Review requests (formerly post-interaction email or PIE) invite your customers to leave reviews for online and offline purchases and service interactions. Bazaarvoice sends review requests via email and text messages to collect reviews from your customers. Review requests are essential to driving volume, and it adds significant product coverage, content freshness, and search engine optimization (SEO) value.

Note: Clients who use Bazaarvoice's review requests and review request reminders, have seen 80+ percent of their Ratings & Reviews volume generated through these messages.
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The following characteristics of Bazaarvoice’s review requests provide a straightforward way for your customers to share content:

  • One message—A single email message includes a list of all products or services involved. A single text message contains a link leading the consumer to our multi-product submission form.
  • One click—Customers are automatically directed to the review-submission form when they select Write a review.
  • Customer-sensible—Review requests do not solicit reviews for products that were previously reviewed.

Other benefits of review requests:

  • Ensures that you receive content from authenticated purchasers.
  • Drives significant volume back to your site. Some clients see thousands of transactions each week from customers responding to review requests.
  • Increases conversion. You can expect to get an average of four moderated and approved reviews for every 100 review requests you send. This conversion rate can be up to 10 percent for specialized retailers when following review request best practices.

Prerequisites

To send a review request, a product ID is required, which is the same as the product's ExternalId in the product catalog, and it is captured by BV Pixel or contained in the interaction feed. Typically, a review request is sent to a consumer after an e-commerce transaction is completed, such as after a product is purchased. If you want to send a review request after a non-e-commerce transaction, the transaction must be associated with a product or service that is included in your product catalog.

If you do not have a product ID, you cannot send a review request. However, you can use other methods to increase review volume, such as sampling or promotional activities.

Workflow and timing of review requests

Here is a typical workflow and timeline for review requests:

  1. A customer completes a transaction, such as a purchase on your site or in your brick-and-mortar store.
  2. A transaction record is generated within your e-commerce system and then sent to Bazaarvoice in an interaction feed or BV Pixel event.
  3. Bazaarvoice determines the following:
    • Whether the customer has submitted an approved review in the past 180 days for one or more of the products or services in the transaction. If so, the product or service is omitted from the review request. If not, the product or service is included in the review request if the transaction occurred within the last 180 days. Contact Bazaarvoice Support if you want to change the number of days that a transaction is eligible to appear in a review request.
    • Whether the customer had more than one transaction on the same date. When we receive multiple same-day transactions for a customer (until 12 AM CST: UTC-6 or CDT: UTC-5), we create a single review request that includes up to five unreviewed products or services. Those transactions can be new, or they can come from an interaction feed containing historical transaction data. The review request lists the products or services in this order:
      1. Highest priced item
      2. Item with fewest reviews
      3. Next highest priced item
      4. Next item with fewest reviews
      5. Next highest priced item

      If price is not included for the product or service in the interaction feed, the products are ordered strictly by the fewest reviews.

  4. We send a review request to the customer. You can configure when to send this message, typically 14-21 days after the date and time of the transaction.
  5. The customer receives the review request. If the customer does not submit reviews for all products or services in the message, we send a review request reminder after a set time or when the customer completes another transaction, whichever occurs first.

    The review request reminder includes unreviewed products or services from the initial review request. If fewer than five products or services from the initial review request were not reviewed, and the customer has prior unreviewed transactions, the review request reminder will include products or services from prior transactions until the message contains up to five unreviewed products or services. For example, if the initial review request solicits reviews for three products and the customer doesn't review any of them, the review request reminder will contain those three products plus two more from previous transactions. We use the same ordering criteria described in step 3 to determine which products and services to include from previous transactions.

  6. You can configure the delay between the initial review request and reminder messages. A product or service will be included in the review request reminder if the sent date is less than or equal to the sum of 180 days and the configured review request reminder delay.

    For example, if a customer completed a transaction during the last 180 days, the transaction is eligible to be in the review request reminder for the next 14 days, if the configured review request reminder delay is 14 days.

    Note: Review request reminder delay is the number of days to wait before sending the review request reminder after the initial review request.
  7. Reviews approved by the Bazaarvoice moderation team are made available for publishing. Reviews from review requests and reminders follow the same moderation path as reviews collected from pages on your site.

Submission link expiration

The submission links in review requests and review request reminders expire in the following scenarios:

  • Implementations using hosted authentication— If a user does not follow the submission link within 30 days of receiving the message, the user will no longer be pre-authenticated and won't be considered a verified purchaser. The user's email address won't be displayed on the submission form.
  • Implementations using site authentication— If a user does not follow the submission link within 30 days of receiving the message, the user will no longer be pre-authenticated and must sign in using your Sign-In page to access the submission form.
  • All implementations— Submission links expire after 90 days. If a user selects a link after it expires, a 404 error will display.

Setup overview

Follow these steps to implement review requests:

  1. Enable and configure review requests.
  2. Determine how you will send transaction data to Bazaarvoice and implement that method:
    • Send interaction data automatically, which works with the BV Pixel to collect encrypted transaction and interaction data directly from your website. You can add BV Pixel events to any page element on your website, though it is most commonly used at the point of transaction.
    • Send interaction data manually, which requires you to upload an XML file to Bazaarvoice with transactions to use in review requests. You can rely on this method if BV Pixel is not implemented on your website. It is also useful if you want to import historical transaction data or send review requests to email addresses and phone numbers that were collected during offline transactions, such as purchases made in your brick-and-mortar store.

    You can also use a combination of these methods for greater control, such as if transactions occur online and in stores.

    Sending interaction data automatically Sending interaction data manually
    Easier, faster, encrypted*. More effort, more control, more maintenance.
    Order cancellations Cannot be excluded. If you've a high number of canceled transactions, you should send interaction data manually. Can exclude as part of the feed effort.
    Shipping delays Can only be covered by an appropriate delay for all review requests. If you've many orders that are shipped with delays, you could delay all review requests to a point where 97 percent are shipped. If many orders are delayed for months, you should send interaction data manually. Transaction date can be adjusted forward into the future to account for the desired delay.
    Interaction type A single BV Pixel call can encompass one interaction only, though multiple BV Pixel calls are allowed. Can encompass a mixture of interactions.
    Security and encryption High level. Not encrypted. However, the feeds are uploaded to our secure FTP (SFTP) site.
    Submission link (ssURL) Required. Required.
    Template creation Yes. Yes.
    Review request features Opt-out (mandatory) and review request reminders (optional). Opt-out (mandatory) and review request reminders (optional).

    *Data is encrypted when collected and transmitted to Bazaarvoice. Data is unencrypted only prior to send-out/storage.

  3. Test your review request configuration.

Optional tasks for optimizing review requests:

  • Configure message templates—Email and text message templates are provided, but you can edit the templates or create custom templates, if necessary.
  • Track review request performance—Configure automated reports or manually generate reports to determine if your review requests are optimized and successful.
  • Configure submission form questions— A set of default questions is defined for submission forms, but you can configure the submission form questions that are shown users when they select the "Write a review" link.
  • Manage consumer subscriptions—An Unsubscribe link is included in all email and text messages to consumers. You can also manage and monitor subscriptions with the Notifications Subscription API .
    • Note: Customers who unsubscribe from receiving review request text messages will receive these messages via email. We will not send review requests to customers who opt-out of both email and text messages.
  • Use a multi-product submission form—Use a multi-product submission form to allow consumers to review all unreviewed purchases from a transaction in one form.

Enable review requests

To send review requests, you must enable them and configure settings that govern when and how often users receive review requests.

Settings that affect when messages are sent

Configure these options after enabling review requests:

  • Review request delay: When the first review request is sent after a consumer completes a transaction. By default, this message is sent 21 days after the transaction.
  • Review request reminder delay: When a review request is sent to remind the consumer to submit a review. This review request reminder is sent only if the consumer does not take action after the first review request, and it is sent either after the specified delay from the first review request or after the consumer completes another transaction (whichever occurs sooner).
  • Review message sending time: The time of day when Bazaarvoice begins to send review requests. By default, review requests are sent at the original transaction times. However, to improve message open rates, you can control the start time if you want to target message send times or if you need to observe business rules or customs in a specific locale. After Bazaarvoice begins to send review requests, it can take up to 3-4 hours to complete the process (depending on system load).
    • Note: We recommend configuring daytime or business hours for start sending time for text messages.
  • Repeat messages: If and when a review request is sent after a consumer repeats a transaction.

In addition, be aware of the following internal settings. Contact Bazaarvoice Support to change these settings.

  • Number of days after which a transaction is considered too old to be included in a review request. By default, review requests or review request reminders will not include transactions that happened more than 180 days ago.
  • Number of minutes between multiple solicitation messages to the same consumer. If a consumer makes multiple purchases minutes or hours apart, Bazaarvoice will not send more than one review request for the subsequent purchases within 24 hours. This setting also affects when email messages are sent for Google Seller Ratings and Ask a Product Owner.

Enable and configure review requests

Complete the following steps to enable and configure review requests:

  1. Sign in to the Bazaarvoice Portal .
  2. From the upper-right corner, select the settings icon settings icon.
  3. select Configuration.
  4. Select the instance and Go to Configuration. The Site Manager appears, listing the available deployment zones and implementations.
  5. From the Implementations section, select Edit next to the implementation you want to configure.
    6. Note: Email templates are used in the deployment zone to which the implementation is published. Changes made to templates in one zone affect email messages sent from that zone only.
  6. Under Collect Reviews section, select Configure Messages.
  7. To control how the review submission form is displayed after the user selects the "Write a review" link in the review request, select one of the Use product pages for submission options in the Email Submission Links section of the General tab:
    • To display the submission form in a lightbox on the product display page (PDP), select Enabled.
    • To display the submission form on its own page, select Disabled. You can select this option if you do not specify a container URL on the Technical Setup > Site Profile page (this forces the use of the Bazaarvoice hosted submission form). Or, you can select this option if you implement a container page and specify a container URL on the Technical Setup > Site Profile page.
  8. Select the Settings tab and scroll down to the Review Requests section of the page.
  9. Select Enabled under Send review requests after qualifying interactions.
  10. In the Days to wait before sending the first review request text box, type the number of days to wait between a qualifying interaction and the first review request. We recommend that you specify 14-21 days to allow enough time for shipping.
  11. If you want customers to receive review request reminders:
    1. Select Enabled under Send review request reminders.
    2. In the Days to wait before sending review request reminders text box, type the number of days after the first review request to send the review request reminder. We recommend that you do not specify a value that is a multiple of 7.
  12. Use the Trigger messages dropdown list to select your method of sending review requests to customers:
    • Select Automatically if you send us transaction data using BV Pixel only or BV Pixel and interaction feeds. BV Pixel powers review requests by automatically capturing and sending transaction data.
    • Select By feed if you send us transaction data using only interaction feeds.
  13. To send feed failure alerts that are generated when Bazaarvoice validates and imports .xml or .txt interaction feeds, add email addresses to the Send interaction feed failure alerts to the following email addresses list by selecting the +Add button.
    Note: In review request text messages, the feed failure is reported and stored in the new SFTP failed folder. To access these failure reports, you must have access to the new SFTP, which resides at the following location:

    https://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseDataFeed/1.5.

  14. To send review requests to consumers for purchases made after the initial transactions, enter the number of days in the Delay between multiple review requests for the same product (in days) field. If the number of days exceeds 30, Bazaarvoice does not send a review request for a subsequent purchase. Specify 0 to disable this setting.

    For example, suppose a consumer buys the same product 30 days after the initial purchase and the number of days in the Delay between multiple review requests for the same product field is less than or equal to 30. In this scenario, Bazaarvoice sends a review request for the second purchase. However, if the number of days exceeds 30, we do not send a review request for the second purchase.

    Note: If the consumer already submitted a review for the product, a review request is not sent for the second purchase.

  15. To specify a time of day when Bazaarvoice will begin to send review requests, scroll to the top of the page (on the Settings tab) and then select an option from the Schedule time to start sending review requests (UTC) dropdown menu. If multiple locales are in use in your implementation, select the locale from the locale indicator on the upper right side of the page first. Alternatively, you can select Edit Values next to the locale indicator to the right of the scheduling dropdown to edit that value for any your locales.

    By default, Bazaarvoice sends a review request at the same time as the original consumer transaction (transaction time) after the delay specified in step 7. If this delay expires after the time specified here, the review request is sent the following day at the transaction time.

    Note: This settings controls when all review requests are sent (review requests and Seller Ratings requests). Keep this in mind when changing the setting.
  16. If desired, edit the standard email templates that are used to send email messages to consumers, or create custom templates.
Note: If necessary, you can manage end-user email subscriptions and provide end-users the ability to unsubscribe from email messages, though an Unsubscribe link is included in all email messages to consumers. See Consumer email subscriptions for more information.

Disabling review requests

If you disable review requests but Seller Ratings requests are still enabled, Bazaarvoice continues to collect data and generate feeds. When you re-enable review requests, Bazaarvoice sends review requests for transactions that occurred while review request was disabled.

Provide data for review requests

For us to send review requests, we need data about your customers' transactional or non-transactional interactions with your website.

You can send us that data automatically using BV Pixel or manually in an interaction feed.

Send interaction data automatically

BV Pixel captures consumer interaction data directly from your site and sends it to Bazaarvoice. Types of interactions include the following:

  • Purchases—Implement BV Pixel on all your order confirmation pages to capture this data.
  • File downloads—Examples: Manuals, coupons, software, or cash-back claims. Implement BV Pixel on relevant pages to capture this data.
  • Registrations—Examples: Newsletter subscriptions or product registrations. Implement BV Pixel on the Thank You page to capture this data.
Note: When using BV Pixel to power review requests for purchases, order cancellations and returns cannot be taken into account. However, receiving feedback from these users will be helpful in reducing returns in the future.

Follow these steps to implement BV Pixel:

  1. Add the BV loader to the relevant pages.
  2. Add the transaction event code.
    Note: BV Pixel conversion event code cannot be used to power review requests.
  3. Add PII parameters to the transaction event code (optional).

After BV Pixel is implemented, Bazaarvoice collects the interaction data needed to generate review requests directly from your site.

Send interaction data automatically for review request text messages

To use BV Pixel to send interaction data for review request text messages, you must include a phone number and/or preference and/or encrypted phone number along with the email address in the interaction data you send. We will use the encrypted phone number provided in the interaction data to send review request text messages.

Send interaction data manually for email review requests

If your company does not send interaction data automatically, you can send us an XML or TXT file that contains transaction data to use in review requests. Even if you send interaction data automatically, the manual method can be useful for importing historical transaction data or for sending review requests to email addresses and phone numbers collected during brick-and-mortar store purchases.

Sending interaction data this way has two advantages:

  • Significantly increases review volume. Some clients have seen a 2x increase in review submissions.
  • Introduces offline customers to your online experience.

Complete the following steps to create and upload a feed containing your customer's interaction data.

Step 1: Create a feed file

You can create an interaction feed that contains transaction data about customers who have purchased products and services on your site or at a physical location. Bazaarvoice uses the interaction feed to send review requests to your customers. You must generate this feed and upload it to Bazaarvoice by 12 AM Central Time (CST: UTC-6 or CDT: UTC-5) every day.

You can create an XML file that contains your transaction data, which you will upload to Bazaarvoice. If an XML file is not feasible, you can create and submit a tab-delimited text file (TXT). However, text files can generate complicated errors during processing.

XML feed

The XML schema for your interaction feed resides at the following location:

https://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseFeed/<version>

where <version> is the appropriate Bazaarvoice release number. For example, the XML schema for the interaction feed that is associated with version 14.7 resides at the following location:

https://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseFeed/14.7

Follow these guidelines when you create an XML interaction feed:

  • Ensure that the first line of your feed adheres to the following format:
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

  • Ensure that the <Feed> element has the following attribute:

    xmlns="http://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseFeed/14.7"
  • The standard character-encoding scheme, such as UTF-8 or Windows-1252, must match the scheme that you use for any special characters in the feed.

  • When you name the XML file, be aware that the filename must begin with "bv_ppe_tag_feed" and you can also include your company name and the date, as in the following example:

    bv_ppe_tag_feed_YourSiteName_20150928.xml

    Each file you upload must have a unique name to avoid overwriting the previous file. If you intend to upload multiple feeds a day, add a timestamp to the filename. For example:

    • bv_ppe_tag_feed_YourSiteName_20150928-1030.xml
    • bv_ppe_tag_feed_YourSiteName_20150928-1645.xml
  • If you publish implementations to multiple deployment zones, be sure to include the <DeploymentZone> element in the feed to indicate the implementation's email templates to use when sending review request email messages. The implementation where the templates are configured must be published to the deployment zone before you reference the deployment zone in the interaction feed. Check with your Bazaarvoice representative to obtain the correct ID, or sign in to the configuration to verify.
  • If you do not have a value for a specific field, omit the field from your feed. Do not include fields with blank values.

Here is a simple example of an XML interaction feed:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Feed xmlns="http://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseFeed/14.7">
   <Interaction>
      <TransactionDate>2016-08-23T15:09:41.000</TransactionDate>
      <EmailAddress>user@example.com</EmailAddress>
      <Locale>en_GB</Locale>
      <UserName>name</UserName>
      <UserID>715987491</UserID>
      <Products>
         <Product>
            <ExternalId>product902</ExternalId>
            <Name>Product Name</Name>
            <ImageUrl>http://example.cimages/products/image01.jpg</ImageUrl>
            <Price>33.99</Price>
         </Product>
      </Products>
      <DeploymentZone>secondary_site</DeploymentZone>
   </Interaction>
   <Interaction>
      <TransactionDate>2016-08-23T15:11:41.000</TransactionDate>
      <EmailAddress>user2@example.com</EmailAddress>
      <Locale>en_US</Locale>
      <UserName>name2</UserName>
      <UserID>715983395</UserID>
      <Products>
         <Product>
            <ExternalId>product14</ExternalId>
            <Name>Product Name2</Name>
            <ImageUrl>http://example.cimages/products/image02.jpg</ImageUrl>
            <Price>14.49</Price>
         </Product>
         <Product>
            <ExternalId>product42</ExternalId>
            <Name>Product Name3</Name>
            <ImageUrl>http://example.cimages/products/image03.jpg</ImageUrl>
            <Price>234.99</Price>
         </Product>
      </Products>
   </Interaction>
</Feed>

The following are lists of data fields that are required and optional for transactional and non-transactional interaction feeds.

Field Best practice for review requests? Required? Description
TransactionDate Yes Yes, if using send delay Specifies the purchase, shipping, or other interaction date in the .XML DateTime format .
Locale Yes Yes, if supporting review requests in multiple languages Controls the language-specific email template that is used. This field includes language and country information. Examples:
  • en_US for English
  • es_US for Spanish
DeploymentZone Yes Yes, if multiple deployment zones are used

Indicates the ID of the deployment zone whose email templates to use when sending review request email messages. The implementation where the templates are configured must be published to the deployment zone before you reference the deployment zone in the interaction feed. If you omit this field, main_site is used. You must specify the ID, not the deployment zone name.

To determine the deployment zone ID to use, select to the right of the deployment zone on the Site Manager page of the configuration.

Note: This field is supported for schema versions 14.6+.
EmailAddress Yes Yes

Specifies the email address of the customer. Must be in a valid format.

Note: You can use encryption to ensure the security of customer email addresses used for notifications and requests. To learn how, refer to Encrypt interaction feed PII.
PhoneNumber Yes No

Specifies the phone number of the customer. Must be in a valid format (E164 ).

Note: You can use encryption to ensure the security of customer phone number used for notifications and requests. To learn how, refer to Encrypt interaction feed PII.
Preference Yes No

Specifies what messaging format the customer prefers: Email or SMS.
UserID No (Hosted Authentication)

Yes (Site Authentication)		 No Specifies the customer's user ID, typically created during an online transaction. This value is encoded into the Bazaarvoice user authentication string (UAS).

The user ID in the interaction-data feed must match the user ID that is passed to Bazaarvoice during the review-submission process (as part of your Ratings & Reviews implementation).

This field can be ommitted from the feed if no user ID was generated during the checkout process (for example, if a customer has placed a purchase order as a guest purchaser).

If the same user ID occurs in the same feed more than once with different email addresses, the user ID will be set to null and a warning is printed to the log file.

This field should be omitted if using Bazaarvoice hosted authentication.
UserName Yes Yes if you want to:
  • auto-populate the nickname field on the submission form
  • address the email recipient by their user name in the review request email message (example, “Hi Vicki”)
 Specifies the user's first name or nickname created by the customer on an online account. This field can be used to personalize the email greeting.

The maximum number of products that will be listed on a review request is five.

Field Best Practice for review requests? Required? Description
ExternalId (product) Yes Yes

Must match the external product ID for the item that is sent to Bazaarvoice in your product catalog. This matching is crucial to associate the review with the appropriate product in your product catalog. For example, do not provide a stock-keeping unit (SKU) in the interaction-data feed rather than the less granular ExternalId in the product catalog.
ImageUrl (product) Yes Yes

If you cannot provide a URL to the image, a customizable "no image available" graphic is displayed.

Product thumbnail will be displayed in the email template. Always provide the full URL including "http://www". If not provided, it will be retrieved from your current product database.

Note: If the URL contains a reserved (special) character, you must URL-encode the character. For example, use &amp for an ampersand, use %20 for a space, or use %5B and %5D for square brackets ([ ]).
Name (product) Yes Yes Will be used in the email template. If not provided, it will be retrieved from your current product database. In XML feeds, it puts names in CDATA sections: <![CDATA[Your_Product_Name]]>

Replace special characters with the HTML entity number equivalent (® = &#174;).
Price Yes No, but recommended for determining the order of products in review requests containing multiple products Used to control the order in which products appear within a given email (for example, list highest value product first). Should be a decimal number with no currency symbols, e.g., "20.99", "40.00"
Field Best practice for review requests? Required? Description
TransactionDate Yes Yes, if using send delay The purchase, shipping, or other interaction date in the XML DateTime format .
Locale (includes language and country information) Yes Yes, if supporting review requests in multiple languages Specifies the locale code and controls the language-specific email template that is used, as shown by the following examples:
  • en_US for English
  • es_US for Spanish
EmailAddress Yes Yes

Email address of customer. Must be in a valid format.

Note: You can use encryption to ensure the security of customer email addresses used for notifications and requests. To learn how, refer to Encrypt interaction feed PII.
PhoneNumber Yes No

Specifies the phone number of the customer. Must be in a valid format (E164 ).

Note: You can use encryption to ensure the security of customer phone number used for notifications and requests. To learn how, refer to Encrypt interaction feed PII.
Preference Yes No

Specifies what the customer opts for sending review requests - Email or SMS.
UserID Yes No Customer's user ID, typically created during an online transaction. This value is encoded into the Bazaarvoice user authentication string (UAS).

The user ID in the interaction-data feed must match the user ID that is passed to Bazaarvoice during the review-submission process (as part of your Ratings & Reviews implementation). This field can be blank on purchase records for which a user ID was not generated during the checkout process, such as a guest purchaser.

If the same user ID occurs in the same feed more than once with different email addresses, the user ID will be set to null and a warning is printed to the log file.

This field should be omitted if using Bazaarvoice hosted authentication.
UserName Yes Not required unless you want to:
  • auto-populate the nick name field on the submission form
  • address the email-recipient by their user name in the review request email message (example, “Hi Vicki”)
 User's first name or nickname created by the customer on an online account. This field can be used to personalize the email greeting.

The maximum number of events that will be listed on a review request is five.

Field Best practice for review requests? Required? Description
ExternalId (product) Yes No, but recommended Must match the external product ID for the item that is sent to Bazaarvoice in your product-catalog data feed.
ImageUrl (product) Yes No, but recommended

Product thumbnail will be displayed in the email template. Always provide the full URL including "http://www". If not provided, it will be retrieved from your current product database.

Note: If the URL contains a reserved (special) character, you must URL-encode the character. For example, use &amp for an ampersand, use %20 for a space, or use %5B and %5D for square brackets ([ ]).
Name (product) Yes No, but recommended Will be used in the email template. If not provided, it will be retrieved from your current product database. In XML feeds, it puts names in CDATA sections: <![CDATA[Your_Product_Name]]>

Replace special characters with the HTML entity number equivalent (® = &#174;).
Price Yes No, but recommended Used to control the order in which products appear within a given email (for example, list highest value product first). Should be a decimal number with no currency symbols, e.g., "20.99", "40.00"
TXT feeds

If you want to provide a text (TXT) feed, be aware of the following limitations and caveats:

  • Email templates by deployment zone are not supported for TXT feeds. Only email templates from the implementation deployed to Main Site can be used.
  • If data is not available for a column in the feed, leave the column blank (keep the tab delimiter).
  • Product information—external ID, product name, product image, and price—can be repeated if an order contains several products (refer to the example below).
  • Transaction date must be formatted as follows: YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.
  • Do not include the currency symbol, such as $, with the product price.

The following schema is the only acceptable format in which Bazaarvoice can accept text (TXT) feeds.

TRANSACTION_TIME<Tab>EMAIL_ADDRESS<Tab>LOCALE<Tab>USER_ID<Tab>USER_NICKNAME<Tab>PRODUCT_EXTERNAL_ID<Tab>PRODUCT_NAME<Tab>PRODUCT_IMAGE_URL<Tab>PRODUCT_PRICE

Example:

2017-08-07 13:28:37  user1@example.com   en_US   1032957 user1   111222  Beyond The Solar System Cards, set of 36    http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/111222.jpg    12.39
2017-08-07 13:29:40 user2@example.com   en_US   0193761 user2   895110  Hydrion Regular pH Strips, Wide Range, pH 1-12  http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/895110.jpg    26.99   854959  Cobalt Chloride, Hexahydrate, Reagent Grade, 100g   http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/854959.jpg    49.95   
2017-08-07 13:30:12 user3@example.com   en_US   0296728 user3   145564  Zebra Fish (Danios), Living, Male, Pack of 12   http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/145564.jpg    24.99   145566  Zebra Fish (Danios), Living, Female, Pack of 12 http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/145566.jpg    24.99
2017-08-07 13:34:11 user4@example.com   en_US   8573928 user4   172032  Drosophila, Living, Vestigial x Sepia Cross http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/172032.jpg    22.99   172020  Drosophila, Living, F1 White x Wild Cross   http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/172020.jpg    19.99
2017-08-07 13:34:14 user5@example.com   en_US   0967289 user5   653571  Coliform Bacteria, 44 tests http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/653571.jpg    16.99   653574  pH, 50 tests    http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/653574.jpg    5.99    653576  Nitrate Wide Range, 50 tests    http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/652568_ese.jpg    8.99    
2017-08-07 13:35:56 user6@example.com   en_US   2085728 user6   972056  Penlight, with 2 AAA Batteries  http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/972056.jpg    6.29
2017-08-07 13:47:56 user7@example.com   en_US   2083975 user7   144088  Praying Mantis Amazing Bugs Kit http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/144088.jpg    11.49
2017-08-07 13:49:36 user8@example.com   en_US   9285729 user8   621280  Anatomy Dissecting Set  http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/621280.jpg    88.49   221521  Young Scientist's Frog Dissection Kit   http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/221521.jpg    48.59
2017-08-07 13:49:38 user9@example.com   en_US   0959783 user9   171142  Onion Mitosis Stain Set http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/171142.jpg    59.95   302432  Onion Mitiosis, squash mount, Feulgen Stain http://www.example.cimages/products/thumb/302432.jpg    59.95

Step 2: Validate the XML feed

We recommend you use the Bazaarvoice Workbench to validate your XML or TXT feed to ensure the code is correct.

Complete the following steps:

  1. From the Bazaarvoice Workbench, select Settings > PIE Feed Testing.
  2. Select Choose file to upload your feed file. Maximum file size is 10 MB.
  3. Select the type of feed you want to test, for example XML PIE Feed.
  4. Select Validate.
    5. Your feed is automatically reviewed. The page will either display a list of errors or let you know that your feed is validated and ready to upload.

Note: If the feed file successfully validates against the schema, you must check that each transaction within the feed is unique. The user ID, transaction date, and email address values must not match with those of another transaction.

Additionally, you must verify the format of transaction dates and email addresses, as follows:

Field Format Example
Transaction date

XML: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.ZZZZZ

TXT: YYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss

 2017-09-01T00:00:00.00000
Email address username@domain user123@example.com

Step 3: Upload the feed file

When you upload an interaction feed to one of the Bazaarvoice SFTP servers, the review request process is triggered and Bazaarvoice starts sending review requests to email addresses that appear in the interaction feed.

When you upload a feed file to test in the staging environment, keep the following in mind:

Email messages are sent to addresses with domains that have been whitelisted for your company only. In general, these domains have domain names that are associated with your company's sites.

Before you begin sending review requests to your customers:

  • We strongly recommend that you test the interaction feed in staging and production using internal email addresses and phone numbers. Refer to Test review requests for detailed information that you need when testing review requests in the staging and production environments.
  • Verify that your Ratings & Reviews implementation is live and uses an active container page.
  • Control when review requests are sent by specifying the review request delay and review request send time (optional). These options are on the Configure Messages page of your Ratings & Reviews configuration settings.

When you are ready to send review requests to your customers, upload your interaction feed file to ppe/inbox directory on the Bazaarvoice SFTP location:

  • If your data is hosted in the US, use the following URLs:
    • Staging server—sftp-stg.bazaarvoice.com
    • Production server—sftp.bazaarvoice.com
  • If your data is hosted in Europe, use the following URLs:
    • Staging server—sftp7-stg.bazaarvoice.com
    • Production server—sftp7.bazaarvoice.com

Be sure to connect to SFTP using port 22. Contact Bazaarvoice Support if you do not know your SFTP credentials or where your data is hosted.

We recommend that you upload interaction feeds at least weekly. Bazaarvoice automatically imports interaction feeds daily at 5:15 AM Central Time (CST: UTC-6 or CDT: UTC-5). Depending on the configured review request delay and review request send time, Bazaarvoice will deliver review requests as early as the morning that you upload the feed.

Send interaction data manually for text message review requests

Complete the following steps to create and upload a feed containing your customers' interaction data.

Step 1: Create a feed file

You'll need to create a transaction data XML file that includes the email addresses and phone numbers of customers who have purchased products and services on your site or at a physical location. When you upload the XML file to a Bazaarvoice server, Bazaarvoice can start sending text message review requests to your customers.:

Follow these guidelines when you create an XML interaction feed:

  • Encrypt the email addresses and phone numbers of customers. Refer to Encrypt customer PII.

  • Ensure that the <Feed> element has the following attribute:

    xmlns="https://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseDataFeed/1.5" encryptionKeyID="ENCRYPTION-KEY-ID-2021-02-01T18:03:12.361Z">
  • Save the feed as an XML file.

Here is a simple example of an XML interaction feed:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Feed xmlns="https://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseDataFeed/1.5" encryptionKeyID="ENCRYPTION-KEY-ID-2021-02-01T18:03:12.361Z>
   <Interaction>
      <TransactionDate>2020-02-17T00:08:00</TransactionDate>
      <AbstractEmail>
      <EmailAddress>user@example.com</EmailAddress>
      <EncryptedEmailAddress>969368244b6c25c0efba8ae70c81e69e9a749c18d885868a2d77137e4e4e5041acf18d6ec318bf66791d82f09852139c1ed5991dcdb2d83a6be472409474dd</EncryptedEmailAddress>
      </AbstractEmail>
      <PhoneNumber>+19082348967</PhoneNumber>
      <EncryptedPhoneNumber>2c3faf1eb4052b1aa220a200b418970c3a5d0db26f4de978b36ad1be7ac2479ea84a5913de07a61f8d723ad315d5d41145956a4409e0d525594b6a649f78f6deca29fb1ba7a5ca42f5c266478b12</EncryptedPhoneNumber>
      <DeploymentZone>sms_pilot_do_not_edit</DeploymentZone>
      <CountryCode>1</CountryCode>
      <Preference>SMS</Preference>
      <UserName>GUEST</UserName>
      <UserID>0457293316</UserID>
      <Locale>en_US</Locale>
      <Products>
         <Product>
            <ExternalId>100111070</ExternalId>
            <Name>Product Name</Name>
            <ImageUrl>https://www.costco.com.au/medias/sys_master/images/h86/he7/137449266774046.jpg</ImageUrl>
            <Price>698</Price>
         </Product>
      </Products>
   </Interaction>
</Feed>
Note: To enable Bazaarvoice to send text message review requests, it is essential that you include the customer phone number and/or encrypted phone number in the interaction feed. If both are included, Bazaarvoice will use the encrypted number. It is also a requirement to provide the customer email address and/or encrypted email address in the interaction feed.

Step 2: Validate the XML feed

We recommend you validate your feed to ensure the code adheres to the Bazaarvoice XML Schema.

Complete the following steps to validate an interaction feed:

  1. Ensure that all of the elements are contained inside the opening and closing Feed tags.
  2. Ensure that individual interaction details are contained inside opening and closing Interaction tags.
  3. Include the encryptionKeyID and its value when you send the RSA encrypted email ID and phone number to Bazaarvoice.
  4. Validate your XML file against the schema (XSD) which you can download through the following URL:

    5. https://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseFeed/14.7

You can also self-validate an XML file against the XSD released by us. To do so, perform the following steps:

  1. Create an XML feed file by removing the feed tag.
  2. Place only one interaction tag (if our system validates one interaction tag, it will also validate other tags).
  3. Open the command line in the folder where the XML file is present.
  4. Run the following command, where example.xml is the name of your .XML file:
    5. xmllint --noout --schema https://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseDataFeed/1.5 example.xml

If successfully validated, you will get the output "example.xml validates". If an error occurs during validation, follow the appropriate steps to create a valid XML feed file.

Step 3: Upload the feed file

When you upload an interaction feed to one of the Bazaarvoice SFTP servers, the review request process is triggered and Bazaarvoice starts sending review requests to phone numbers that appear in the interaction feed.

When you’re ready to send review requests to your customers, upload your interaction feed file to the inbox directory on the Bazaarvoice AWS SFTP location:

  • If your data is hosted in the US, use the following URLs:
    • Staging server—sftp-stg.bazaarvoice.com
  • If your data is hosted elsewhere, use the following URLs:
    • Production server—sftp7.bazaarvoice.com
Note: Bazaarvoice currently does not host any servers in the European region.

Be sure to connect to SFTP using port 22. Contact Bazaarvoice Support if you do not know your SFTP credentials or where your data is hosted.

Note: Each day, you can upload several interaction feeds for text message review requests. However, we recommend that you do not attempt to upload more than four feeds in a single hour.

Send interaction data manually using the transactions API

The transactions API keys allow you to send interaction data manually for review request email messages that contain historical and new data of the ordered products. Use the transaction API keys to create records of single and bulk transactions. Bazaarvoice use this data to schedule review request notifications. When an order is canceled or returned, you can also delete or invalidate the transaction.

Note: To learn more about how to send interaction data using the transactions API, refer to Transactions API in the Bazaarvoice Developer Portal.

Test review requests

Before you use review requests to solicit feedback from your customers, we recommend that you test review requests in your staging and production environments. This section lists the implementation details to keep in mind when testing.

In staging

When you create a feed file to test in the staging environment, keep the following in mind:

  • Email addresses you use to test the process in staging must include the appropriate domain names. The domains in the email addresses must be whitelisted (with the exception of bazaarvoice.com). Do not include real customer email addresses or phone numbers in the feed until the feed has been successfully tested.
  • Specify values in the feed from the staging product catalog, such as ProductPageURL.
  • Make sure transactions have different product IDs, email addresses, phone numbers, and transaction dates. Otherwise, the transactions are considered duplicate and review request is not sent.

When you upload the feed to the staging server, be aware of the following limitations of the staging environment:

  • Bazaarvoice can only process 100 test transactions (for each feed file) at one time.
  • Review request delay is overwritten to zero (0) no matter what is specified in the review request settings.
  • Multiple review requests cannot be sent to the same email address and phone number within a 120-minute window.

In production

When you create and upload a feed file to test in the production environment, keep the following in mind:

  • Include email addresses or phone numbers that are internal to your company only. Also, be sure to provide one or more personal email addresses (from domains such as gmail.com or hotmail.com) to verify that underlying security does not send review requests to spam folder. Finally, do not include real customer email addresses or phone numbers in the feed until the it is successfully tested.
  • Specify values in the feed from the product catalog in production, such as ProductPageURL.
  • Back date transaction times in the feed by as many days as the review request delay has been configured. Or, set the review request delay to 0.
  • Limit the number of transactions in the feed to 100,000 or less.
  • Multiple review requests cannot be sent to the same email address or phone number within a 1440-minute window.
  • Preview any custom email templates that were created to make sure they show the correct images, text, and so on.
  • If possible, limit the amount of times you test review requests in production (ideally only once) in order to keep the analytics as accurate as possible.

After you test your interaction feed and settings in production, make sure these settings are corrected on the Configure Messages page of the configuration:

  • Use product pages for submission
  • Days to wait before sending the first review request
  • Days to wait before sending review request reminders
  • Delay between multiple review requests for the same product (in days)
  • Schedule time to start sending review requests (UTC)

If you reconfigured any of these settings, be sure to redeploy the implementation to production.

Track review request performance

You can track the performance of your review request implementation in the following ways:

  • Review request automated reporting
  • Reports

Automated reporting

Bazaarvoice sets up automated reports as part of your review request implementation, using the values you specify for the parameters listed below. You must provide an email address to instruct Bazaarvoice where to send the report. You can optionally provide a subject line. If you do not provide a custom subject line, Bazaarvoice creates one for you.

Note: If notifications are part of your Ratings & Reviews implementation, metrics on review requests are included in the notifications automated report Bazaarvoice sends you.

Reports can be delivered with the following frequencies:

  • Once only—Can specify a one-time report with a custom date range
  • Daily—Can specify the time of day
  • Weekly (default)—Can specify the day of week
  • Monthly—Can specify to run on the first day of the month or on the first Su/M/T/W/Th/F/Sa of the month
Note: If you want to change from the default weekly report, contact Bazaarvoice Support for instructions.

The report can be configured to include data for the following date ranges:

  • Last 24 hours
  • Last 7 days
  • Last 30 days
  • Custom

The report period defines the manner in which the data is summed within the report. The reporting period can be set to any of the following periods:

  • Day
  • Week
  • Month
  • Year

For example, if a report is configured with a date range of Last 7 days and a report period of Day, it displays a row for each day in the last seven days.

The report can be delivered in one of several formats, broadening the range of options available to the client. Bazaarvoice supports the following file formats:

  • Data file (.csv)
  • Data file UTF-8 (.csv)
  • Data file Shift_JIS (.csv)
  • Compressed CSV (.zip)
  • Excel spreadsheet (.xls)
  • Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx)
  • Adobe (.pdf)

The report includes the following columns:

  • Period—Report period
  • Sends—Number of emails that were sent during the period
  • Deliveries—Number of emails that were sent during the period that did not bounce
  • Delivery rate—Percentage of emails that were sent during the period that did not bounce
  • Total bounces—Number of emails that were sent during the period that bounced
  • Bounce rate—Percentage of emails that were sent during the period that bounced
  • Unique opens—Number of emails that were sent during the period that were opened. This column counts only the first time that the email was opened.
  • Open rate—Percentage of emails that were sent during the period that were opened
  • Cumulative clicks—Total number of emails that were sent during the period that were clicked. This column counts multiple clicks from the same recipient.
  • Unique unsubscribes—Number of unsubscription requests received during the period. This column counts only the first time that a request was received.
  • Unsubscribe rate—Percentage of emails that resulted in unsubscription requests
  • Cumulative unsubscribes—Total number of unsubscription requests received during the period

Manual reports

You view the number of reviews you receive from review requests by using the Reviews reports. To generate a report, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to Workbench.
  2. Under Reports, select Create A New Report.
  3. Under Select Report Template, select the default option, All Reviews Reports,
  4. Customize the report by selecting a date range under Add Filters. Use the Product, People, Content, and Moderation fields to further customize your report.
  5. If you want all possible data to be included by default, do not make any changes under Customize Report Columns. Customize the columns by highlighting the applicable column name in the Selected Data field and either dragging the name to the Available Data field or using the arrows between fields to move the column.
  6. Under Select Run Options, enter an optional report name.
  7. Select Save and Run.
  8. On the following Analyst Reports screen, select Download under the report name. A report in the file format you selected downloads to your computer.

The Campaign ID column in the report indicates the source of a review.

Send multiple review requests for repeat purchases of a single product or service

If you use Ratings & Reviews for services reviews, you might want to send review requests to consumers each time they purchase the same service. For example, an automotive service company could send a customer a review request whenever the customer receives an oil change from one of the company's service providers.

Complete the following steps to enable customers to submit reviews each time they receive the same service.

  1. Under the User Experience section of the Ratings & Reviews configuration, select Display Options.
  2. Select the Ratings & Reviews tab. Scroll down to the Review Submission section of the page.
  3. From the Allow multiple reviews per user dropdown menu, select Yes (best for services).

You can also set a minimum number of days between purchases to send multiple review requests. For example, the automotive service company might want to ensure customers receive review requests no more frequently than 100 days between purchases of the same service. If a customer purchases a second oil change 90 days after the first one, the company does not send a second review request. If the customer purchases the second oil change 120 days after the first, the company sends a second review request.

Complete these steps to set a minimum number of days between review requests:

  1. Go to Collect Reviews in the configuration, and select Configure Messages.
  2. Select the Settings tab and then scroll down to the Review Requests section of the page.
  3. In the Delay between multiple review requests for the same product (in days) field, enter the minimum number of days that must occur between identical purchases to trigger additional review requests. You must enter a number between 0 and 365.

Manage email subscriptions

You can use a subscription feed to subscribe to or unsubscribe consumers from Bazaarvoice notifications. This measure allows you to comply with the US CAN-SPAM Act and Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). The Unsubscribe link is only specific to each email message type. Contact Bazaarvoice Support if you'd like to apply the Unsubscribe link to all message types.

Email recipients who select the Unsubscribe link no longer receive that type of email notification or request. For example, if a consumer selects the Unsubscribe link in a review request email message, review requests are no longer sent to the consumer, though they may still receive a notification from another Ratings & Reviews feature , such as Ask a Product Owner. Consumers cannot resubscribe or opt back in after opting out of a specific type of email notification.

In addition, you can use a subscription feed to subscribe to or unsubscribe consumers from Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews notifications. This provides a way to perform bulk subscriptions or unsubscriptions. Or, you can use the Notifications Subscription API to monitor and manage email subscriptions.

Create a subscription feed

A subscription feed gives you a way to easily communicate opt-in and opt-out email lists to Bazaarvoice, and you do not have to implement the Notifications API to perform these bulk actions. When you subscribe consumers, they will receive notifications from Ratings & Reviews (of all types). Similarly, when you unsubscribe consumers, they will no longer receive notifications of any type.

Note: If personally identifiable information (PII) encryption is a concern, use the encrypted single-email Notifications Subscription API endpoint .

You can subscribe or unsubscribe a list of your consumers from notifications by creating a subscription feed:

  1. Create a feed file. You can create a text (TXT) file or a comma-separated value (CSV) file. In both cases, include one email address in each line in the file. The format of the file is as follows:
    email_address1,
    email_address2,
    email_address3,
    email_address4,
    ...

    You can include up to 100,000 email addresses in a feed file.

  2. Upload the feed file to the staging or production SFTP server, as follows:
    • To subscribe email addresses to Ratings & Reviews notifications, upload the file to the /subscriptions/sub folder on the server.
    • To unsubscribe email addresses, upload the file to the /subscriptions/unsub folder.
    • If your data is hosted in the US, use the following URLs:
      • Staging server—sftp-stg.bazaarvoice.com
      • Production server—sftp.bazaarvoice.com
    • If your data is hosted in Europe, use the following URLs:
      • Staging server—sftp7-stg.bazaarvoice.com
      • Production server—sftp7.bazaarvoice.com

    Be sure to connect to SFTP using port 22. Contact Bazaarvoice Support if you do not know your SFTP credentials or where your data is hosted.

    Upload the feed file to Bazaarvoice by 12 AM Central Time (CST: UTC-6 or CDT: UTC-5), which is when Bazaarvoice automatically begins importing feeds.

Manage email subscriptions with the API

Ratings & Reviews triggers email notifications to end-users. These notifications alert users when a review is published, or a product is purchased. Bazaarvoice allows the end-users to opt out of those notifications, although there will be situations when you need to manage and monitor notifications subscriptions on behalf of end-users. The Notifications Subscription API makes this possible.

Depending on your country's anti-spam regulations, your company might decide to categorize Bazaarvoice email requests as either transactional or marketing messages. This decision affects the way you manage consumer email subscriptions.

Transactional email subscriptions

Transactional messages contain content related to a transaction involving the recipient, such as purchases of products or services. In many countries, you must provide recipients the ability to unsubscribe from transactional messages.

If your company categorizes Bazaarvoice email requests as transactional, all verified purchaser email addresses collected by the BV Pixel or your interaction feed are eligible to receive the requests. You do not need to exclude purchasers who have opted not to receive your marketing email messages. If you want to manage and monitor email subscriptions, use the Notifications Subscription API.

Marketing email subscriptions

Marketing or commercial messages contain content that promotes or advertises products or services. In many countries, these messages are considered spam if recipients have not opted to receive them from a specific company.

If your company categorizes Bazaarvoice email requests as marketing, we send review requests to verified purchasers on opt-in lists you create. The lists should include only purchasers who have opted to receive your marketing email messages. You can add consumer email addresses to your opt-in email lists with the help of Notifications Subscription API.

Note: We do not send review requests to email addresses on the opt-out lists you provide. However, we continue sending other notifications to those email addresses. You can use the Notifications Subscription API to unsubscribe users from the other notifications Bazaarvoice triggers on your behalf.
  1. Create a simplified interaction feed with only a handful of transactions, so you can test the feed. Keep the following in mind:
    • Do not include consumer email addresses and phone numbers in the interaction feed until the feed is successfully tested. The domains in the email addresses must be whitelisted.
    • The feed's filename must start with bv_ppe_tag_feed and end with .xml.
    • Each product ID must match the product ExternalId in the product catalog. If you've multiple products in a transaction, the product with the highest price will be the featured product in the review request.
    • Be sure to use staging values for ProductPageURL in the staging product catalog.
    • Back date transaction times in the feed by as many days as the review request delay has been configured. In staging, the review request delay is set to 0.
    • The value of TransactionDate must be in the XML DateTime format .
    • In staging, Bazaarvoice can only process 10 test transactions at one time.
    • If you publish implementations to multiple deployment zones, be sure to include DeploymentZone in the feed to indicate the implementation's email templates to use when sending review requests. The implementation where the templates are configured must be published to the deployment zone before you reference the deployment zone in the interaction feed.

    Here is an example:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Feed xmlns="http://www.bazaarvoice.com/xs/PRR/PostPurchaseFeed/14.7">
   <Interaction>
      <TransactionDate>2016-08-23T15:09:41.000</TransactionDate>
      <EmailAddress>user@example.com</EmailAddress>
      <Locale>en_GB</Locale>
      <UserName>name</UserName>
      <UserID>715987491</UserID>
      <Products>
         <Product>
            <ExternalId>product902</ExternalId>
            <Name>Product Name</Name>
            <ImageUrl>http://example.cimages/products/image01.jpg</ImageUrl>
            <Price>33.99</Price>
         </Product>
      </Products>
      <DeploymentZone>secondary_site</DeploymentZone>
   </Interaction>
   <Interaction>
      <TransactionDate>2016-08-23T15:11:41.000</TransactionDate>
      <EmailAddress>user2@example.com</EmailAddress>
      <Locale>en_US</Locale>
      <UserName>name2</UserName>
      <UserID>715983395</UserID>
      <Products>
         <Product>
            <ExternalId>product14</ExternalId>
            <Name>Product Name2</Name>
            <ImageUrl>http://example.cimages/products/image02.jpg</ImageUrl>
            <Price>14.49</Price>
         </Product>
         <Product>
            <ExternalId>product42</ExternalId>
            <Name>Product Name3</Name>
            <ImageUrl>http://example.cimages/products/image03.jpg</ImageUrl>
            <Price>234.99</Price>
         </Product>
      </Products>
   </Interaction>
</Feed>
  2. Validate the interaction feed against the feed schema .
  3. Upload the interaction feed to the staging SFTP server in the /ppe/inbox folder. Feeds are processed daily starting at 6:15 AM Central Time (CST: UTC-6 or CDT: UTC-5). It may take up to six hours to send the review requests depending on server load. Review requests cannot be recalled beyond this point.
  4. Check logs in the /ppe/backup folder.
  5. Build a process that updates and delivers a new interaction feed with the most recent transactions every day. Upload that feed to the production server.

Verify the following:

Be aware that test messages may not be sent if

  • You are attempting to send a review request to the same email address using the same product ID within a given date range. Multiple review requests are not sent for the same purchase within 180 days, by default.
  • You did not change the date on the interactions across review requests. The date must be updated for every test.
  • You sent a test review request to non-whitelisted email addresses.