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The First Coverage Run

The first question after setup: how much of my assortment does Icecat actually cover? This page walks through the answer once, end to end — from the Business Central item through the queue to a readable report. Plan for one working day of runtime (the run works on its own) and half an hour of your own time.

Step 0: Check the prerequisites

  1. Licence or demo active — the module list (merchantCENTRAL Modules) shows Icecat as licensed
  2. Module switched on — Enabled is set on the setup card
  3. Account complete — user name entered, both tokens Stored
  4. Connection tested — Test Connection reports success
  5. Languages chosen deliberately — only the languages you actually publish; each one doubles the requests
  6. Identifiers present — the items carry GTINs, or manufacturer code plus manufacturer part number

Step 1: Select and queue the items

  1. Open the Item List (search for Items)
  2. Narrow down with a filter if needed — for example on the Manufacturer Code for a single brand; for the full run, leave the list unfiltered
  3. Select the items; for all rows, click one row and extend the selection with Ctrl+A
  4. Run the Queue for Icecat Content action (group Icecat)
  5. The confirmation names the count; the result message counts queued items and those already waiting

Each item produces one queue entry per active language — without a single request yet. Queueing is local work and takes moments even for ten thousand items; queueing twice is harmless, waiting items are never duplicated.

Step 2: Let it process

  • Background run (recommended): run Schedule Background Run once on the setup card — from then on an hourly job works off up to Max. Items per Run
  • Immediately: Process Queue Now (dashboard or queue) works off the due entries in the foreground — good for a sample

A quick calculation

1,000 items in one language = 1,000 requests. With the default of 200 per run and an hourly job, the queue is empty after roughly five hours. Icecat answers one product per request — the module behaves like a polite regular, not a load spike.

Step 3: Watch the progress

  • The dashboard shows datasheets growing and the queue shrinking
  • The Icecat tiles on the merchantCENTRAL dashboard show the same movement one level up
  • The queue shows every entry with its status and, if applicable, the error message

The run is interruptible and resumable; problems appear as a status, not as a crash.

Step 4: Read the report

Open the coverage report. Check the Not Yet Requested column first: if it reads zero everywhere, the run really covered the whole assortment and the coverage figures are trustworthy.

Afterwards: switch to continuous operation

The first run is an inventory. Now switch on Queue New Items Automatically — from then on every new item and every corrected GTIN flows into the queue by itself. Together with the hourly run, the re-check for items without a match and the refresh via Refresh Content After (Days), enrichment runs without further attention.