item_group_id for this.

2. A variant attribute name: what value does the variant group differ on (e.g. color, size).

3. The field that is associated with the variant code.
   
   Filling this in allows you to create a variant group through our API. You can fill in multiple variant codes by placing an , in between each code (see screenshots). Doing so will result, in the attribute builder, indicating that this is an invalid value. However, this error can be ignored as Walmart will accept this nonetheless. Similarly, by adding a comma , multiple possible attributes can be listed in a field. 

Step 4: Send your products to Walmart

Almost there, your product listings are ready to be sent. If you have not activated your project, go to Settings > Project settings on the left-hand side of the screen and click 'activate project'. After, go back to the APIs overview and go to "Your Walmart API Name" > Settings where you activate the API by selecting "Activate API". After you have completed this step, navigate back to the APIs overview and select the blue "Run now" button to send your product listings to Walmart. When the API successfully pushes items to Walmart, the items go through various stages before they are actually published on Walmart and are available to the user to order. 

After the first run, you will probably see successfully pushed items in Channable, which means that the items are pushed to Walmart successfully, and we have created the items on Walmart. But in this stage, the item is missing price and inventory. In the next exporter run, we will then set the price and inventory of an item if the item was created successfully. You can use the Walmart Dashboard in order to track an item’s publish status. 

Step 5: Check your product listings for errors

After you have sent your product listings to Walmart, go to the Results tab of your Walmart API. 

For errors, click filter on 'error'. Now you can see which product listings have errors and which are not listed. Click on a specific error to see more information on what is causing the error. If you have solved some errors by changing the settings or product information, re-run the Walmart API to see the new results.