A lot of stores might need a way to create an inventory feed of all the products to be sent to a shopping channel. The data could be in either CSV, XML or another format and usually sent via FTP or it could be pulled directly from the store.
The only way to do this is using a third party application that will pull the product data from the BigCommerce API and then forward it to the appropriate channel.
Here's what you have to think about when designing or looking for such an application:
How many products to do you have?
If you have hundreds of thousands of products then you will need to update the feed into chunks to make it more manageable. Otherwise, you can just create the feed in a single pass which is the easiest and least time consuming way to do it.
How often do you need to update the feed?
Once a day is probably what most channels will required. Anything more frequent than that and it might be better to just update the inventory as it changes as opposed to generating a file and then sending it. You can do this using a cron job, or a scheduling service but it is definitely something doable.
Do you need to send out the variation inventory levels?
Tracking inventory levels by the option will add some development time to the project. It is harder to develop just because the inventory data has to be pulled from a different API endpoint. There might also need to be a special way to handle product variations/options when sending that data out to the channel.
This type of project is complex and can definitely overwhelm a developer if they are just starting out. There are a couple of pieces that have to be in place (app server, cron jobs, data processing etc.) in order to create the app. It also needs to be robust enough so that it works with many products and is available on a day to day basis.
You can answer the discovery questions on how to generate a product inventory feed and get a quote from us within 24 hours.