You can use the ImportActiveData pipelet to automate the import of active data feeds into an instance, either via a job or a pipeline.
If you are testing data on a Staging instance, sometimes you must import extra custom attributes not included in the Production instance for testing purposes. In this case, you must rebuild the product index after import. Incremental indexing doesn't automatically rebuild based on imported feed data.
If you are implementing feed import in an existing system, you can easily edit a copy of your existing product import pipelines to automate feed import. If you are creating a project, we recommend using the Simple Feed Integration project as a starting point for product and active data feeds. This project is available in the code library.