Connect your shop
Give krasslabs permission to read your Shopware catalog and write content back — once, with two keys you create in your own shop.
Only the Owner of a shop sees the Connection page. Managers, Editors and Auditors do not — if the product list tells you “Ask the shop owner to configure the connection.”, that is why.
Why you have to connect
krasslabs is not a plugin inside your shop. It is a separate application that talks to your shop over its own interface. To do anything useful it needs two permissions:
- Read — so it can import your products, categories, languages and pictures and know what it is writing about.
- Write — so it can put finished content back where it belongs, when you ask it to.
The page itself says it plainly: once your shop is connected, “we can read its products and write the generated content back. Nothing is changed in your shop until you explicitly send something.” Connecting alone changes nothing in your shop.
Where the page is
Open your shop, then in the left sidebar open Settings › Connection. You land on Connect your shop, which has two cards: Access data on the left and Status on the right.
Step 1 — create the integration in Shopware
Shopware calls the access keys an integration. You create it in your own administration, not here. The application shows this same list under Where do I get this? — step by step on the Access data card:
- Open the administration of your Shopware shop in another browser tab and sign in.
- Go to Settings → System → Integrations.
- Click Add integration and give it a name you will recognise later, for example “AI content”.
- Give the integration the roles it needs: reading products, categories, media and languages, and writing products, categories and media. If your shop only offers “Administrator”, that works too.
- Save. Shopware now shows an access key ID and a secret access key — the secret is shown only this once, so copy both straight away.
- Paste them into the fields below, together with the web address of your shop (for example
https://my-shop.example), and save here. - Finally press Test connection on the right. A green result means everything is set up.
The secret access key is shown exactly once, right after you save the integration in Shopware. If you close that dialog without copying it, the key is gone for good — you have to delete the integration and create a new one. Copy both values before you leave the page.
If you cannot find the menu, or your account in Shopware is not allowed to create integrations, ask whoever maintains your shop — an agency, a colleague, your hosting partner. They only need to send you the two keys. As the page puts it: “If a step is missing in your shop, whoever maintains it can create the integration for you — they only need to send you the two keys.”
Step 2 — fill in the access data
On the Access data card, leave Platform on Shopware 6 — that is the connector for a normal Shopware 6 shop. (A “Mock” entry also exists in the list; it is a test connector and does not talk to any real shop.) Then fill in three fields:
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Shop URL | The web address of your shop, for example https://my-shop.example. Use the address customers see, including https://, without a trailing path. |
| API access key ID | The first of the two values Shopware showed you. Not secret — you can look it up again in the integration at any time. |
| API secret key | The second value, the one shown only once. It is stored encrypted and never shown again. |
Press Save connection. You get the message “Connection saved. Run a test to verify the credentials.” Saving only stores the data — it does not check it yet, which is why the status badge goes back to Not tested every time you save.
Step 3 — test the connection
On the Status card on the right, press Test connection. krasslabs signs in to your shop once and asks it which version it is running.
- If it works, you get a success message such as “Connected to Shopware 6.7.x” (or simply “Connection OK”) and the badge turns green.
- If it does not, the badge turns red and the card shows a plain-language explanation of what went wrong.
What the status badge means
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Not tested | Access data is stored but has never been tried — or you just saved it again. Press Test connection. |
| Connected | The last test succeeded. You can sync and send content. |
| Failed | The last attempt failed. The reason is shown right underneath, with a Technical details section you can open if you want to forward it to your shop maintainer. |
Under the badge, Last tested tells you when it was last checked, or Never. The same status also appears on your shop card on the Dashboard and in the Catalog box on the shop overview, so you can see at a glance whether a shop is healthy.
“Connected” means the connection worked the last time it was tried. If your shop later goes offline or the keys are revoked, the next sync or send will fail and the shop overview will show the banner We cannot reach your shop. Run the test again to find out where you stand.
How your keys are protected
- The secret is stored encrypted and is never sent back to your browser. Once saved, the field shows the placeholder •••••• (leave blank to keep).
- Leave the secret field empty when you only want to correct something else — an empty secret means “keep the one you already have”. You never have to re-type it for no reason.
- Change the Shop URL or the access key ID, and you must enter the secret again. The application refuses to save otherwise, with the message “You changed your shop address or access key ID. Please enter ‘API secret key’ again as well — for your security we never send a saved key to a new address.” This prevents your existing key from being sent to a different address by mistake.
- The address is checked before anything is stored. Addresses that do not point at a real, publicly reachable shop are rejected.
When something goes wrong
The test says the connection failed
Work through the list in this order — the first two cover most cases:
- Check the address. It must be the shop’s own address, with
https://, no trailing slash or path, no typo. If your shop is only reachable through a specific domain, use that one. - Re-enter both keys. Copied keys pick up stray spaces or line breaks surprisingly often. If in doubt, create a fresh integration in Shopware and paste the new pair.
- Check the integration’s roles. It needs read and write access to products, categories, media and languages. An integration with too few permissions can sign in but fail later.
- Check that the integration still exists and has not been deleted or deactivated in Shopware.
- Open Technical details and send that text to whoever maintains your shop. It names the exact error the shop returned.
“Too many connection tests. Please wait a minute and try again.”
The test button is rate-limited so a broken shop is not hammered. Nothing is wrong with your data — wait a minute and press it again.
“We can no longer read your saved access data”
This banner appears at the top of the Connection page after the platform’s encryption key has been rotated: your stored secret can no longer be decrypted. The fix is quick, and the page tells you exactly what to do — “Please enter the access key ID and secret again below and save. Everything else stays as it is.”
If you no longer have the secret, create a new integration in Shopware and use the new pair of keys. Nothing else about your shop — content, jobs, credits, settings — is affected.
Your shop maintainer rotated the keys
If someone deletes or regenerates the integration in Shopware, your saved secret stops working: syncs and sends start failing and the connection is marked as Failed. Ask for the new access key ID and secret, enter both here, save, and test.
You are not the Owner
Then you do not have this page at all. Ask an Owner of the shop to set the connection up — or to make you an Owner. See Team & roles.
What next
A green Connected badge means the plumbing works, but krasslabs still has no idea what you sell. Import your catalog next: Sync your products.