# Intake

**Convert unstructured customer requests into structured Carts or Shopping Lists in the Merchant Center.**

Intake is a commercetools [Add-On](/offering/intake.md) product that converts unstructured customer requests into structured Carts or Shopping Lists. You can provide information through free text or by uploading a [supported file format](/merchant-center/ai-agents/intake.md#input-methods). Intake extracts the relevant information, creates the Cart or Shopping List, and lets you review the result before proceeding.

> **AI use:** This feature uses AI to analyze data you provide.
>
> **Your data:** We do not use your data to train models.
>
> **Opt-in:**  To enable this feature, submit a [support request](https://support.commercetools.com/) and include the Project key.

## When to use Intake

Intake is useful in scenarios such as:

- You are a customer service agent and want to create a [Cart](/merchant-center/cart-list.md) on behalf of a customer, edit it, and hand it over.
- You are a sales representative and want to create a [Quote](/merchant-center/quotes.md) from a customer request, or freeze a Cart.
- You are a customer service agent and want to save a customer's product list as a Shopping List that they can turn into a Cart later.
- You are a developer and want to validate how a Cart behaves given realistic input.

## Permissions

Only users in Teams with the **View and edit all: Agent Intake** [permission](/merchant-center/user-permissions.md#agents) can use Intake. Permissions are managed by the [Administrators Team](/merchant-center/administrators-team.md) in your Organization.

To open Intake from the Carts or Quotes page, Team members also need the **View all: Carts and Orders** [permission](/merchant-center/user-permissions.md#carts-and-orders). You don't need to grant the other underlying permissions Intake uses. Intake acts on behalf of the user with the access it needs to complete the task.

To grant access to non-administrator users, do the following:

1. Click the profile icon, and then select **Manage organizations & teams**.
2. Select the Organization and Team.
3. In the **Permissions** tab, from the **Select Project** list, select the Project for which you want to set permissions.
4. Expand **Permissions for Agents**, and then enable **View and edit all: Agent Intake**.
5. Expand **Carts and Orders**, and then enable **View all: Carts and Orders**.

## Input methods

You can provide information to Intake through free text or by uploading a file. Intake supports the following file formats:

- PDF
- TXT
- CSV
- DOCX
- XLSX
- EML
- Markdown
- HTML

## Intended workflow

1. Open Intake from the Carts, Quotes, or Shopping Lists page.
2. Upload a file or provide free text. The information Intake needs depends on whether you want a Cart or a Shopping List:

| Information | Cart | Shopping List |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Customer email address | Required | Required |
| At least one Product | Required | Required |
| Country code, used for pricing and tax | Required | Not used |
| Name for the Shopping List | Not applicable | Required |

   Wording such as "shopping list" or "save this list for later" tells Intake to create a Shopping List. Without it, Intake creates a Cart. If required information is missing from your input, Intake asks for it, including the name of the Shopping List.
3. Intake extracts the information and creates the Cart or Shopping List.
4. Review the result.

### Carts

1. Review the parsing status to understand how well the input was parsed and mapped to your catalog:
   - If the status is **Fully parsed**, the Cart is ready for review.
   - If the status is **Partially parsed**, review the missing Products listed above the Cart table, and make any necessary manual adjustments to the Cart.
2. Review the Cart. Make any necessary adjustments to the Products, quantities, prices, or addresses.
3. Choose one of the available next actions:
   - **Go to cart**: Opens the Cart in the [Cart list](/merchant-center/cart-list.md) for additional processing.
   - **Freeze the cart**: Locks the Cart from further modifications and preserves its current state.
   - **Create draft quote**: Creates a draft [Quote](/merchant-center/quotes.md) based on the current Cart contents.
   - **Start new conversation**: Starts a new request without deleting the current parsed Cart, letting you begin fresh while preserving work already completed.
   - **Delete cart**: Deletes the Cart so you can start over with a new request.

> Billing and shipping addresses are automatically populated based on the Customer associated with the provided email address. If a Customer has multiple addresses, the default address is used.

### Shopping Lists

Intake shows a read-only summary of the Shopping List it created, with its name, description, and Line Items. Products that couldn't be matched to your catalog are listed in the summary with the reference that was used to search for them.

To change the Shopping List, open it from the Shopping Lists page, which requires [Shopping Lists permissions](/merchant-center/user-permissions.md#shopping-lists).

## Related pages

- [Area overview page with navigation](/merchant-center.md)
- [Previous page: Overview](/merchant-center/ai-agents.md)
- [Next page: Promotions Agent](/merchant-center/ai-agents/promotions-agent.md)
- [Search documentation and API specs](/search.md)