Introduction
Shopify has updated how collections work behind the scenes. A single collection can now combine several kinds of membership at once: rules, hand-picked products, other collections, and even individual variants. For more background on this change, see our blog post on Shopify collection sources.
To match this, Altera now offers a single unified Collections data type for importing and exporting collections. It covers everything a collection can do and will eventually replace the separate Smart collections and Manual collections options.
What changed
Previously you exported collections as either Smart collections (products added automatically by rules) or Manual collections (products added by hand). Those were two separate options on the export screen.
There is now a third option: Collections. A single Collections export includes every collection on your store, whether it uses rules, hand-picked products, or both, and it captures the newer Shopify features that the older formats cannot: excluded products, membership pulled in from other collections, and rules that target individual variants.
The Smart collections and Manual collections options are still available for now, but they cannot represent the newer collection features, so Collections is the recommended way to export collections going forward.
Do my existing files still work?
Yes. The Smart collections and Manual collections formats are still fully supported for importing. You can:
Upload an existing Smart or Manual collection spreadsheet and import it as before.
Keep using
smart_collectionsandmanual_collectionsin the Altera CLI and API.
Nothing you have already built stops working. Over time, Collections will become the single export option, but the existing formats will always be recognized on import.
Exporting only rule-based or hand-picked collections
If you want the equivalent of an old Smart or Manual export, use the Type filter on the Collections export and choose Smart collections (rule-based) or Manual collections (hand-picked). This narrows the export to just those collections while still using the unified format. Choosing Mixed (new-style) does the opposite: it exports only the collections that use the newer features and can't be represented as a plain Smart or Manual collection.
What the format looks like
The Collections sheet adds a few columns so one collection can describe all the parts of its membership:
Source groups the rows that belong to one part of the collection, and Source Target says whether that part is rules (Products or Variants), a set of Sub Collections, or a Shared source.
Source Command lets you update or delete one source without touching the collection's other sources.
Rule: Mode marks each rule row as Include or Exclude.
Rule: Include Descendants controls whether a category rule also matches its subcategories.
Collection Type shows on export whether a collection maps to the old Smart or Manual type, or is Mixed (uses newer features).
Rules and hand-picked products use the same Rule: and Product: columns you already know from Smart and Manual collections, so most of the sheet will look familiar.
Good to know
To export a collection's full definition, include both the Sources and Products field groups. Rules live in Sources, and any hand-picked products live in Products, so you need both to capture everything.
Sub-collections can only be nested one level deep. A collection that pulls its products from other collections cannot itself be used as a sub-collection. This is a Shopify limitation.
A collection cannot reference itself as a sub-collection.