Partners participating in the offers integration must complete the account setup step before they begin. The implementation, testing, and launch of the offers integration will be detailed in this guide. Read through this overview and offers policies before going through the integration steps.
Offers
The offers integration allows you to relay structured information about merchant promotions and discounts applied to specific services at specific times. Offers are made up of the actual offer (percent-off, dollar-off, etc), validity windows (specific times, days of the week, etc), and applicable uses (the offer can only be used on certain services).
Examples of offers:
- Half-off appetizers on Wednesdays and Thursdays in December from 12pm to 5pm
- Buy one get one dessert free for Mother’s Day dinner from 6pm to 10pm
- $5 off a brunch entree every Sunday from 10am to 2pm
In order for an offer to be included in the integration, it needs to fit within the technical data model as well as meet our eligibility requirements. Please make sure to review our offers policies to ensure your integration is in compliance and for instructions on what to do with offers that do not fit the technical requirements.
Offers implementation
The offers integration consists of three feeds that will be uploaded daily:
All three feeds must be uploaded daily and contain all data (not just new or changed data). Any previously uploaded data that is not included in the latest feed upload will be deleted.
The
Offers feed will be uploaded to the
Generic feed dropbox. Follow the
How to use the Generic feed dropbox tutorial for instructions and use
the name set to promote.offer in your descriptor file.
End-to-end booking with offers
Offers can be used in the Actions Center end-to-end booking integration. If you are also an Actions Center Reservations End-to-End partner, you will need to also complete the Reservations End-to-End integration and integrate the offers into your booking server. If you are not an Actions Center Reservations End-to-End partner, this does not apply to your integration.
Development & launch process
Throughout your integration, the Partner Portal will be able to assist you with information and feedback based on your development. The development process will follow this flow:
- The integration will be first developed in the Sandbox environment. You should be using an export of production (or even production data directly) in the Google Sandbox environment. This helps ensure that your development catches all edge cases and allows Google to evaluate data quality and better assist you based on your data model.
- Once you are uploading complete and daily Merchant, Services, and Deals feed consistently in the Google Sandbox environment the Google team will evaluate your feeds. Once the Google team provides approval, you can push your code to production and begin sending production data to the Google Production environment.
- After you have fully tested the Production integration the Google team will test as well. Once all testing is complete, then your integration will launch.