As we continue improving product discovery by giving customers new tools and levers to pull, we’re very pleased to announce our new Product Launches functionality. This provides the ability to time the release of a product without worrying about waiting for a reindex to run, remembering to time an upload or configuring complicated rules right before the launch. All you need to do is set the date, and wait!

We know that there might be restrictions on when you’re able to show new products to your customers, whether they be for legal reasons, or because you want to make a big splash in the market with a timed launch. Now you can do this by including a release date and time on a product in your catalogue feed. Then when you run a search or browse query, that product will not be returned until the time is met.

For example, if you have an index that serves users in North America, and you want to time the launch of a product to midnight PDT on May 1st, simply set the following on the product in your catalogue feed:

As soon as the west coast reaches midnight, the product will be returned in search and browse queries.

In addition, we make it easy to check that the right date is set. This can be done by viewing the product in the Indexes tab of the Dashboard, or by overriding “now” in the API to see what the returned results will look like at some time in the future.

For more information on how to set up and view a Product Launch, see this article.