Adding products

Your product portfolio is the foundation of what you share with customers. This guide covers how to add products to LinkXG, whether one at a time or in bulk.

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Two ways to add products

Manual entry is best when you are adding a small number of products or want fine control over each record. You fill in a form with product details, save as a draft, and publish when ready. Bulk upload is best when you have many products to add at once. You upload a CSV or Excel file, map your columns to LinkXG fields, review the results, and accept products into your portfolio. Both methods create the same product records. Choose whichever suits your workflow.

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Manual entry

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Start a new product

Go to Products and select Add product.

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Required fields

Every product needs at minimum: Everything else is optional and can be added later.

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The product editor

The editor uses a two-panel layout. The left panel (wider) shows the product form. The right panel shows completeness metrics and guidance. Product attributes are organised into collapsible families:

• Core information — Name, SKU, category, description
• Specifications — Technical attributes relevant to your product type
• Certifications — Compliance and quality certifications
• Origin — Manufacturing location and sourcing information
• Composition — Materials and inputs (see below)

Expand a family to see and edit its attributes. Collapse families you are not working on to reduce visual clutter.

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Adding attribute values

For each attribute, you can:

• Enter the value directly
• Select a unit where applicable (e.g., kg, mm, volts)
• Upload evidence (PDF or image) to support the value
• Add a source reference if the value comes from another system

Evidence and source references improve your data quality score and build confidence with customers.

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Draft and publish

New products start as drafts. You can save your work at any time and return later. When you are ready for customers to see the product, select Publish. Published products become visible to customers according to your share policies. You can continue editing a published product. Each significant edit creates a new version, preserving the history of what was shared and when.

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Adding inputs (materials)

If you want to enable traceability for this product, you can define what goes into it. In the Composition section, select Add input. For each input, specify:

• The input product (search your own portfolio or shared products from your suppliers)
• Quantity and unit
• Percentage by weight (optional)
• Whether this input is critical to the product

Inputs create the links that enable your customers to trace the supply chain.

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Bulk upload

Bulk upload is a five-stage process: Upload → Configure → Map → Review → Accept.

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Stage 1: Upload

Go to Products and select Upload products. Drag and drop your file or browse to select it. Supported formats: File limits: Maximum 50MB, maximum 10,000 rows.

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Stage 2: Configure

Confirm basic settings:

• Which row contains your column headers (usually row 1)
• Whether to skip any header rows
• The product category to apply to all products in this upload (or map from a column)

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Stage 3: Map columns

This is where you tell LinkXG how your spreadsheet columns correspond to product fields. The platform uses AI to suggest mappings based on your column names. Each suggestion shows a confidence score. You can:

• Accept a suggestion if it looks correct
• Change a mapping by selecting a different target field
• Skip a column if you do not want to import it
• Create attribute for columns that do not match existing fields

Mappings work bidirectionally. You can start from your source column and pick a target field, or start from a target field and pick which source column provides its value.

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Stage 4: Review

The platform validates every row against the schema. You will see:

• Errors (red) — Problems that must be fixed before importing. Common errors include duplicate SKUs, missing required fields, or invalid data types.
• Warnings (amber) — Potential issues that will not block import but may need attention.

You can filter to see only rows with errors, only rows with warnings, or all rows. For errors, you can either fix your source file and re-upload, or edit values directly in the review screen.

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Stage 5: Accept

Once validation passes, you choose which products to accept into your portfolio. By default, all valid products are selected. You can deselect individual products if needed. Select Accept products to complete the import. Products are added to your portfolio as drafts. You can review and publish them individually, or publish in bulk.

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After import

Your import job is retained for 7 days. During this time you can:

• Review what was imported
• See any validation issues that were overridden
• Re-download your original file

After 7 days, the job record is deleted but your products remain.

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Updating existing products

Currently, bulk upload creates new products only. If you upload a file containing a SKU that already exists, it will be flagged as a duplicate error. To update existing products, use the manual editor. Select the product from your portfolio, make your changes, and publish the new version. Bulk update functionality is planned for a future release.

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Data quality

LinkXG calculates a completeness score for each product based on:

• How many relevant attributes have values
• Whether values have supporting evidence
• Whether units and formats are valid

A higher completeness score means customers can rely more on your data. The product editor shows your current score and suggests which attributes to add next for the biggest improvement.

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Common questions

What happens if I upload a file with encoding issues? The platform attempts to detect encoding automatically. If you see garbled characters, re-save your file as UTF-8 and try again. Can I import products from my ERP system? Yes. If you have an ERP integration configured, you can sync products directly. See ERP integration for setup instructions. Alternatively, export from your ERP to CSV and use bulk upload. Do I have to add inputs for every product? No. Inputs are optional. Add them when you want to enable traceability for a product. Products without inputs still work fine for basic data sharing. Can I delete a product? You can archive products to remove them from your active portfolio. Archived products are hidden from customers but retained for audit purposes. Permanent deletion is not available in the current release.

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Next steps