Listings migration strategies

The steps necessary to migrate your listings workflow are unique to your use case and business needs. This section outlines additional considerations that might help you define a migration strategy that is minimally impactful and takes advantage of new features iteratively.

Iterative workflow migrations

Listings management workflows are often a complex combination of use cases and business logic unique to each selling partner that are built around the specific capabilities of individual listings tools (for example, Category XSDs). With previous XML feed submissions, listings workflows were forced to handle product, pricing, inventory, and other data separately, whether or not that pattern fit the use case and business logic for individual selling partners. With the Listings Items API and JSON_LISTINGS_FEED, this type of workflow pattern is supported while providing flexibility to build workflows that more closely match the use case and business logic for individual selling partners.

The flexibility provided by the Listings Items API and JSON_LISTINGS_FEED allows an iterative approach to migrating portions of listings management workflows without having to migrate everything at once. Taking a phased approach allows you to refactor, test, iterate, and migrate smaller portions of your workflow, reducing the overall impact these changes have on your business workflows at each stage in your migration. Consider the following when approaching migration in an iterative fashion:

Data types

Creating and managing product data in listings workflows is complex because the data model and constraints vary between marketplaces and product types. For most use-cases, updating inventory, pricing, and images are the least complex.

To iteratively approach migrating listings workflows, break down the migration by data type (for example, inventory, pricing, images). This allows you to start with the least complex data elements and leave the most complex (that is, product data) last.

For example, migrate your pricing and inventory workflows first. This way, you build your initial integrations by migrating the data elements that can be statically mapped from an XML-based workflow to a Listings Items API or JSON_LISTINGS_FEED-based workflow. As you expand your migration to incorporate each data type, you can choose to maintain isolation between the handling of each data type or refactor to consolidate the handling of different data types.

Onboarding to new API and notification features

You can begin to employ new Selling Partner API and notification features that work alongside your existing XML or flat file feeds-based workflow. By doing so early in your migration, you can take advantage of the following features:

• Listings Items API (getListingsItem) - The getListingsItem operation of the Listings Items API returns the current status, issues, and other data associated with a listing, including listings created with other tools. For existing listings, this operation returns the previously submitted data in the format used for Listings Items API and JSON_LISTINGS_FEED submissions.
• Listings Restrictions API - The Listings Restrictions API provides eligibility details for selling partners creating offers on items in the Amazon catalog. This API allows you to verify eligibility requirements for a selling partner prior to spending time or effort on the offer creation process.
• LISTINGS_ITEM_ISSUES_CHANGE Notifications - You can subscribe to the LISTINGS_ITEM_ISSUES_CHANGE notification to receive a notification when issues are added or cleared on selling partner listings. You can then use the Listings Items API to retrieve the latest status and issues for a listing.
• LISTINGS_ITEM_STATUS_CHANGE Notifications - You can subscribe to the LISTINGS_ITEM_STATUS_CHANGE notification to receive a notification whenever the buyability status changes on selling partner listings. You can then use the Listings Items API to retrieve the latest status and issues for a listing.

Offer-only workflows

Listings management workflows that manage offer-only listings are less complex than workflows managing listings with product data. Offer-only listings refers to listings with sales terms (inventory and pricing) on existing items in the Amazon catalog. Another iterative approach is migrating offer-only listings workflows prior to migrating listings that include product data. For more details on creating offer-only listings with the Listings Items API and JSON_LISTINGS_FEED submissions, refer to the List an offer for an item that already exists in the Amazon catalog tutorial in the Building Listings Management Workflows Guide.

Product types and marketplaces

The data model and constraints for managing listings with product data differ by product type and marketplace. Category XSDs define these data models at a category level, while the Product Type Definitions API defines these at the individual product type. With the migration of product data being the most complex portion of migrating listings workflows for most use-cases, an iterative approach by category, product type, and marketplace allows you to configure data mappings, test submissions, and iterate more rapidly on smaller amounts of data, rather than configuring everything at once.

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There is not yet support for all product types in all marketplaces

The Listings Items API and JSON_LISTINGS_FEED do not yet support all product types in all marketplaces. An iterative approach by product type and marketplace allows you to begin migrating and iteratively adopt product types in these tools as they become available.