Data exports

Data exports let you create a controlled file from list data in Actualog. An export can include selected rows, the current visible page, or every record that matches the applied filters on a list page. Actualog saves the request, freezes the target set on the server, processes the file in the background, stores it in private export storage, and notifies you when the file is ready.

Exports are designed for large list operations. The browser sends one export request for the whole operation. It does not download every entity one by one and it does not keep the page locked while the file is being generated.

Where export is available

Export is available on list pages that show the Export action, including product, stewardship, expert, admin, integration, catalog, community, and reference-data lists.

Common export-enabled areas include:

  • Product Overview.
  • Product Stewardship.
  • Expert Categories.
  • Expert Attributes.
  • Expert Attribute Groups.
  • Expert Companies.
  • Expert Measures.
  • Company workspace lists such as catalogs, company categories, media-related lists, and integration-ready reference data.
  • Admin lists such as platform dictionaries, communities, and other administrator-controlled records.

The exact fields in the generated file depend on the entity type and selected format.

Export ownership

Actualog uses three export ownership scopes. The page that queues the export determines where the result appears, which permissions are checked, and which quota rules apply.

Company workspace exports belong to the selected company workspace. They are opened from Company Workspace -> Data Integration -> Exports. Authorized integration users in that company can see the export list, including files created by other users in the same workspace.

Company exports are used for workspace data such as Product Overview, Sales Catalog, company catalogs, company categories, company lists, and other company-owned data. They count against the company plan feature, company quotas, and company monthly limits.

Expert workspace exports belong to the Expert workspace activity of the user who queued them. They are opened from Expert -> Exports. They are not owned by the company selected in the Sidebar.

Expert exports are used for Product Stewardship and Expert pages such as Expert Categories, Expert Attributes, Expert Attribute Groups, Expert Companies, and Expert Measures. They do not count against company workspace quotas, but they still use the shared export queue, user active-export limits, secure storage, retention, and cleanup lifecycle.

Application admin exports belong to the application administrator area. They are opened from Admin -> Integrations -> Exports. They are not owned by the company selected in the Sidebar and do not count against company quotas.

Admin exports are used for platform administrator pages such as dictionaries, communities, and other application-controlled lists. Application Administrators can also inspect live exports from all users and ownership scopes from the Admin exports page.

Who can export

Export never gives access to records you cannot already see or manage.

Company workspace export requires:

  • access to the company workspace;
  • the company plan feature for Data Export;
  • integration-management permission for the company export list and export files.

Application admin export requires:

  • Application Administrator access.

Expert workspace export requires:

  • access to the Expert page or Product Stewardship page that queues the export;
  • the role required by that page.

Product Stewardship export requires Application Administrator access, but its result is an Expert workspace export and appears under Expert -> Exports.

Application Administrators can create, view, download, and delete admin exports without company plan checks or company quota checks. When an Application Administrator exports company-scoped data from an admin context, the file remains an admin export unless the page explicitly creates a company workspace export. When an Application Administrator exports from an Expert page, the result remains an Expert export.

Mass selection

Many export pages use the same mass-selection model.

Select items turns on selection mode. Checkboxes are hidden until selection mode is enabled, so normal browsing is not cluttered by export controls.

After selection mode is enabled, the page can support these scopes:

  • Selected rows exports only rows that you checked.
  • Select visible selects the records currently rendered on the page.
  • Current page exports the current page of applied results when the list exposes that scope.
  • All matching filters exports every record that matches the applied filters, including records on other pages.
  • All matching filters with exclusions starts from every filtered record and removes visible rows that you unchecked or excluded.
  • Clear removes the current selection and exits the all-filtered selection state.

Only applied filters are used for all-filtered exports. If you changed search text, sort order, category, community, workflow, status, or other filters but did not apply them yet, Actualog blocks all-filtered export until you apply the filters. This prevents a file from being created from a different result set than the one you see.

What happens when you queue an export

When you click Export and choose a format, Actualog performs the export as an operation:

  1. The browser sends one enqueue request with the requested entity type, source list, format, selection mode, selected IDs, excluded IDs, and applied filters.
  2. The server checks the Data Export feature, permissions, active operation limits, and target limits.
  3. The server resolves the final target set using the same query and access rules as the list page.
  4. The target set is frozen into an export operation so later list changes do not silently change the file.
  5. The operation is saved in the queue.
  6. A background worker claims queued operations and processes them in chunks.
  7. The worker writes the file to private export storage.
  8. Actualog updates the exported, skipped, and failed counts.
  9. Actualog sends a notification when the export reaches a terminal state.

If a record becomes unavailable before the worker processes it, Actualog rechecks access and can skip or fail that record without exposing data that should no longer be exported.

Notifications

Exports use the normal Actualog notification system.

You may see notifications for:

  • export request is being saved for the queue;
  • export failed before queueing;
  • export completed;
  • export completed with issues;
  • export failed.

Notifications are operation-level messages. Actualog does not create one notification per exported record.

Completion notifications include business-readable counts, for example:

Product export completed: 240 exported, 0 skipped, 0 failed.
Category export completed with issues: 86 exported, 2 skipped, 0 failed.

The notification can include a secure Download export link and an Open exports link. Download links return the file directly. Open links take you to the correct export list: Company Exports for company workspace files, Expert Exports for Product Stewardship and Expert-page files, or Admin Exports for application-admin files.

Export lists

Use the export list pages to review, download, and delete generated files.

Company exports are available from Company Workspace -> Data Integration -> Exports.

Expert exports are available from Expert -> Exports.

Admin exports are available from Admin -> Integrations -> Exports.

The list shows:

  • export name and source list;
  • creator;
  • format;
  • status;
  • exported, skipped, and failed counts;
  • created time;
  • expiry time;
  • file size when available;
  • download action;
  • delete action.

Company export lists show exports for the company workspace, not only your own exports. Expert export lists show your live Expert workspace export files. Admin export lists show live exports across users and ownership scopes for Application Administrators.

Statuses

An export can move through these lifecycle states:

  • Queued means the request was saved and is waiting for the worker.
  • Running means the worker is generating the file.
  • Completed means the file is ready and all targets were exported.
  • Completed with issues means the file is ready but some targets were skipped or failed.
  • Failed means no usable file was created.
  • Deleted means a user removed the export from the live user-facing lifecycle.
  • Expired means the retention period ended and the file is no longer downloadable.

Deleted or expired exports cannot be downloaded. Company exports, Expert exports, and Admin exports hide deleted rows and expired rows because those files are no longer actionable. If a completed export has passed its expiry time, the list treats it as unavailable instead of showing a stale completed row without a download action.

File storage and download security

Generated files are stored in private export storage backed by Actualog blob storage. Export files are separated from DAM, media, document libraries, and public content assets.

Actualog does not expose public blob URLs for exports. Downloads go through authenticated application routes. Before returning a file, Actualog checks that the current user can access the export based on its ownership scope.

Deleting an export removes it from the export list and makes the download unavailable. Blob cleanup is handled by the export lifecycle and retention process.

File retention

Export files are temporary working files, not permanent records.

The standard retention period is 30 days unless the plan or deployment policy says otherwise. Use the Exports page to download a file while it is still available or delete it earlier when the handoff is complete.

The expiry time is stored as ExpiresAtUtc. After that UTC time passes, the file is treated as expired even before the physical cleanup worker removes the private blob. Physical cleanup is retryable and records the latest attempt, attempt count, deletion time, and cleanup error for operations teams. Application Administrators can review the lifecycle model in Admin exports.

Limits

Actualog applies limits before an export is queued. If a request is too large or the user already has too many active exports, the request is rejected before the queue is changed.

Default safeguards include:

  • maximum targets per export: 5,000;
  • maximum queued or running exports per user: 2;
  • maximum queued or running exports per company: 10;
  • default retention: 30 days.

Plan-managed limits can include:

  • monthly export operations;
  • monthly exported items;
  • maximum items per export job.

Expert and Application Administrator exports bypass company plan checks, company quotas, and company monthly limits, but still use the shared queue, user active-export limits, secure storage, retention, and cleanup lifecycle.

JSON format

JSON is the structured format. Use it when you need nested data, references, grouped attributes, category templates, measure definitions, or data that another system should parse with full context.

JSON files use a shared envelope. Most entity exports use schemaVersion: "1.0" and a provider-owned items section:

{
  "schemaVersion": "1.0",
  "export": {
    "operationKey": "...",
    "entityType": "Product",
    "sourceSurface": "ProductOverview",
    "format": "Json",
    "generatedAtUtc": "2026-07-14T12:00:00Z",
    "language": "en"
  },
  "selection": {
    "mode": "AllFiltered",
    "targetCount": 240,
    "sourceDescription": "Product Overview applied filters"
  },
  "filters": {},
  "items": []
}

The envelope records what was exported, where the export came from, when it was generated, which selection mode was used, and which applied filters were used.

The items section is specific to the entity type:

  • Product JSON is grouped by category. Category-level communities, facets, and template context are written once, followed by clean product entries with product names, identifiers, brand or company context, images, and attributes grouped by template groups.
  • Attribute JSON includes attribute name, type, group, library flag, measure or unit summary, category usage summary, and type-specific definition where available.
  • Attribute Group JSON includes group name, related attributes, category usage summary, and list context.
  • Company JSON includes list-safe company profile fields, unique name, website, country or city, domain verification state, profile completeness flags, category or community counts, and public relationship summaries. Secrets, API keys, billing internals, and private integration credentials are not exported.
  • Measure JSON includes measure names, short names, category-use flags, quantity kind or dimension metadata where available, and units with names, symbols, coefficients, and base-unit flags.

Expert Categories category-model JSON

Expert Categories JSON is a richer category model export for universal category design. It uses:

{
  "schemaVersion": "1.1",
  "documentType": "ActualogCategoryModelExport",
  "export": {},
  "selection": {},
  "filters": {},
  "modelOptions": {},
  "categories": [],
  "categoryTree": [],
  "attributes": [],
  "attributeGroups": [],
  "measures": [],
  "units": []
}

Before queuing the JSON export, the Expert Categories page opens a configuration dialog. Use it to decide how much structure should be written:

  • Lean creates a compact model for quick review. It keeps core category records, direct attributes, and effective template rows, but omits tree context, communities and facets, sample products, product name templates, identity policies, dictionaries, and hashes.
  • Design is the default. It includes the category tree, communities and facets, universal links, direct attributes, effective templates, product name templates, identity policies, and referenced dictionaries. It omits sample product names and internal template hashes so the file stays readable.
  • Full includes all optional sections, sample product names, detailed inheritance paths, value filters, analysis hints, and template hash fields. Use it only when you need deep troubleshooting or universal-category design evidence.

You can also adjust the preset manually. The main switches control category tree context, communities and facets, sample product names, universal links, direct attributes, effective template details, product name templates, identity policy, and referenced dictionaries for attributes, groups, measures, and units.

The Detail level setting controls how much effective-template inheritance detail is written:

  • Basic keeps the row values and requirement metadata without source lineage.
  • Standard adds source category, source type, source distance, and override status.
  • Full analysis adds full source paths, value filters, inheritance hints, and optional template hashes when the hash switch is enabled.

categories contains only the selected or filtered export targets. categoryTree adds context nodes such as ancestors, children, descendants, and linked universal categories. Context nodes include isExportTarget so you can tell which categories were actually exported.

Each exported category always includes core identity, hierarchy fields, and product counts. Optional sections can add communities, facets, sample product names, direct category attributes, the current materialized effective template when one exists, product name templates, identity policy metadata, and existing universal links.

The effective template section explains where each attribute came from. sourceType can be Self, ConcreteParent, UniversalCategory, or Unknown. Attribute requirement is written as business text such as Mandatory, Recommended, or Optional; retired legacy fields such as isRecommendedRequired are not written.

The dictionary sections include only records referenced by the exported categories and templates. They provide enough attribute, group, measure, and unit information to interpret the category model without opening separate exports. If a dictionary switch is off, the section is omitted from the JSON rather than emitted as an empty library dump.

CSV for categories remains a flat list export. Use Expert Categories JSON when you need inheritance, effective-template, identity-policy, or universal-category design context.

For a practical walkthrough of presets, detail levels, optional sections, and file structure, see Category model export.

CSV format

CSV is the flat report format. Use it when you need a spreadsheet-friendly file, a lightweight handoff, or a quick comparison list.

CSV files include practical list columns such as:

  • identifiers;
  • names and unique names;
  • source list;
  • category, community, company, or brand context;
  • status and workflow flags;
  • publication or governance flags;
  • counts and summary fields;
  • relevant timestamps.

CSV does not try to represent nested product attributes or category templates as a full round-trip format. Use JSON when nested structure matters.

Actualog escapes commas, quotes, Unicode, and multiline text so CSV files open correctly in spreadsheet tools.

Filters in exported files

When an export uses all matching filters, the JSON file includes a filters section. This makes the file explainable later, even if the live list has changed.

Examples of filter metadata include:

  • search text;
  • category or community scope;
  • product kind or product shape;
  • workflow, publication, governance, or data-quality status;
  • attribute type, library, group, or usage filters;
  • company profile or verification filters;
  • measure and unit filters;
  • sort field and sort order;
  • page size or current page scope when relevant;
  • visible exclusions removed from an all-filtered selection.

Only applied filter values are recorded. Draft changes in filter controls are not used until you apply them.

File names

Export file names are designed to be readable. They include Actualog, entity type, source surface, and a UTC timestamp.

Examples:

actualog-products-product-overview-export-2026-07-14-12-30-15.json
actualog-category-model-expert-categories-export-2026-07-14-12-30-15.json
actualog-categories-expert-categories-export-2026-07-14-12-30-15.csv
actualog-attributes-expert-attributes-export-2026-07-14-12-30-15.json
actualog-measures-expert-measures-export-2026-07-14-12-30-15.csv

The operation key remains in Actualog for secure tracking, but it is not needed in the visible file name.

Use Selected rows when you need a small handpicked set.

Use Select visible or Current page when you want exactly the rows you are reviewing now.

Use All matching filters when the export should include every record in the filtered result set, including records on later pages.

Use All matching filters with exclusions when the filter is mostly right but a few visible records should be excluded.

Use JSON for structured transfer and audit-friendly snapshots.

Use CSV for spreadsheet review and flat reporting.

Download the file from the notification if you need it immediately. Use the Exports page when you need to find it later, confirm who created it, check counts, or delete it.

Common issues

The export button is unavailable. You may not have the Data Export feature, the required workspace permission, Application Administrator access for admin exports, or a valid selection.

All matching filters cannot be exported. Apply the current filters first. Actualog blocks all-filtered export when the visible list does not match the draft filter controls.

The preview or enqueue request says the export is too large. Narrow the filters or export a smaller selection. Limits are checked before the request is queued.

The file is missing records. Check the skipped and failed counts. Actualog rechecks access during execution and can skip records that are no longer exportable.

The download link does not work. The file may be deleted, expired, still running, failed, or inaccessible to the current user.

I exported from an Expert page but do not see the file under company exports. Open Expert -> Exports. Expert-page exports are Expert workspace files, not company workspace files.

A completed export row disappeared. The export may have expired or been deleted. Export files are temporary handoff files and are hidden after they leave the live lifecycle.

A company user cannot see another user's export. The user needs company integration-management access for the workspace export list.

An admin export appears while a company is selected in the Sidebar. Admin exports are owned by the application administrator scope. The company switcher does not make an admin export part of that company workspace.