Edit AWS Marketplace Listings Without Overwrites

To edit an AWS Marketplace listing, you submit a change request. AWS queues it, locks the product while it runs and, if it succeeds, overwrites the existing details with what the request carried. This post is for the marketplace ops or product marketing owner whose listing is edited by more than one person or tool.

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Acme’s product marketer rewrites two highlights on the company’s SaaS listing in AWS Partner Central, and AWS applies the change. Before that change reaches Fours, Acme’s marketplace ops lead corrects a keyword in Fours and saves. Fours sends the listing as it holds it, so the old highlights go back to AWS. Both requests succeed, and nothing tells either of them that the marketer’s edit is gone.

Neither person did anything unusual, and no system failed: that is how AWS applies an edit. It’s why AWS gives API callers a guard, and why Fours’ documentation ends its section on outside edits with a rule: edit a listing in one place at a time. This post covers AWS’s side first, then what Fours does with an edit made outside it. It doesn’t cover what to write in the fields, and price changes follow AWS rules of their own, covered in changing your marketplace price after launch.

How do you edit an AWS Marketplace listing?

You submit a change request, in AWS Partner Central or through the AWS Marketplace Catalog API. AWS’s Seller Guide puts it in one line: “In a self-service listing, you use a change request to make changes to your product.”

• In the console. Open the product in AWS Partner Central and choose an action from the Request changes menu, such as Update product information. Your current requests appear “on AWS Partner Central on the Requests tab.” AWS’s Seller Guide now starts these steps in Partner Central; Fours’ documentation, and parts of AWS’s own developer guide, still name the AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP). This post says “the portal” for either.
• Through the API. Call StartChangeSet “with the UpdateInformation change type and the details that you want to change.” The changes “are added to a queue and processed.”

A change set is the Catalog API’s unit of change: a collection of change types, each naming the entity to change, the type of change and its details. The two routes meet underneath. AWS CloudTrail “captures all calls to the Catalog API as events, including calls from the AWS Marketplace Management Portal,” and AWS reports the completion of portal and Catalog API requests with the same change set events.

Every request runs the same course, and only a request that ends as succeeded changes the listing:

Stage	AWS Partner Central (Requests tab)	Catalog API (DescribeChangeSet)
In progress	Under review, then Preparing changes, then Applying changes	PREPARING, then APPLYING
Applied	Succeeded: “changes are reflected in the system”	SUCCEEDED
Not applied	Failed: “the changes were not processed.” The request lists Error Codes, and Copy to new request copies its details so you can fix them and resubmit	FAILED, or CANCELLED; CancelChangeSet works only while a change set is PREPARING

What does “overwrite the existing details” mean?

It means an update request replaces what is on the listing with what the request carries. AWS’s Seller Guide: “Change requests that start with an update will load the current details of the project. Then, you can make updates, which overwrite the existing details.”

With one editor, that is the point of an edit. With two, the order decides what survives. AWS’s Catalog API guide warns that two requests to change the same object can end with one overwriting the other, “as the second request rewrites data changed by the first request.” Its guard is the revision. “Every successful change request to the entity will update the revision,” and a StartChangeSet request that names a RevisionId “will fail with a ValidationException if the RevisionId is not the latest revision of the entity,” which AWS calls optimistic locking. Leave the RevisionId out, and “the request is performed on the latest revision of the entity automatically,” whatever copy of the listing its details came from.

The overwrite trap is a save built from an older copy of a listing that lands after a newer change, so the newer change is replaced without an error.

Doesn’t AWS lock a listing while someone edits it?

Only while a change set runs. The StartChangeSet reference: “when a ChangeSet is running, all the entities targeted by the different changes are locked until the change set has completed (either succeeded, cancelled, or failed).” A second change set against a locked entity returns ResourceInUseException (HTTP 423). SaaS listings get the strict version: for product types other than AMI and container products, “you can only have a single request for a product at a time,” and a request pending with the AWS Marketplace Seller Operations team blocks any other request on that product.

So the lock stops two edits from colliding. It does nothing about two edits in sequence. When the first change set succeeds, the product unlocks, and a request built from a copy taken before it overwrites it, unless the request names the revision. AWS’s advice for a ResourceInUseException is that “you can retry the request later.” If the request was built before the change that locked the product, that retry is the overwrite.

How does anyone find out an edit finished?

AWS sends an Amazon EventBridge event when a change set completes. In an announcement posted November 3, 2023, AWS said “all successful, failed, and cancelled change request events” from the portal and the Catalog API would go to EventBridge as Change Set Succeeded, Change Set Failed or Change Set Cancelled. Each event carries the change set’s ID and name, a failure code for a failed request, and the start and end times. Before that, sellers “had to continuously query the DescribeChangeSet action or check in AMMP.”

Two limits shape everything that follows:

• Delivery is best effort. That is the delivery type AWS’s EventBridge reference gives these events.
• The event identifies the change set, not the person. What it changed is in DescribeChangeSet. Who sent it is in AWS CloudTrail, which records “who made the request” for every Catalog API call, portal calls included.

Two editors, one listing: what does Fours do with an outside edit?

For a SaaS listing, Fours acts on AWS’s change set event: an outside edit that AWS applies is picked up and recorded in History, and one that AWS rejects or cancels shows only in the integration’s Auditing Events. As Fours’ documentation on edits made in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal describes it, an edit in the portal or through the Catalog API reaches AWS as a change set, and AWS reports the outcome to Fours over the integration’s EventBridge connection. Here is every case, with a save in Fours first for comparison:

The edit	What AWS reports	What Fours does	Where you’ll see it
Saved in Fours	Change Set Succeeded or Change Set Failed, like any change set	The listing shows Update in progress while AWS processes the edit. Once AWS applies it, History records the update and Fours sends the Update Product notification to wherever you route it. If AWS rejects it, the listing moves to Update Failed, with AWS’s reason in a banner	The listing, History and your notification route
Made outside Fours, still running	Nothing yet; the product is locked	A save in Fours stops before it reaches AWS: “A previous change to this product is still being processed by the marketplace,” with that change set’s ID. Nothing is submitted	The message in Fours; look the change set up in the portal
Made outside Fours, applied	Change Set Succeeded	Refreshes the listing straight away, and if that refresh fails, the hourly sync brings the change in. History shows “Product … was changed in AWS Marketplace” with Source: Cloud Partner, dated when AWS applied it. No email, Slack or Microsoft Teams notification	More actions → History, and the integration’s Auditing Events
Made outside Fours, rejected or cancelled	Change Set Failed or Change Set Cancelled	Nothing changes: the listing isn’t refreshed and History gets no entry	The integration’s Auditing Events only
Made outside Fours while a Fours save shows Update in progress	Change Set Succeeded	Records the change in History but doesn’t refresh the listing yet. The Fours update reads the listing back from AWS when it finishes	History, then the listing

Three notes apply to the whole table:

• SaaS listings only. In Fours’ documentation: “Only SaaS listings are refreshed and recorded this way.”
• Professional Services listings stay in the portal. Fours’ documentation says they “can’t be edited through Fours,” so their changes are made in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal.
• One entry per edit. “An edit you save in Fours is recorded once, by Fours’ own update, not a second time as a Cloud Partner change.”

A failed or cancelled outside edit is the easiest to miss, because it reaches only the AWS integration’s Auditing Events table, on the Integrations page of the Fours Console.

Can a save in Fours overwrite an edit made in the portal?

Yes, if you save before the outside change has reached Fours. Fours’ documentation is direct about it: “A save in Fours sends the listing as Fours holds it. If you save in Fours before an outside change has reached Fours, the older content goes back to AWS.”

The window opens when AWS applies the outside change and closes when Fours holds it. Normally it is short, because Fours refreshes as soon as the Change Set Succeeded event arrives. Three things stop “normally” from being a rule a team can work to:

• The event is best effort. That is AWS’s label for its delivery. When Fours’ refresh fails, its backstop is the hourly sync.
• Nobody is told. Fours sends no notification for an outside edit, so the person about to save in Fours may not know one happened.
• The lock has already gone. By the time the window opens, the outside change set has finished and the product is unlocked, so nothing on AWS’s side holds the save back.

How should a team edit one listing from two places?

Edit it in one place at a time. That is the rule Fours’ documentation gives, and it holds for any two editors, people or tools. In practice:

1. Give each listing a home. If a SaaS listing is managed in Fours, edit it in Fours. Professional Services listings are edited in the portal, since Fours can’t edit them.
2. After an outside edit, confirm it before you save in Fours. Fours’ documentation: “After editing in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal, check that the change shows in Fours — or in History — before you edit the same listing in Fours.” In History, the entry reads Source: Cloud Partner.
3. Read the change set Fours names. If a save stops with “A previous change to this product is still being processed” and you didn’t start that change set, someone else is editing. Look it up in the portal, let it finish, confirm it in History, then edit.
4. Announce outside edits. Fours sends no notification for them, and a rejected one appears only in Auditing Events, so whoever edits in the portal tells the listing’s owner.
5. In the portal, open a request after the last change lands. An update request “will load the current details,” and what you submit overwrites the existing ones, so open it once any change in flight has finished.
6. In your own Catalog API code, send the revision. AWS’s identifier pairs the entity ID with its revision, as in its example prod-ad8EXAMPLE651@3. “Using RevisionIds in your requests prevents this issue by not allowing a change to an earlier revision to overwrite the current revision,” and the ValidationException you get instead includes the latest RevisionId, a signal to re-read the listing before you resend.

Frequently asked questions

How do you edit an AWS Marketplace listing?

Submit a change request: in AWS Partner Central, from the product’s Request changes menu, or through the AWS Marketplace Catalog API with StartChangeSet. AWS queues the request, locks the product while it runs, and changes the listing only if the request succeeds.

Can two people edit an AWS Marketplace listing at the same time?

AWS won’t run two edits at once: while a change set runs, the entities it targets are locked, and a second change set against them fails with ResourceInUseException. In sequence it’s different: AWS warns that the second of two requests can rewrite data changed by the first.

Why did my AWS Marketplace listing edit disappear?

If AWS reported it succeeded, a later request may have overwritten it. AWS warns that the second of two requests can rewrite data changed by the first; a tool saving an older copy of the listing does exactly that. AWS CloudTrail records who made each Catalog API request.

Does Fours pick up edits made in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal?

Yes, for SaaS listings. When AWS reports the change set succeeded, Fours refreshes the listing and History records the change with Source: Cloud Partner. Fours sends no email, Slack or Microsoft Teams notification for it, and a rejected or cancelled edit appears only in Auditing Events.

Can a save in Fours overwrite a portal edit?

Yes, if you save before the portal edit has reached Fours. A save in Fours sends the listing as Fours holds it, so the older content goes back to AWS. Check that the change shows in Fours, or in History, before you edit the listing in Fours.

Takeaways

• Every edit to an AWS Marketplace listing is a change request, and an update request overwrites the existing details with what it carries.
• AWS’s lock stops two change sets from running at once. It doesn’t stop a request built on older details from overwriting a newer change; in your own API calls, the revision does.
• For a SaaS listing, Fours picks up an outside edit once AWS applies it and records it in History with Source: Cloud Partner, without a notification. A rejected or cancelled one shows only in Auditing Events.
• A save in Fours sends the listing as Fours holds it, so confirm an outside change shows in Fours before you save there.
• Edit each listing in one place at a time, and keep Professional Services listings in the portal.

In Fours, an outside edit that AWS applies lands in the same History as the edits saved in Fours, marked Source: Cloud Partner, so the listing’s owner sees both. See how listing edits fit the rest of your catalog work in Fours’ product listing management.