What are Operations (Bulk operations), and how to calculate them?

Created by Nicolas Wussler, Modified on Tue, 16 Aug, 2022 at 8:23 AM by Igor Galic

If you consider calculating Task runs and/or Bulk Operations too confusing, we’ll try to explain them as simply as possible in this help article.

So, what are Bulk Operations?

Bulk Operations represent the number of actions/operations sent-received/synced within a task run (importing and exporting items, changing prices on a larger scale, assigning products to a warehouse).

In SyncSpider we have a unique feature to send a large number of operations in one task run, that's why we call them bulk operations.

Let’s continue with the formula:

O = EI x A

O - number of operations

EI - number of Items within the Entities (Data set e.g., Products, Contacts, Leads)

A - number of Attributes (Specific properties that further define an Entity, e.g., Price, Country of Origine, etc.), counted in a set of 10

You don’t like math? Okay, let’s explain that in words.

Everything starts with Entities, Items, and Attributes.

Entities are, as the name said, entities, a sort of data. Typical entities are products, services, collections, contacts, or other sets of data. They are a type of Data that one integration can Import or Export.

Entities are the main data you will select for your Integration. In this case, Product.

Every entity has a specific set of Attributes.

Attributes are data items within your entity. They are specific properties that further define an Entity and can vary. Typical attributes for a product entity are price, product name, category, country of origin, contact.

Attributes are all the “fields” you are mapping within your task.

You may also imagine Entities as a Sheet, Items as a Row in that sheet. Every row has its columns, and you can consider Attributes as the value within the Columns.

Back to the formula.

So, the number of operations will depend on the number of Entities’ Items and the set of Attributes you send.

But, there’s a catch.

SyncSpider considers 10 attributes as 1 operation. That means:

If you have 10 attributes within 1 entity, it equals 1 operation.
If you have 11 attributes within your entity, SyncSpider will consider it as 2 operations.

Let us put that in an example of sending products:

If you are sending 4 products (Items), and each product has 16 attributes, you’ll be consuming 8 operations.
If you are sending 4 products (Items), and each product has 6 attributes, you’ll be consuming 4 operations.

And there you go!

You can easily calculate how many bulk operations you have and optimize them if necessary. For example, in the first example, only cutting down Attributes by 6 for each entity (10 instead of 16) would decrease the number of operations by half (and you would have 4 operations)

Note: This is a good thing to consider when mapping a task. You can save a lot of operations if you only map attributes you really need for that task.

We hope this helped, and if you want to find out more about Attributes and Entities, you can read one more Help article we prepared for you.