Custom Field Populator for BigCommerce Gets a Major Update

Custom fields are one of those BigCommerce features that can be incredibly useful right up until you have hundreds or thousands of products using them in all kinds of different ways.

Maybe one product uses a field called “Color,” another uses “color,” and somebody else imported a batch using “COLOR.” Maybe you have duplicate fields, empty values, old fields nobody remembers creating, or a spreadsheet import that changed more products than expected.

That’s exactly the kind of problem our Custom Field Populator app was built to solve, and we’ve just rolled out the biggest update to the app since it launched.

The new version includes a redesigned dashboard, a much easier way to edit custom fields directly on products, scheduling, automatic snapshots, improved activity tracking, and a new Premium plan that can actually scan your catalog for messy custom field data and help clean it up.

There’s a lot here, so let’s take a look at what’s new.

Edit Custom Fields Without Going Product by Product

One of the biggest additions for every Custom Field Populator user is the new Product Fields Editor.

Instead of opening individual products in BigCommerce just to update a custom field, you can now browse your catalog inside the app, select a product, and edit its custom fields right there.

For larger jobs, you can select multiple products and make changes in bulk.

The editor also includes advanced filters for things like categories, price ranges, and stock status, which makes it much easier to narrow down exactly which products you want to work with. Once you’ve built a useful filter, you can even turn it into a rule or schedule instead of recreating that same selection every time.

For stores that use custom fields heavily, this alone can eliminate a lot of repetitive catalog work.

Schedule Custom Field Updates Ahead of Time

Custom Field Populator can now run CSV imports automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.

Those imports can come from an uploaded file, a URL, or a Google Sheet, which opens up quite a few possibilities for stores that routinely update product information from another system or spreadsheet.

Scheduling also works for one-time field changes.

For example, let’s say you use a custom field to display a special message or badge during a promotion. You can schedule that update to happen when the sale begins and set a revert time so the app automatically restores the previous values when the promotion ends.

That means fewer reminders, fewer late-night catalog changes, and less chance of discovering three days later that your “Labor Day Sale” message is still showing.

Snapshots Give You an Undo Button

Any time you’re making changes across a large catalog, having a way back is important.

The new version automatically creates a Snapshot of your custom fields before imports, bulk edits, and scheduled updates.

If something doesn’t look right afterward, you can restore the previous values with a click instead of trying to reconstruct what changed from an old spreadsheet or backup.

Snapshots are included for all users, with Premium expanding how many you can keep and how long they’re retained.

See What’s Happening While It Happens

We’ve also made it much easier to keep track of activity inside the app.

A new Tasks tray shows live progress while imports and exports are running, so you’re not left wondering whether a large job is still processing.

The new Activity page keeps a history of changes as well, including what happened, when it happened, and who made the change.

That becomes especially useful when more than one person is managing a catalog and somebody asks the inevitable question: “Who changed this?”

A Redesigned Dashboard

The dashboard has been rebuilt to put more useful information front and center.

There’s now a searchable custom field directory that makes it easier to see what fields exist across your store, and dates and times are displayed using your store’s timezone.

We’ve also made dozens of smaller usability improvements throughout the app, but the biggest change to the dashboard is especially important for stores considering the new Premium plan.

It can now show you the custom field issues already hiding in your catalog.

Introducing Custom Field Populator Premium

The new Custom Field Populator Premium plan is aimed at stores with larger catalogs, more complicated custom field setups, or simply years of accumulated field data that could use some attention.

Its most requested feature is Custom Field Clean Up.

Clean Up scans your catalog for common problems such as duplicate custom fields, inconsistent capitalization like “Color” versus “color,” repeated fields, and fields with empty values.

Instead of having to discover those problems manually, the app identifies them for you and gives you tools to correct them.

You can also create cleanup rules so the same issues don’t keep reappearing as new products are imported or created.

That last part is important because catalog cleanup is usually not a one-time job. If several people, apps, imports, or outside systems are contributing product data, inconsistencies have a habit of creeping back in.

Find & Replace Across Your Catalog

Premium also includes Find & Replace, which lets you change custom field values across the catalog in one operation.

If a value is outdated, misspelled, renamed, or simply needs to be standardized, you no longer have to export the catalog, edit a spreadsheet, and import everything again just to make that one change.

For stores with hundreds or thousands of products, that can turn a potentially tedious cleanup project into a much simpler task.

Weekly Custom Field Health Reports

Premium can also keep an eye on things after you’ve cleaned them up.

The Weekly Health Report emails you a summary of new issues discovered in the store, along with the details you need to review them.

That gives you a chance to catch problems while they’re still small instead of discovering six months later that a new import process has been creating another variation of the same field on hundreds of products.

Higher Limits for Bigger Catalogs

Premium also increases several of the limits around automation and backups.

Premium stores can have up to 50 active schedules, 50 Snapshots, and 30 days of Snapshot history. Basic users receive 7 days of Snapshot history.

If you’re using Custom Field Populator for occasional updates, the existing plan may still be everything you need. If custom fields are a major part of how your catalog is managed, the expanded limits give you much more room to automate that work.

Your Current Plan Isn’t Changing

If you’re already using Custom Field Populator, your existing plan and price are not changing.

The new Product Fields Editor, scheduling tools, Snapshots, Tasks tray, Activity page, redesigned dashboard, and other improvements are already part of your current plan.

Premium simply adds the advanced cleanup, monitoring, Find & Replace, and higher limits on top.

You can open Custom Field Populator from your BigCommerce control panel now to start using the new features. If you want to see what Premium could clean up in your own catalog, the dashboard will show you actual findings from your store, and you can compare plans under Billing → Change Plan.

If you’ve ever looked at your custom fields and wondered where half of them came from, this update was made for you.

Not using Custom Field Populator? Now is the time to take control of your custom fields!  Install the app today and take advantage of a 3-day free trial!