Algolia’s Collections feature is designed for customers who do not have an existing way to build curated pages or merchandising-driven experiences. It is designed to offer a simple, native option for assembling product groups directly in Algolia.
BigCommerce
The Algolia Collections feature is not compatible with the BigCommerce connector as whenever the BigCommerce connector performs a full reindexing, it indexes a pre-defined product schema which does not include the _collections attribute used by Algolia Collections feature, and result in any Collections that are present on the index to change their status to "Pending".
We recommend making use of BigCommerce's own out of the box collections feature, as described in our documentation here: https://www.algolia.com/doc/integration/bigcommerce/search-settings/instantsearch#instantsearch-categories
Shopify
Shopify is compatible with Algolia Collections.
It is important to note that there is also a Shopify capability called Collections, which is separate from the Algolia Collections feature. Using Shopify's native Collections feature is a recommended approach.
Shopify Collections are not compatible with Algolia Collections, but Algolia Collections can be used in Shopify.
There is one caveat to the functionality of Algolia Collections in Shopify; as Algolia Collections adds an attribute called _collections, any changes initiated from Shopify that would remove this attribute would break the Algolia Collections feature. This is user configurable, and if changed, could result in the removal of the _collections attribute. This setting can be found in your shopify admin dashboard > Algolia AI Search & Discovery > Indexing > Products > Real-time updates with Shopify webhooks (recommended).
Magento
With the release of Magento 3.19.0, the Ingestion Module is now available for configuring Magento to function with Data Transformations and Collections. Documentation is available here:
- https://www.algolia.com/doc/integration/magento-2/how-it-works/ingestion
- https://github.com/algolia/algoliasearch-ingestion-magento-2/blob/main/README.md
Prior to 3.19:
The Algolia Collections feature is not compatible with our Magento integration versions 3.18 and below.
You can find more information on this and potential issues that you can face here:
- https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/solutions/ecommerce/browse/tutorials/collections/#ensure-collections-remain-up-to-date
- https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/solutions/ecommerce/browse/tutorials/collections#fix-the-%E2%80%9D-_collections-isn%E2%80%99t-a-facet%E2%80%9D-error
- https://support.algolia.com/hc/en-us/articles/36998866887825-Why-are-my-Collections-status-changing-from-Synchronised-to-Pending
A recommended alternative would be to use the Landing Page Builder tool which you can access directly from your Magento 2 back office, by navigating to Stores > Algolia Search > Merchandising > Landing Page Builder through the main menu.
Salesforce B2C Commerce
Salesforce B2C Commerce is compatible with Algolia Collections, as long as the cartridge is set to index through the Ingestion API. By default the cartridge uses the Search API, and records sent that way do not carry the _collections attribute, which causes any Collections on the index to change their status to "Pending". You can change this in the Algolia Business Manager module, by setting Indexing API to Ingestion API. This requires cartridge version 26.2.0 or later.
Each product index needs one Ingestion task. Creating a Collection on an index provisions that task automatically, so there is no need to set up a Push to Algolia connector as well. It is important to note that the cartridge creates a separate index for each locale, so every locale index needs its own task and its own Collections.
A full reindex does not break Collections, as the cartridge applies the production index's transformation to the temporary index it builds before promoting it.
Cartridge version 26.6.0 and later also add a Collections refinement and a collection listing page to the SFRA storefront. Earlier versions index the _collections attribute correctly but do not display anything, so the storefront would need to be updated. SiteGenesis storefronts are not covered.
Documentation is available here: