A New Feature in the Kitty

It has happened too many times for me to stand by idly so I finally did something about it. A subscriber to the Shopify App Transparent Kitty would call me and ask me this very specific question.

Why can I not see the vendor(s) in the App when I just added them to my shop?

The answer came to me quickly as I found the answer to that question after the first time it was asked. A vendor is not created in the App until a sale is registered in Shopify for a product belonging to that vendor! Once the order is received by the App, any missing or new vendors will be present in the App.

In the meantime, before the Kitty was in the App store, I had written a rake task that updates the App so that any vendors missing in the App are created, by querying Shopify for an updated list of all vendors and their products. The upside of this task is that it also serves to find vendors where their name has changed in Shopify, and it propagates this name change into the App.

I added a new button to the Kitty located in the /shopify route with the navbar link preferences where subscribers see their options to import/export the cost prices of their products. Now there is a third option, to synchronize their vendors with the App.

Once a synchronization job is completed, the subscriber should receive an email telling them the job completed, and how many new vendors were added by the operation.