Connecting your store to Findalo: the six places people get stuck

On 9 September, a merchant signed up, paid, downloaded the module and set about connecting their store. Twenty minutes later they had cancelled. They didn't give up: they tried four times. The problem is that the route they kept trying could not work, and nobody at Findalo found out until the cancellation was already done.

We fixed it the same day. This post is what we learned, turned into the guide we wish they'd had in front of them: the six places where people get stuck connecting their store, with the way out of each one.

It works whether you're starting now or you've been fighting with it for half an hour.

1. The connect button and the manual connection

There are two ways to pair your store with your account.

The automatic one is the "Connect with Findalo" button in the module: it takes you to the dashboard, you pick the store, and you come back with everything filled in. When it works, it's ten seconds.

The manual one is copying two values from the dashboard into the module, and it always works. Both values are in the dashboard, under Integration:

• Search engine ID.
• Sync token — revealed with the eye icon and copied with the button.

In the module: "Connection not working? Connect manually" → paste both → save.

If the automatic button sends you round in circles, don't insist: use the manual one. That's what would have saved that merchant twenty minutes. And no, these aren't two grades of connection: once paired, the store works exactly the same either way.

2. Regenerating the token locks the module out

This is the quietest sticking point of all, and the easiest one to cause when something isn't working and you start pressing buttons.

The dashboard has an option to regenerate the sync token. The moment you press it, the previous token stops being valid. If your store's module still has the old one, syncing stops and the module starts replying that it has no token configured.

Nothing is broken: there are two halves of a key that no longer match.

The way out: if you regenerate the token, copy the new one into the module immediately. And if you've lost track of which one you have, regenerate once more and paste that — then they're definitely the same.

3. If you signed up with Google, sign in with Google

It sounds obvious and it isn't. If you created the account with Google, you don't have a password. When the dashboard asks for a username and password, there's no correct combination you could type, and the natural move is to end up in "forgot my password" inventing one.

It works, but it's an absurd detour. The dashboard's sign-in screen has a Google button: use it.

We mention it because that detour was exactly the second step of the 9 September case.

4. Letting search read your catalogue

With the module installed, this usually works without touching anything: it's your store that pushes the catalogue to Findalo when it detects changes, not us going in to fetch it.

Where it may need a hand is if your store has an access wall — catalogue for registered customers only, store in maintenance, a protection layer in front — that also intercepts the module's routes. Then they have to be let through. It's a couple of lines, and it shows up on the first sync, not three weeks later.

The same goes for aggressive bot protection: if your provider blocks anything that doesn't look like a browser, it may be blocking your own store.

5. Each store and each language aren't the same as each search engine

Here people get stuck on an expectation, not a fault.

A Findalo search engine is a configuration: its catalogue, its synonyms, its rules and its design. If you run multi-store, you'll normally want one search engine per store, because each sells different things to different people. Languages, on the other hand, live inside the same search engine: they're indexed together and the widget serves whichever applies.

Plans come with one search engine; more can be added for €12 a month each. If you have three stores and expected all three to fit in the base plan, better to know before installing than after.

6. The first sync: what to look at and what not

Connected isn't the same as working. After saving the connection:

• Run "Sync now" from the module and wait. A small catalogue takes seconds; a big one, minutes.
• Check the product count in the dashboard. It's the only confirmation that counts. If it says zero, the connection is made but the catalogue hasn't arrived.
• Give the images and links a couple of minutes. It's normal for products to appear before their photos: nothing is broken, it's still being assembled.
• Don't reindex in a loop. If the first sync failed, the second will fail the same way; what to look at is the error message, which is now readable and says what to do.

What we changed afterwards

Because telling the problem and not the fix would be telling half of it.

• The connect button works for customers. There used to be a path where a signed-in customer ended up kicked back to the login screen and lost the thread of the connection. That was the underlying fault, and it was deterministic: not bad luck.
• You can sign in with Google. Before, you had to invent a password the long way round.
• A shortcut that no longer worked was removed. The dashboard offered a code to copy that the module had stopped accepting months earlier. It's gone.
• Sync errors are readable. Before, you got the raw error; now it says what happened and what to do.
• And we find out. An internal alert now fires the first time a paying customer's sync fails. That day there were nine failed attempts and a cancellation with nothing sounding at all.

If you're stuck anyway

Write to hola@findalo.io and tell us which step you're on. Two things that help a lot and that you can send without worry: your store URL and the search engine ID.

What you must never email us is the sync token. If we need it, we'll look it up from the inside.

And if you'd rather not fight with it: say so and we'll connect it for you. We don't charge for that.