Magento 2 B2B merchants have lots on their minds due to the business specifics, high requirements of their clients, and the complexity of the data structures they have to deal with on a daily basis. Recently, the community has paid great attention to the problems B2B businesses face and answered with a bunch of reliable solutions to maintain such businesses and help merchants create healthy life cycles.
FireBear Magento 2 Improved Import and Export is one of those pieces of software with a single exception — the extension is a seasoned player in the market that has absorbed the best practices of working with the Magento 2 data. With the software, you can manage both standard Magento 2 routine and boost the performance of the B2B features. Thus, companies, quotes, shared catalogs, and others become truly efficient in growing your revenue.
Improved Import and Export: an essential management tool
Improved Import and Export for Magento 2 is a data management tool that serves as the main enabler of routine automation within B2B and B2C stores. The extension turns to explore data transfer opportunities to provide users with powerful resources for site administration. The software logic improved the native import and export functionality and grants transfer flexibility with a variety of data sources and formats supported.
The area of expertise of Magento 2 Improved Import and Export is unlimited. The safe data transfers that are available with the extension helps with routine database updates, cross-platform integrations, third-party software synchronizations, etc.

What you get with the extension:
● Cron-based automatic updates,
● Full Magento 2 entities support,
● Data transfers via REST and SOAP API, FTP/SFTP, Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Sheets, URL, file uploads,
● Processing of data in the CSV, XML, XLXS, ODS, JSON, ZIP, TAR formats
● Data mapping.
Improved Import and Export is able to establish multiple connection channels within a single store, which means, by paying for the extension once, you benefit from it infinitely.
How to transfer Magento 2 shared catalogs with the help of Improved Import and Export
Shared catalogs allow delivering personalized services to clients by providing custom discounts. Personalized offers help to strengthen relations with clients and conduct their behavior during various promotions.
Shared catalogs are one of the Magento 2 B2B features so that they can not be enabled and managed without the official Magento 2 B2B extension installed. Improved Import and Export processes such features via the B2B add-on and adds new ways of managing the entities.
To start importing or exporting Magento 2 shared catalogs data you, first, need to select ‘Shared Catalogs’ as a transfer entity among the wide list of Magento 2 entities. Specifying transfer behavior is the next step. You can choose your option between ‘add, update, or replace’. The functionality allows you to control the way your data is implemented.
Once you have done with the previous settings, you get to select the import or export sources for the transfer process. Here Magento 2 Improved Import and Export provides multiple options for enabling the connection channel. Deciding on the data file format is also flexible as the extension supports the most popular formats. Generating different combinations of data sources and formats, you can get the most comfortable option for a particular transfer goal.
All the transfer data undergoes validation before being extracted or implemented. To modify entity values massively you can turn to the built-in mapping functionality. In case you need to export particular samples of shared catalogs or any other entities, you can use the filtering tool.
Once you have configured an import or export, you can run the transfer safely.
For more details on the Improved Import and Export specifics and the shared catalog transfers visit the FireBear site.