Step 2: Feeds

First you need to create your feeds, then Google evaluates them.

Create feeds

1. Generate your feed(s). You transmit most of your inventory data to Google by feeds. To get started, create your Merchant feed (and Services feed if applicable):

   • Merchants feed: The Merchants feed describes your merchants and merchant level action links.
   • Services feed (optional / not recommended): It is not recommended to implement services feeds for new Appointments Business Link integrations. If you are looking to maintain your existing integration, follow this legacy documentation.

   Required and Recommended fields

   Feed	Field name	Description	Required?
   Merchant	merchant_id	Unique identifier for the merchant	Yes
   Merchant	name	Name of the merchant	Yes
   Merchant	geo	Address and geo coordinates of the merchant	Yes
   Merchant	telephone	Telephone of the merchant	Yes
   Merchant	category	Place type of the merchant	Nice to Have
   Merchant	action_link	Information regarding Merchant Specific Deep Links	Yes
   Merchant	action_link_type
   Merchant	brand_id	String that identifies the consumer-facing brand to use	Optional

   Note: All additional fields outlined in the reference section should be ignored.
   Key Point: You are only required to upload merchant feed.

   To start, check out the sample feeds

   • In-Person Appointment Feeds

   You can learn more about specifying action links in Appointments Business Link integration feeds here.

   Include feed metadata in each of your feeds that instructs Google on how to interpret the feed.

   The following is a feed metadata snippet:

   "metadata": {
    "generation_timestamp": "1467993600",
    "processing_instruction": "PROCESS_AS_COMPLETE",
    "total_shards": 1
   }

   Note: All feeds must be uploaded with processing_instruction PROCESS_AS_COMPLETE. PROCESS_AS_INCREMENTAL is deprecated and cannot be used.
   Note: This integration can also be implemented in conjunction with the Actions Center end-to-end integration or as an addon to the end-to-end integration. In order to support this you will also be required to implement availability feeds and the end-to-end integration required fields as per this guide.

2. Export your feeds. The feeds format is described with the protocol buffer 3 syntax, however you can reference the samples mentioned above to see the JSON format. We recommend that you upload the feeds in JSON format.

   If you really want to proceed with pb3 format, for general information on how to use protocol buffers to generate a pb3 file, see Protocol Buffer Basics: Java.

3. Upload the feeds to your SFTP Dropbox. To upload your feeds, use the SFTP dropbox information that Google provided to you and the private key that you created in Setup. The Google SFTP server is available at sftp://partnerupload.google.com on port 19321.

   Upload your files with unique names, such as a name that includes a timestamp. Unique names help with troubleshooting and allow queries for the feed status.

   To determine the size of the feeds and frequency of delivery, use the following guidelines:

   • Size of feed files and shards:
     • Keep the feed file size below 200MB (after compression). Compress them using gzip
     • If your file may reach more than 200MB (after compression), split them in multiple shards following the Sharding feed files tutorial. However, this integration alone is unlikely to reach the 200MB limit.
   • Frequency of complete updates:
     • A complete merchant feed is provided once a day.
     • (If implemented) A complete service feed is provided once a day.
   Note: Google processes feed files as soon as they're uploaded to the SFTP dropbox. If the feed is sharded into multiple files, the process begins after you upload the last file. If your feed contains errors, you receive an email with the feed error codes.

Google evaluates feeds

Once you upload your feeds, Google processes and evaluates them for quality and completeness. We look at several factors:

• Feeds meet the specifications.
• Feeds include all required fields.
• Each merchant has at least one action_link or one service with at least action_link defined.
• The majority of your merchant data matches with Google Maps locations.

Note: To ensure a smooth integration, perform a pre-evaluation of the factors above, except for the last one, before you submit your feeds.