Automatic publishing
Automatic publishing looks for products for you and publishes their offers in your channels without you being there. It works with search profiles: each one says what to look for, in which store, with which filters and in which channels to publish.
On this page
The essentials
- Press New profile, choose the Store and type the Search text. In Publishes to the active channel is already ticked.
- Press Test search to see the products it would find.
- If you like them, press Save profile.
- At the top, turn on the channel's switch, which changes to On, and press Save.
- If the status says Publishing on its own, you are done; if it says Stopped, each row says what is missing.
The automation settings belong to each channel —whether it is on and how many days pass before a product is repeated— and the screen shows the active channel's. The search profiles, on the other hand, belong to the organization, and each one declares which channels it publishes to, so one profile can feed several channels at once. If you collaborate in somebody else's organization you only see the profiles whose channels you can all reach.
The queue and automatic publishing work together
The queue has priority. While a channel has pending messages, those go out; automatic publishing only comes in when that channel's queue is empty, at the same pace and in the same hours.
The free plan publishes by hand
Publishing with nobody in front comes with the Solo plan. On the free plan the status says Off —“Your plan doesn't include publishing on its own”— with the switch disabled and a row that leads to See the plans. Search profiles and the manual handling of their results work just the same.
- The channel's status: whether it publishes on its own, and why not when it does not, with a button for each cause.
- The channel's switch: On or Off.
- The pace: the queue's, and how many days pass before a product is repeated.
- Search profiles: New profile, the search box, the filters and the tabs by status.
- Each profile: its switch, its status, its route and its actions.
The first time you open Automatic publishing, a guided tour points out its parts. You can skip it, and start it again whenever you like from the button in the header, with Repeat the tour.
What is it for?
Two ways of using it:
- Automatic: you define profiles and, every time the channel's queue runs empty, the offer of the next valid product from one of them goes out.
- By hand: you open any profile, review its results and decide what to send to the queue, what to publish right now and what to edit first, also with automatic publishing off.
Prerequisites
- The owner's confirmed email in the organization.
- At least one channel with its ID, and the Telegram bot connected.
- The credentials of the store where you are going to search in Settings › Amazon or Settings › AliExpress, with its Use the Amazon API (or Use the AliExpress API) switch on. Without them that store's profiles say No access. Stores and affiliation explains how to get them.
- The channel's queue Active and with some publishing hour.
- At least one active profile that publishes in the channel.
The channel's status
The first thing on the screen says whether automatic publishing in the active channel is publishing, and why not when it is not.
| Title | What it means |
|---|---|
| Publishing on its own | It is on and nothing prevents it. Underneath it says how many offers it has published today and this month in the channel and when the next one goes out (“The next one goes out today at 18:30”). If the queue has messages, it says it is waiting for it to empty and how many are left. |
| Off | The switch is off, or your plan does not include publishing on its own. |
| Stopped | It is on, but something prevents it from publishing: underneath, one row for each cause. |
A resting hour does not stop it: it stays Publishing on its own and says when the next one goes out.
The switch
Next to the title, the switch turns this channel's automatic publishing on or off, with its state written beside it: On or Off. Switching it off deletes nothing: profiles, their progress and the settings are kept. While it is off the causes are not shown, except Your plan publishes by hand on the free plan; they appear when you switch it on and save.
The causes
When something prevents publishing, the block puts one row for each cause, with what is happening, what it affects and a button to the place where it is fixed:
- Your plan publishes by hand: you can search and review each profile's results, but nothing goes out on its own; it leads to See the plans.
- Confirm the email to publish: nothing is published without a confirmed email; the row offers Resend the email, if you are the owner, or Add an email, which takes you to My account, if you have none.
- No bot is connected, or Telegram rejects the bot: Connect the bot or Check the bot take you to Settings › Telegram.
- The queue is off, or The queue rests all day: Open the queue.
- This month's publications are used up: says when they come back and leads to See the plans.
- Amazon (or AliExpress) is not connected, or rejects the credentials: says how many of the channel's profiles cannot search and leads to Check Amazon.
- No profile searches for this channel: activate one from the list or create a new one.
- Every profile is exhausted: says when they search again.
If you cannot get to the place where it is fixed, the row says who fixes it instead of the button. And if the status will not move from Stopped, a profile finds no products or runs out sooner than you expected, Troubleshooting covers it, symptom by symptom.
The pace and the days without repeating
Underneath, a line reminds you of the pace it publishes at, which is the queue's: “At the queue's pace: every 45 min, resting from 0:00 to 8:00”. On the same line:
- Does not repeat a product within: a dropdown with 1, 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, 90, 180 or 365 days (30 to begin with). It is the time that has to pass since a profile's product was queued or published in this channel —by automatic publishing, Publish now or manual handling— for them to choose it again. What you paste by hand in Create offer does not count.
- The month's publications used, if your plan has a cap.
- Change the pace in the queue, which takes you to the queue to adjust the frequency and the hours.
The switch and the days are saved with the Save button in the screen's header, which switches on as soon as anything differs. Meanwhile, the block carries the Unsaved chip, and leaving the screen asks you first. If somebody else has saved these settings while you had the screen open, the save is rejected and asks you to reload.
Creating a search profile
Press New profile to open the window. At the very least, choose the Store and fill in the Search text, the category or both. Profile searches, the test search included, spend no credits.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Store | The store where it searches. The window shows only that store's fields. |
| Name (optional) | To identify the profile in the list. With no name, the list shows the search text. |
| Search text | The terms that are searched. |
| Amazon section | Amazon only: the number of a section of the catalogue. The Amazon section explains it. |
| Category and Subcategory | AliExpress only: the section of the catalogue, chosen in two dropdowns. |
| Excluded words | One word or phrase per line. If a product's title contains any of them, the product is discarded. |
| Publishes to | The channels this profile will publish to. Tick at least one; when you create the profile the active channel comes ticked. A channel with no ID says so beside it. |
Available filters
Filters combine, and each store has its own:
| Filter | Amazon | AliExpress |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum price / Maximum price | ✓ | ✓ |
| Minimum discount (%) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Minimum rating | ✓ (rounded to whole stars, from 1 to 4) | ✓ |
| Minimum sales | — | ✓ (and sorts the results by sales) |
| Sort by | ✓ | — |
| Condition (New / Used) | ✓ | — |
| Shipping type | ✓ (Prime, Fulfilled by Amazon, Free shipping, Amazon Global) | — |
Fine print: each filter's limits
The minimum price cannot exceed the maximum —if it does, the notice appears under Maximum price—, the discount goes from 0 to 100 and the rating from 0 to 5. With Used, the offer's “before” price is that of the new unit.
Profiles that find good offers
- Start broad and narrow down later: a very specific search text leaves few results, and the profile runs out sooner.
- Remove what you do not want with Excluded words: cases, spare parts, accessories. They are searched only in the title, without distinguishing capitals, and also inside other words —“case” discards “cases”—, so a very short one may discard more than you think.
- A Minimum discount leaves out what is not a real deal; if it is very high, the list is left almost empty.
- See what is left after the filters: with Test search before saving the profile, and with Review the results by hand once it is saved.
The Amazon section
Every section of Amazon's catalogue has a number: the one that appears after node= in its link. Amazon calls it Browse Node ID. The button next to the field opens a helper, How do I find the section?: paste the link of any Amazon section and, if it carries the number, it finds it (“Section found: 16209206011”) and Use this section puts it in the field. Only a number is valid.
Categories on AliExpress
Choose the category and, if it has any, the subcategory. AliExpress provides the lists with your credentials, so without them you will only see “None”. If you choose a subcategory, that is the one used; if not, the category.
Testing a search before saving
When you create a new profile, the Test search button lets you see the results before saving anything:
- The button checks the form.
- It opens Manual handling with the real results of that search.
- If it is not what you expected, go back with the arrow, with Edit or with the browser's or phone's back button: the window opens with the criteria you had set, so you can adjust them and test again. If you leave the preview any other way, the window does not open by itself again.
- Only when you press Save profile from that screen is the profile saved, publishing in the channels you ticked.
A one-off search, with no profile
The same flow works for looking for offers occasionally: fill in the criteria, test the search, send what interests you to the queue or publish it from manual handling and leave without saving. No profile is left.
The profiles
Each profile is a row in the list with:
- Its switch, which resumes or pauses it at once. A paused profile keeps all its settings.
- Its name and, underneath, a line with the store and the criteria it has set (“Amazon · “keyboard” · €10.00–€50.00 · −20 % or more · without “case””).
- Its state in the active channel, with the reason.
- Its progress: which page of the results it is on and how many there are (“3/10”), once it has searched in this channel. Amazon gives 10 results per page and up to 10 pages; AliExpress, 20 per page.
- Its actions.
Profiles appear in the order they were created, and they are not reordered.
The states
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Searching | It can publish in the active channel; says when it last published. It is called Waiting while the channel's automatic publishing is not publishing. |
| Exhausted | It has gone through its results without finding anything new for the active channel; says when it searches again. |
| No access | Its store has no credentials or has rejected them. |
| No channel | It publishes in no channel. It happens when the only channel it published in is deleted. |
| In other channels | It publishes in other channels, but not in the active one; says which. |
| Paused | You have paused it with its switch. |
Exhausted profiles
A profile is exhausted in a channel when it reaches the end of its results or goes through five pages in a row without any product, and also when its store does not answer or rejects the credentials. An exhausted profile rests for 24 hours and searches again on its own: from the first page if it had reached the end, or from where it was if the store stopped it. If by then the “do not repeat” window has not freed up anything new, it will be exhausted again.
Progress and exhaustion are per channel: two channels that share a profile have their own turn, their own page and their own history, so an offer published in one is still eligible in the others.
The actions
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Publish now | Publishes at once in the active channel the offer of the profile's next available product, with automatic publishing on or off, also on the free plan. It respects the “do not repeat” window but not the resting hours, and counts as one of the month's publications. If it cannot publish any —none is left that is valid or Telegram rejects them—, it says so and leaves the profile exhausted for 24 hours in that channel. |
| Edit | Opens the window with the profile's data and, at the top, its state in the active channel. If you change what it searches —the store, the text, the category, the prices or the filters—, Save profile restarts its progress in the active channel: it goes back to the first page and is no longer exhausted. Changing only the name or the channels leaves it as it was. |
| More actions | A menu with Review the results by hand (the profile's manual handling) and Delete, which asks for confirmation and does not erase the history of what has already been published. |
On narrow screens all the actions are in the menu.
Publish now also moves the queue
A publication made with Publish now counts as the channel's last one: the queue and automatic publishing wait the full frequency from that moment.
Finding a profile
Above the list there are four filters that combine:
| Filter | What it does |
|---|---|
| Find a profile | Filters by name, search text and excluded words. |
| Store | All stores or one. |
| Channels | Active channel only (includes profiles with no channel), All channels or From other channels, each with how many profiles it has. It starts on the active channel, or on all of them if no profile publishes to it. It only appears if you have more than one channel. |
| State | All or one of the states above, each with how many profiles there are among those the other filters leave. A state with no profiles is not offered. |
Fine print: how many the list shows
- The list shows the first twenty profiles that match (“Showing 20 of 34”), and See the 14 remaining shows the rest.
Manual handling of results
The Manual handling screen shows the real results of a profile's search, page by page, with the profile's criteria summarized at the top in chips. Each product is a card with its photo, its title, the price, the previous price and the discount (“20% off”), and on AliExpress the rating and the sales. A search repeated within one hour shows the same results.
- The profile's criteria, summarized in chips.
- Each product, with its photo, its title, the price and the discount.
- Open, Edit, Queue and Publish.
- Already handled: what has already gone to the queue or the active channel.
- The pages of results.
The first time you open a profile's Manual handling, as soon as the results arrive, a guided tour points out its parts. You can skip it, and start it again whenever you like from the button in the header, with Repeat the tour.
From here you act on each product:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open | Opens the product in its store. |
| Edit | Takes the product to Create offer with the fields filled in, to touch it up before publishing or queueing it. |
| Queue | Sends it to the active channel's queue —the notice says which— and marks it as handled. |
| Publish | Publishes it right now in the active channel, with its template, and marks it as handled. It counts as one of the month's publications. |
The last three act on the active channel, not on the profile's channels.
Already handled
A product that has already gone from a profile or from this screen to the queue or the active channel, with the “do not repeat” window still open, appears dimmed with the Already handled chip. It is a warning: automatic publishing and Publish now skip it, but from this screen you can queue or publish it again: Queue and Publish ask first, because it would go out repeated, and once you confirm its day count starts over.
If there are no results
The Results could not be retrieved card says why: the store's credentials are not configured or are not valid, the store is switched off in Settings, Amazon or AliExpress are throttling searches (“wait a few seconds”), or the profile has neither text nor a valid category. If it is fixed in the store's settings, the message carries a button to get there; if the store is throttling searches, just wait.
A page may come out empty (“No results on this page”) if the excluded words discard everything the store brought; try the next one.
Fine print: how it chooses what to publish
How it chooses what to publish
- A channel's turn to publish comes when it has automatic publishing on, the queue active and empty, the hour is not a resting one and the frequency has passed since its last publication.
- It chooses one of the profiles that can search in that channel. The turn is shared out at random among them: each profile publishes once per round, and when all of them have published another round begins.
- It goes through the profile's results from the page where it left off and publishes the offer of the first product that is not discarded by the excluded words or within the “do not repeat” window. If Telegram rejects that offer, it stays in the channel's queue —which retries it, and meanwhile automatic publishing waits— and it tries the next product on the page. If the failure is the bot's or the channel's, it stops at that first product.
- The offer goes out with the channel's message template and image template, with the affiliate link, and is noted in Published posts as an automatic publication.
