How do I set up a Product Launch?

Setting up a Product Launch is an easy way for merchandisers to ensure that a product won’t be displayed to customers until a specific time. You might want to do this for a variety of reasons, like wanting to time a new product launch campaign to start on the minute, or for legal purposes (e.g. a product cannot be shown before it is officially released by the manufacturer) or to make a big splash in the market.

Constructor’s platform makes it easy to set up a product for launch. There is no need to worry about waiting for a reindex to run, remembering to time an upload or configuring complicated rules right before the launch. All you need to do is set the date, and wait!

Setting up a Product Launch

To set up a Product Launch, you need to set the release date and time on the product in the catalogue. This can be done via whichever method you are using to upload your catalogue (HTTPS or FTPS). Simply add the following column to your upload (e.g. to time a launch to May 1st at midnight PDT):

• The column name must match exactly (metadata:__cnstrc_release_time).
• The format is a standard ISO date & time string, with a timezone UTC offset at the end (yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss.SSS±hh:mm).
• You can also submit a unix epoch timestamp.
• Incorrectly formatted entries will result in a failed catalogue upload with an error message letting you know why it failed.
• An entry with a missing timezone is assumed to be UTC.

Note that we currently support times to the hour, so minutes and seconds will be truncated from the time submitted.

Now that the date and time are set, sit back and wait. As soon as the time for the specified timezone is met, the product will be returned in search and browse queries.

Verifying the release date

If you want to check the product to make sure the correct date and time are stored, this can be done in two ways:

1. Via the API. We have introduced a parameter to search and browse queries to allow you to override “now” with a timestamp. This runs the query and returns the results you would see if you were to run the query at that time.

For example, to search for “cookies” and see the results as if you were running it on May 1st at one minute past midnight:

https://ac.cnstrc.com/search/cookies?key=[your API key]&now=1651388460

• The “now” parameter currently requires a unix epoch timestamp.
• This query must use an API authentication token.
• Currently, overriding “now” will only include future-dated release dates.

2. Via the dashboard. You can view the release date in the Indexes tab of the dashboard. Click on the section your product is in (“Products” in the image below) and then search for the product.

Clicking the information icon will display the attributes for the product, including the release date.