Content - Walmart Merchant Manual Blocks

This article contains detailed information about Walmart's Merchant Manual Block (MMB) process. MMB’s may occur when you try to publish content  that has been updated by a higher-ranked source. When an item has a Merchant Manual Block, you will not be able to update some or all of the content on your product details page(s).

Here are the details:

• Walmart has created a tiered publishing hierarchy that establishes priority for which types of sources can overwrite existing content. Internal Walmart sources are at the very top, which means that whenever a Walmart associate updates content on an item page, every other source is then locked out. This situation is known as a Merchant Manual Block. 
• The intention behind this block is to allow Walmart associates the highest level of control of content for merchant promotions and urgent updates. It makes sense in theory, however, we often find that a block was unintended or the reason for it is no longer relevant. You are not alone in this matter, as Merchant Manual Blocks are affecting the majority of Walmart suppliers.
• When content is submitted, the system first checks to see if the incoming source’s rank is higher than the incumbent’s. If it is, the incoming content is published, and the incumbent content stays in the item’s catalog but is no longer live on the site. If the incoming content source’s rank is not higher than the incumbent, the content is added to the item’s catalog, but not published to the site. 
• When SKU Ninja submits content that is ingested into the catalog but not published, we kick off a process called “de-ranking” that seeks to take all content sources in the item’s catalog that have higher rankings and move them to the back of the line, thereby allowing SKU Ninja’s submitted content to go live. If there are multiple sources in the item’s catalog with ranks higher than SKU Ninja’s, older content will go live on the site as we continue to push higher-ranked sources to the back of the line. This is an unfortunate consequence of the process, but it is the only way to publish new content to your item pages if the incumbent content was published by an internal Walmart source.
• There is no visibility as to how many sources currently have content in your item’s catalog, and only one source can be deranked at a time, so there is no way to provide an estimated completion time.  Each de-rank will take an estimated 72 hours to complete. It is imperative that no other sources attempt to submit content until SKU Ninja’s notification that the new content has been successfully published. Attempting to resubmit with SKU Ninja or any other source will only further delay the de-ranking process.