Engage SDK Shopping: Third-party technical integration instructions

Google is building an on-device surface that organizes users' apps by verticals and enables a new immersive experience for personalized app content consumption and discovery. This fullscreen experience provides developer partners with an opportunity to showcase their best rich content in a dedicated channel outside of their app.

This guide contains instructions for developer partners to integrate their shopping content, using the Engage SDK to populate both this new surface area and existing Google surfaces like Entertainment Space.

Integration detail

Terminology

This integration includes the following three cluster types: Recommendation, Featured, and Shopping Cart.

• Recommendation clusters show personalized shopping suggestions from an individual developer partner. These recommendations can be personalized to the user or generalized (for example, trending items). Use these to surface products, events, sales, promos, subscriptions, and so on as you see fit.

  Your recommendations take the following structure:

  • Recommendation Cluster: A UI view that contains a group of recommendations from the same developer partner.

  • ShoppingEntity: An object representing a single item in a cluster.

• The Featured cluster showcases the chosen hero ShoppingEntity from many developer partners in one UI grouping. There will be a single Featured cluster, which will be surfaced near the top of the UI, with a priority placement above all Recommendation clusters. Each developer partner will be allowed to broadcast a single ShoppingEntity in the Featured cluster.

• The Shopping Cart cluster shows a sneak peek of shopping carts from many developer partners in one UI grouping, nudging users to complete their outstanding carts. There will be a single Shopping Cart cluster, which will be surfaced near the top of the UI, with a priority placement above all Recommendation clusters. Each developer partner will be allowed to broadcast a single ShoppingCart in the Shopping Cart cluster.

  Your Shopping Cart takes the following structure:

  • Shopping Cart Cluster: A UI view that contains a group of shopping cart previews from many developer partners.

  • ShoppingCart: An object representing the shopping cart preview for a single developer partner, to be displayed in the Shopping Cart cluster. The ShoppingCart must show the total count of items in the cart and may also include images for some items in the user's cart.

Pre-work

Minimum API level: 19

Add the com.google.android.play:engage library to your app:

dependencies {
    // Make sure you also include that repository in your project's build.gradle file.
    implementation 'com.google.android.play:engage:1.5.0-alpha'
}

To make the Engage SDK function for devices with Android 11 and above, declare the following in the manifest file:

<queries>
   <package android:name="com.android.vending" />
</queries>

For more information, see Package visibility in Android 11.

Summary

The design is based on an implementation of a bound service.

The data a client can publish is subject to the following limits for different cluster types:

Cluster type	Cluster limits	Maximum entity limits in a cluster
Recommendation Cluster(s)	At most 5	At most 25 ShoppingEntity
Featured Cluster	At most 1	At most 1 ShoppingEntity
Shopping Cart Cluster	At most 1	At most 1 ShoppingCart

Step 1: Provide entity data

The SDK has defined different entities to represent each item type. We support the following entities for the Shopping category:

1. ShoppingEntity
2. ShoppingCart

The charts below outline available attributes and requirements for each type.

ShoppingEntity

The ShoppingEntity object represents a product, promotion, deal, subscription, or event that developer partners wish to publish.

ShoppingEntity attribute requirements

Attribute	Requirement	Description	Format
Poster images	Required	At least one image must be provided.	See Image Specifications for guidance.
Action Uri	Required	The deep link to the page in the app displaying details about the entity.	Uri
Title	Optional	The name of the entity.	Free text Recommended text size: under 90 chars (Text that is too long will show ellipses)
Price - current	Conditionally required	The current price of the entity. Must be provided if strikethrough price is provided.	Free text
Price - strikethrough	Optional	The original price of the entity, which will be struck-through in the UI.	Free text
Callout	Optional	Callout to feature a promo, event, or update for the entity, if available.	Free text Recommended text size: under 45 chars (Text that is too long will show ellipses)
Callout fine print	Optional	Fine print text for the callout.	Free text Recommended text size: under 45 chars (Text that is too long will show ellipses)
Note: All ratings will be displayed using our standard star rating system.
Rating - max value	Conditionally required	The maximum value of the rating scale. Must be provided if current value of rating is also provided.	Number >= 0.0
Rating - current value	Conditionally required	The current value of the entity's rating. Must be provided if maximum value of rating is also provided.	Number >= 0.0
Rating - count	Optional	The count of ratings for the entity.	Integer >= 0

ShoppingCart

Attribute	Requirement	Description	Format
Action Uri	Required	The deep link to the shopping cart in the partner’s app.	Uri
Number of items	Required	The number of items (not just number of products) in the shopping cart. For example: If there are 3 identical shirts and 1 hat in the cart, this number should be 4.	Integer >= 1
Title	Optional	The title of the cart (for example, Your Shopping Bag). If no title is provided by the developer, Your cart is the default.	Free text Recommended text size: under 25 chars (Text that is too long will show ellipses)
Cart images	Optional	Images of each product in the cart. Up to 10 images can be provided in order of priority; the actual number of images displayed depends on the device form factor.	See Image Specifications for guidance.

Image specifications

Required specifications for image assets are listed below:

Aspect ratio	Minimum pixels	Recommended pixels
Square (1x1) Preferred	300x300	1200x1200
Landscape (1.91x1)	600x314	1200x628
Portrait (4x5)	480x600	960x1200

File formats

PNG, JPG

Maximum file size

5120 KB

Additional recommendations

• Image safe area: Put your important content in the center 80% of the image.
• Use a transparent background so that the image can be properly displayed in Dark and Light theme settings.

Step 2: Provide Cluster data

It’s recommended to have the content publish job executed in the background (for example, using WorkManager) and scheduled on a regular basis or on an event basis (for example, every time the user opens the app or when the user just added something to their cart).

There are five APIs to publish clusters in the client:

• isServiceAvailable
• publishRecommendationClusters
• publishFeaturedCluster
• publishShoppingCart
• deleteClusters

API #1: isServiceAvailable

This API is used to check if the service is available for integration and whether the content can be presented on the device.

Task<Boolean> isAvailableTask = client.isServiceAvailable();

isAvailableTask.addOnCompleteListener(task - > {
    if (resultTask.isSuccessful()) {
        // Handle success
    }
});

Note: We highly recommend keeping a periodic job running to check if the service becomes available at a later point in time. The availability of the service may change with Android version upgrades, app upgrades, installs, and uninstalls. By ensuring periodic job checks at a certain time interval, data can be published once the service becomes available.

API #2: publishRecommendationClusters

This API is used to publish a list of RecommendationCluster objects.

A RecommendationCluster object can have the following attributes:

Attribute	Requirement	Description
List of ShoppingEntity	Required	A list of ShoppingEntity objects that make up the recommendations for this Recommendation Cluster.
Title	Required	The title for the Recommendation Cluster. Recommended text size: under 25 chars (Text that is too long will show ellipses)
Action Uri	Optional	The deep link to the page in the partner app where users can see the complete list of recommendations.

Task<Void> task = client.publishRecommendationClusters(
           new PublishRecommendationClustersRequest.Builder()
               .addRecommendationCluster(
                   new RecommendationCluster.Builder()
                       .addEntity(entity1)
                       .addEntity(entity2)
                       .setTitle("Black Friday Deals")
                       .build())
               .build());

When the service receives the request, the following actions take place within one transaction:

• All existing Recommendation Cluster data is removed.
• Data from the request is parsed and stored in new Recommendation Clusters.

In case of an error, the entire request is rejected and the existing state is maintained.

API #3: publishFeaturedCluster

This API is used to publish a FeaturedCluster object.

Task<Void> task = client.publishFeaturedCluster(
           new PublishFeaturedClusterRequest.Builder()
               .setFeaturedCluster(
                   new FeaturedCluster.Builder()
                       .addEntity(entity1)
                       .addEntity(entity2)
                       .build())
               .build());

When the service receives the request, the following actions take place within one transaction:

• Existing FeaturedCluster data from the developer partner is removed.
• Data from the request is parsed and stored in the updated Featured Cluster.

In case of an error, the entire request is rejected and the existing state is maintained.

API #4: publishShoppingCart

This API is used to publish a ShoppingCartCluster object.

Task<Void> task = client.publishShoppingCart(
           new PublishShoppingCartRequest.Builder()
               .setShoppingCart(
                   new ShoppingCart.Builder()
                       ...
                       .build())
               .build());

When the service receives the request, the following actions take place within one transaction:

• Existing ShoppingCart data from the developer partner is removed.
• Data from the request is parsed and stored in the updated Shopping Cart Cluster.

In case of an error, the entire request is rejected and the existing state is maintained.

API #5: deleteClusters

This API is used to delete the content of a given cluster type.

Task<Void> task =
     client.deleteClusters(
            new DeleteClustersRequest.Builder()
                .addClusterType(ClusterType.TYPE_FEATURED)
                .addClusterType(ClusterType.TYPE_RECOMMENDATION)
                ...
                .build());

When the service receives the request, it removes the existing data from all clusters matching the specified cluster types. Clients can choose to pass one or many cluster types. In case of an error, the entire request is rejected and the existing state is maintained.

Error handling

It is highly recommended to listen to the task result from the publish APIs such that a follow-up action can be taken to recover and resubmit an successful task.

client.publishRecommendationClusters(
              new PublishRecommendationClustersRequest.Builder()
                  .addRecommendationCluster(...)
                  .build())
          .addOnCompleteListener(
              task -> {
                if (task.isSuccessful()) {
                  // do something
                } else {
                  Exception exception = task.getException();
                  if (exception instanceof AppEngageException) {
                    @AppEngageErrorCode
                    int errorCode = ((AppEngageException) exception).getErrorCode();
                    if (errorCode == AppEngageErrorCode.SERVICE_NOT_FOUND) {
                      // do something
                    }
                  }
                }
              });

The error is returned as an AppEngageException with the cause included as an error code.

Error code	Note
SERVICE_NOT_FOUND	The service is not available on the given device.
SERVICE_NOT_AVAILABLE	The service is available on the given device, but it is not available at the time of the call (for example, it is explicitly disabled).
SERVICE_CALL_EXECUTION_FAILURE	The task execution failed due to threading issues. In this case, it can be retried.
SERVICE_CALL_PERMISSION_DENIED	The caller is not allowed to make the service call.
SERVICE_CALL_INVALID_ARGUMENT	The request contains invalid data (for example, more than the allowed number of clusters).
SERVICE_CALL_INTERNAL	There is an error on the service side.
SERVICE_CALL_RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED	The service call is made too frequently.

Step 3: Handle broadcast intents

In addition to making publish content API calls through a job, it is also required to set up a BroadcastReceiver to receive the request for a content publish.

The goal of broadcast intents is mainly for app reactivation and forcing data sync. Broadcast intents are not designed to be sent very frequently. It is only triggered when the Engage Service determines the content might be stale (for example, a week old). That way, there is more confidence that the user can have a fresh content experience, even if the application has not been executed for a long period of time.

The BroadcastReceiver must be set up in the following two ways:

• Dynamically register an instance of the BroadcastReceiver class using Context.registerReceiver(). This enables communication from applications that are still live in memory.

class AppEngageBroadcastReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {
// Trigger recommendation cluster publish when PUBLISH_RECOMMENDATION broadcast
// is received

// Trigger featured cluster publish when PUBLISH_FEATURED broadcast is received

// Trigger shopping cart cluster publish when PUBLISH_SHOPPING_CART broadcast is
// received
}

public static void registerBroadcastReceivers(Context context) {

context = context.getApplicationContext();

// Register Recommendation Cluster Publish Intent
context.registerReceiver(new AppEngageBroadcastReceiver(),
new IntentFilter(com.google.android.play.engage.service.Intents.ACTION_PUBLISH_RECOMMENDATION));

// Register Featured Cluster Publish Intent
context.registerReceiver(new AppEngageBroadcastReceiver(),
new IntentFilter(com.google.android.play.engage.service.Intents.ACTION_PUBLISH_FEATURED));

// Register Shopping Cart Cluster Publish Intent
context.registerReceiver(new AppEngageBroadcastReceiver(),
new IntentFilter(com.google.android.play.engage.shopping.service.Intents.ACTION_PUBLISH_SHOPPING_CART));

}

• Statically declare an implementation with the <receiver> tag in your AndroidManifest.xml file. This allows the application to receive broadcast intents when it is not running, and also allows the application to publish the content.

<application>
   <receiver
      android:name=".AppEngageBroadcastReceiver"
      android:exported="true"
      android:enabled="true">
      <intent-filter>
         <action android:name="com.google.android.play.engage.action.PUBLISH_RECOMMENDATION" />
      </intent-filter>
      <intent-filter>
         <action android:name="com.google.android.play.engage.action.PUBLISH_FEATURED" />
      </intent-filter>
      <intent-filter>
         <action android:name="com.google.android.play.engage.action.shopping.PUBLISH_SHOPPING_CART" />
      </intent-filter>
   </receiver>
</application>

The following intents will be sent by the service:

• com.google.android.play.engage.action.PUBLISH_RECOMMENDATION It is recommended to start a publishRecommendationClusters call when this intent is received.
• com.google.android.play.engage.action.PUBLISH_FEATURED It is recommended to start a publishFeaturedCluster call when this intent is received.
• com.google.android.play.engage.action.shopping.PUBLISH_SHOPPING_CART It is recommended to start a publishShoppingCart call when this intent is received.

Integration workflow

For a step-by-step guide on verifying your integration after it is complete, see Engage developer integration workflow.

FAQs

See Engage SDK Frequently Asked Questions for FAQs.

Contact

Please contact [e-mail] if there are any questions during the integration process. Our team will reply as soon as possible.

Next steps

After completing this integration, your next steps are as follows:

• Send an email to [e-mail] and attach your integrated APK that is ready for testing by Google.
• Google will perform a verification and review internally to make sure the integration works as expected. If changes are needed, Google will contact you with any necessary details.
• When testing is complete and no changes are needed, Google will contact you to notify you that you can start publishing the updated and integrated APK to the Play Store.
• After Google has confirmed that your updated APK has been published to the Play Store, your Recommendation, Featured, and Shopping Cart clusters will be published and visible to users.