Beta
The Product Catalog is currently in Beta and is not yet available to all customers. Availability is being expanded gradually. Functionality, configuration, and behavior may change before general availability.
Overview
Product Attributes define how product data is structured, validated, and reused within the Product Catalog. Attributes describe products at various levels, ensuring that product data can be consistently imported, validated, exported, and utilized by downstream Mapp services.
The Product Catalog includes a set of predefined attributes. You can also create custom attributes to add product data specific to your needs.
Custom attributes are reusable — once created, they can be added to multiple catalogs. The attribute configuration (name, data format, and settings) is shared across catalogs, but the data stored against each catalog remains fully independent.
Figure: The Product Catalog stores all attribute values at the variant level. Product and style act as grouping layers; variants carry the actual data.
Key Characteristics
Predefined attributes: Each Product Catalog includes a set of predefined attributes that are available by default and cannot be modified.
Custom attributes: You can create custom attributes to extend product data for business-specific needs and assign them to one or more Product Catalogs.
Reusable attribute definitions: Custom attributes act as templates and can be reused across multiple catalogs.
Strong validation model: Attributes follow defined data formats, limits, and character rules to ensure compatibility with exports and integrations.
State and Status: Each attribute has a State (Mandatory or Optional) that controls whether it is required during import, and a Status (Active or Inactive) that controls whether new values can be imported. Inactive attributes remain readable, but new data cannot be written to them.
Purchasable Product Option: Attributes can be marked as a purchasable Product Option to indicate that they distinguish variants a customer can buy, such as color and size in fashion.
Predefined Attributes
Every Product Catalog includes a fixed set of predefined attributes. These attributes carry the core product information that Mapp Engage, Mapp Intelligence, and downstream services rely on. Predefined attributes cannot be created, renamed, or removed, and their Data format is fixed.
The State of each predefined attribute depends on whether the catalog operates in Standard mode or in Fashion-enabled mode. Switching a catalog to Fashion-enabled mode promotes six attributes from optional to mandatory and makes additional Fashion-specific predefined attributes available.
Attribute | State (Standard) | State (Fashion-enabled) | Data Format |
|---|---|---|---|
Variant ID | Mandatory | Mandatory | Text |
Product ID | Mandatory | Mandatory | Text |
Style ID | Optional | Mandatory | Text |
Style Title | Optional | Optional | Text |
Product Title | Mandatory | Mandatory | Localized text |
Variant Title | Optional | Optional | Text |
Product Description | Optional | Mandatory | Localized text |
Price | Mandatory | Mandatory | Localized number |
Currency | Mandatory | Mandatory | Text |
Size | Optional | Mandatory | Localized text |
Color | Optional | Mandatory | Localized text |
Image URL | Optional | Mandatory | List |
PDP URL | Optional | Mandatory | Localized text |
Brand | Optional | Optional | Text |
GTIN | Optional | Optional | Text |
MPN | Optional | Optional | Text |
Variant Status | Mandatory | Mandatory | Number |
If Variant Status is not provided during import, it defaults to ACTIVE for newly created variants. For details on all possible values and how Variant Status affects downstream services, see Variant Status below.
Note
Fashion-enabled mode is activated per catalog and cannot be disabled in the user interface. For details on enabling Fashion mode and the resulting catalog behavior, see How Product Catalogs Work.
Variant Status
The Variant Status predefined attribute records the lifecycle phase of a variant. Its value is consumed by downstream services and determines which variants are eligible for recommendations and personalization.
Variant Status uses the Number data format. The following values are accepted:
Value | Status | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
0 | PREORDER | The variant is announced but not yet available for purchase. |
1 | ACTIVE | The variant is available for purchase. This is the default for newly created variants when no value is supplied during import. |
2 | DISCONTINUED | The variant has been retired and is no longer offered. |
Variant Status drives downstream behavior across Mapp Cloud:
Recommendation widgets in Mapp Intelligence exclude variants with the status DISCONTINUED.
Mapp Engage personalization scenarios such as Abandoned Cart reminders skip variants with the status DISCONTINUED.
Configuration and Behavior
Data Formats and Validation
When you create a custom attribute, you select a Data format. The Data format determines which values are accepted, how the attribute is validated, and which additional options become available.
The following Data formats are available for custom attributes:
Text
Number
Boolean
List
Localized text
Localized number
Localized list
Attributes that include localization are automatically validated against the relevant ISO standards (ISO 639-1 for languages, ISO 3166-1 for countries, ISO 4217 for currencies, and BCP 47 for combined locale codes). For an overview of the supported formats, see Localization Support in Product Catalog. If the defined standard is not met, validation fails.
To support third-party integrations, attribute definitions are subject to strict limits.
Attribute | Allowed Characters | Max Length |
|---|---|---|
Variant ID | A–Z, a–z, 0–9, -, _ | 255 |
Product ID | A–Z, a–z, 0–9, -, _ | 255 |
Style ID | A–Z, a–z, 0–9, -, _ | 255 |
Product Title | UTF-8, no HTML | 255 |
Product Description | UTF-8, no HTML | 5,000 |
Brand | UTF-8 | 100 |
Price | Numeric, 2 decimals | 0.01–9,999,999.99 |
Display Type
When you create a custom attribute with a text-based Data format, an additional Display Type selector appears in the create dialog. Display Type controls how the value is rendered in the Catalog view and in downstream services such as Mapp Intelligence reports.
Display Type is available for the following Data formats:
Text
List
Localized list
You can choose one of the following options:
Option | Description |
|---|---|
Text | Default. The value is rendered as plain text. |
Clickable URL | The value is rendered as a clickable link. |
Image URL | The value is rendered as an inline image in Mapp Intelligence reports. |
Note
Display Type can only be set when the attribute is created. After an attribute has been saved, the Display Type is no longer visible in the edit view and cannot be changed. Display Type is not available for predefined attributes.
Purchasable Product Option
When you create a custom attribute, you can enable the Is a purchasable Product Option toggle. This flags the attribute as a variant-defining option that a customer can choose when buying the product.
Typical examples in the Fashion industry are color and size: two variants that share the same product but differ in their option values are treated as separately purchasable items.
The toggle is set to off by default and can be enabled per attribute as needed.
Number Attributes and Aggregation
The aggregation settings define how downstream services such as Mapp Intelligence aggregate the attribute's values across events. The Product Catalog itself stores only the current state per variant.
When Number is selected as the Data format, optional aggregation settings become available for analytics use cases.
Available aggregation types:
Quantity: Counts how often a value is recorded.
Sum: Adds up recorded values.
Quantity and Sum: Provides both metrics and is selected by default.
Example
A variant carries a number attribute that appears in two events involving the variant, once with a value of 5 and once with a value of 3:
Quantity = 2 (the attribute appeared in 2 events)
Sum = 8 (5 + 3 across both events)
Constant Values
When Constant is enabled, the submitted value remains unchanged, regardless of how often the product is accessed. Only a single metric is created.
Example
A variant has a price of 100 on a number attribute. The variant is purchased ten times:
Constant enabled → the reported value remains 100 (typical for stable values like a list price)
Constant disabled with Sum → the reported value becomes 1,000 (summed across all ten purchases)
Constant disabled with Quantity → the reported value becomes 10 (one count per purchase)
Attribute Deletion
Custom attributes can be deleted from a Product Catalog using the Delete action (trash icon) in the Product Attributes overview. Deletion is permanent and removes both the attribute definition and its data from the catalog. A confirmation prompt is shown before the action is applied.
If you need the attribute back after deletion, recreate it with the same configuration and re-import the data through your usual import process.
Fashion-Extended Predefined Attributes
When a Product Catalog is set to Fashion-enabled mode, the following additional predefined attributes become available alongside the standard predefined attributes. They cover values commonly used by the Fashion industry. These attributes are not visible on catalogs that operate in Standard mode.
Attribute | State | Data Format | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
Material | Mandatory | Text | Material composition of the variant. |
Seasonal | Optional | Boolean | Indicates whether the variant belongs to a seasonal collection. |
Old Price | Optional | Localized number | Previous price, used to indicate price reductions. |
Set ID | Optional | Text | Identifier that groups variants belonging to the same set or outfit. |
Locale | Optional | List | Locale that applies to the variant entry. |
Extra ID | Optional | Localized text | Additional product identifier provided alongside the variant. |
Ean | Optional | Text | European Article Number for the variant. |
Ancillary Product Code | Optional | Text | Additional product code for cases where multiple codes are required. |
Min Age | Optional | Number | Minimum recommended age for the product. |
Max Age | Optional | Number | Maximum recommended age for the product. |
Multipack | Optional | Boolean | Indicates whether the variant is sold as part of a multipack. |
Best Model Image | Optional | Text | URL of the preferred image showing the product on a model. |
Best Product Image | Optional | Text | URL of the preferred image showing the product on its own. |
Enriched Attributes
Enriched attributes are additional, Fashion-specific attributes that Mapp generates automatically through the Fashion enrichment process. You do not import enriched attributes through your Source Feed; they appear in the Enriched Feed only after enrichment has run.
Enriched attribute keys follow the fashion_ prefix convention and use British English spelling, for example fashion_colour and fashion_neckline.
Enriched values are read-only from your perspective: they are produced and maintained by the Fashion enrichment service and refreshed as part of the enrichment lifecycle.