Looking for guidance on building a flow that will update metafields and variant metafields

Shopify Plus

Topic summary

A merchant successfully automated the updating of Google Merchant Center metafields and variant metafields using Shopify Flow, after initially struggling with syntax and configuration.

Initial Challenges:

  • Understanding namespace and key formatting (separated by periods in field names)
  • Setting variant metafields like mm-google-shopping.condition to “new”
  • Configuring boolean metafields like mm-google-shopping.custom_product
  • Creating conditional logic based on product options (e.g., setting gender to “male” for Men’s T-Shirts, “unisex” for Hoodies)

Working Solution:
The merchant built flows that automatically update 15+ fields including:

  • Product status, condition, gender, age group, and custom product flags
  • Product taxonomy/category using Admin API mutations with GraphQL
  • Size guides and variant-level metafields

Key Technical Details:

  • Uses “Product Created” trigger with 60-second wait
  • Employs “For each” loops to update variant metafields
  • Implements conditional branches based on Option values
  • For product updates (not creation), uses a scheduled flow every 15 minutes combined with MESA to avoid endless loops
  • Requires finding correct GIDs through GraphQL queries for taxonomy updates

The merchant received assistance from a Flow specialist (Kalen at flow-helper.com) for complex configurations. Community members are requesting additional details about taxonomy codes and implementation specifics.

Summarized with AI on November 1. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
2

Hi Dave.

  1. No problem there.
  2. Your namespace looks correct, just change your key. I assume it would just be googlecustomproduct. No product. and no .value
  3. Similar problem to #2

For the others

I have no idea how to build each of them. Terribly sorry.

I do know someone who can help you with Flow. You might want to contact Kalen at Shopify Automation As A Service | Flow (flow-helper.com). His work focuses on building Shopify flow so he’s very good at it, and I mean very very good. Send him a quick email regarding your problem and he should be able to assist you. Oh, and if you contact him, tell him I sent you.