Salesforce Commerce Cloud product data particularities

There are several particularities regarding the Salesforce Commerce Cloud product data that must be taking into account when establishing and using the Salesforce Commerce Cloud connection. These particularities are described in detail below.

Master catalog

A catalog is a product tree. You can assign certain categories from different catalogs to a product. The product data are part of the catalog. Every product in Salesforce Commerce Cloud must belong to a catalog. This catalog, who owns the product, is the master catalog. The product belongs to the master catalog but must not be assign to a category within the master catalog. The master catalog in Salesforce Commerce Cloud determines which fields are available for a product.
Regardless of which catalog a product belongs to, the product can be assigned to other categories of other catalogs as well.

The master catalog who owns the products must be mapped in the DataHub module to the Master Catalog (CommerceCloud Actind) destination attribute. The ETL mapping determines which catalog is used as master catalog in Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
It is mandatory that the master catalog is set in all ETL mappings to the Salesforce Commerce Cloud attribute set, see Configure the master catalog.

In Actindo, all fields from Salesforce Commerce Cloud are available, as there exists only one single attribute set for Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Sites

Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers the possibility to handle several sites within one instance for the order import. In Actindo, these sites are created as sub-shops. That means that every single site is a sub-account, available in the stock withdrawal matrix in the Warehouse module.

The different sites are managed in Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Administration > Sites > Manage Sites

Attributes

In Salesforce Commerce Cloud, an attribute can either be Localizable, Site-Specific or neither. Also, an attribute can only be either Localizable or Site-Specific, not both at the same time. A localizable attribute in Salesforce Commerce Cloud is equivalent to a multi-language attribute in Actindo. A site-specific attribute in Salesforce Commerce Cloud is similar but not the same as a multi-channel attribute in Actindo.

Actindo supports both localizable attributes and site-specific attributes from Salesforce Commerce Cloud. However, Actindo does not support site-specific boolean attributes from Salesforce Commerce Cloud because they have a different number of states in Actindo and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, which would cause problems.

The localizable attributes from Salesforce Commerce Cloud are imported to Actindo as multi-language attributes and mapped via the language key. For detailed information, see Default language. The site-specific attributes from Salesforce Commerce Cloud cannot be imported into Actindo as multi-channel attributes, because the paradigm is not compatible. Therefore, site-specific attributes from Salesforce Commerce Cloud are imported into Actindo once as a normal (non-site-specific) attribute and additionally as a further attribute for every available site. This means that the site-specific attribute is expanded in Actindo. Thereby, the normal attribute represents the default value.

If the site-specific attribute is empty in Actindo (not mapped in the corresponding ETL mapping), no value is uploaded for the attribute, but the site-specific value is deleted. This causes that the Use Default checkbox is selected in Salesforce Commerce Cloud for a site-specific attribute and thus the value is deleted and the default value is automatically used. This means that no empty value is uploaded, but no value is uploaded at all, so that the default value applies.

When a new site is subsequently created, the corresponding site-specific attribute is automatically created after the connection has been synchronized.

All attributes must be created in Salesforce Commerce Cloud and cannot be created in Actindo and dynamically be added to Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The attribute definitions list displays all available attributes in Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
Administration > System Object Types > Product > Tab Attribute Definitions
The attributes that are created in the Omni-Channel module as available attributes are imported from this attribute definitions list.

Default language

In Salesforce Commerce Cloud, a default language is preconfigured and other languages can be added. All languages beside the default language are mapped via their key. Therefore, the language key in Actindo must equal the language key in Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
As there exists no default language in Actindo, a language must be specified as default language when configuring the connection settings, see Configure the Salesforce Commerce Cloud connection. The language defined in the settings will be mapped with the default language in Salesforce Commerce Cloud as well as with the corresponding language in Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Site-specific status

An offer in Actindo can have one of the following three statuses:

• Active
  The offer is active. It is displayed in the marketplace, where it can be sold.
• Inactive
  The offer is inactive. It is not longer displayed in the marketplace and thus cannot be sold anymore.
• Not available
  The offer is deleted from the marketplace.

By default, the status of an offer applies to the offer in all sites. As there exists the Override online (only active products) status for Site "site ID" site-specific attribute, it is possible to override the active status of an offer for the specific site. That means, an active offer can be switched to inactive for the individual sites.
Note that the site-specific status change is only possible in one direction: If the status of an offer is set to inactive, it will be inactive on all sites and cannot be changed to active for single sites.

Price books

In Salesforce Commerce Cloud, all prices are saved in so-called Price books. In contrast to Actindo, the price is not an attribute in Salesforce Commerce Cloud, but a completely own entity which is largely detached from the product.
As price books in Salesforce Commerce Cloud cannot be accessed via API, the IDs of the price books as well as the ISO-code of the corresponding currency must be specified when configuring the connection settings, see Configure the Salesforce Commerce Cloud connection. The price book IDs are displayed in the ID column of the price books list in Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Price books

When adding a new price book in Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the connection must be synchronized to add the new price book attributes for the ETL mapping in Actindo, see Synchronize a connection.

Variations

Variants in Actindo must not be double, but this is possible in Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Therefore, it may be necessary to create a further variant level in Actindo so that there are no double variants. However, this variant level should not be displayed in Salesforce Commerce Cloud. For this purpose, you have to specify the IDs of all attributes that should not be uploaded as defining attributes in Salesforce Commerce Cloud when configuring the connection settings, see Configure the Salesforce Commerce Cloud connection. This way the value will be uploaded to Salesforce Commerce Cloud, but not created as a defining attribute.

Variant sets for offers can be defined in the Omni-Channel module in Actindo: Omni-Channel > Settings > Tab VARIANT SETS
For detailed information, see Create a variant set.

Note that defining attributes cannot be added dynamically to the Omni-Channel module but must be represented by an attribute that is known to Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Any information about the Salesforce Commerce Cloud variants is displayed in the variation products list in Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Products > Select product > Tab Variations

Translatable variants

Basically, variants in Salesforce Commerce Cloud are always translatable, but they must not be localizable. However, it is possible to specify multiple languages for variants in Salesforce Commerce Cloud. In Actindo, variants cannot be multi-language. Consequently, Salesforce Commerce Cloud can specify multilingual values for defining attributes, but Actindo cannot.
To be able to make the defining attributes translatable in Actindo anyway, you must do the following:

• The corresponding variant attributes must be specified in the PIM module as tree node attributes.
• The translations must be specified in the tree node attribute.

• The Tree-To-String defining values (CommerceCloud) extension must be selected to map the destination attribute from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to the PIM source attribute in the corresponding ETL mapping(s), see Configure the translatable variants.

  As the destination attribute is a variant defining attribute, it is always a single-language attribute with the String data type, whereas the source attribute must be a tree node attribute.

Thereby, the translations can be imported from the tree-node attribute when uploading and the variants can be made translatable.

If you change a translation in the tree node attribute in Actindo, you need to trigger the upload of all affected offers manually, since a change in the tree node attribute is not uploaded automatically.

Product categories

You can create new product category assignments in Salesforce Commerce Cloud as well as in Actindo. When uploading a product category assignment from Actindo to Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the existing assignments to product categories are not overwritten, but merely added to the existing category assignments in Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Further, only assignments to categories that are created and added by Actindo can also be deleted by Actindo. All assignments to categories, that are created or edited by Salesforce Commerce Cloud, are not touched by Actindo at all. Only the changes made in Actindo that do not affect the Salesforce Commerce Cloud categories are uploaded.

Inventory

For the initial product upload, the inventory is imported via a XML file, which is processed by an inventory import job. All changes in inventory of already uploaded products will be processed via the Open Commerce Cloud API. Since the inventory update via API runs without generating an inventory import job, no inventory import jobs are displayed even if the inventory is updated.

In Salesforce Commerce Cloud, inventories can be created. These inventories are synchronized to Actindo as inventory fields. The fields represent what is contained in the inventories.
In addition to the normal fields, custom fields can be defined for the inventory in Salesforce Commerce Cloud. To allow these additional fields, the Handle Inventory custom fields checkbox in the connection settings must be selected when configuring the connection settings, see Configure the Salesforce Commerce Cloud connection. Further the connection must be synchronized to apply all changes. The custom inventory fields for the products are displayed in the list of inventory attributes in Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Products > Select product > Tab Inventory > Button Edit > Sub-tab Attributes The fields can be defined in the Inventory module in Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Inventory

Product options

Product options are options that can be added to a product, for instance, a warranty to a product. There are two different types of product options in Salesforce Commerce Cloud:

• Local options
• Shared options

Local options are product defined. These options are currently not supported by Actindo.

Shared options are globally defined and are assigned to a product. These options are supported by Actindo even if they cannot be maintained by Actindo. As shared options are globally defined, they are the same for all products.

The shared options must be specified in Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Product Options

In Actindo, you must map the IDs of the shared options with the Constant value extension to the Shared Options (,-separated)(CommerceCloud Actind) destination attribute. The IDs of the shared options from Salesforce Commerce Cloud must be entered comma separated in the corresponding field in the Configuration section of the attribute mapping.

Product sets

Product sets are currently not supported by Actindo.

Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Products > Select product > Tab Product Sets

Image handling

The image handling is currently not supported by Actindo.

Order debug endpoint

The following endpoint is used to retrieve all details of a certain order in Salesforce Commerce Cloud, for instance if any problems with a certain order occur and you have to check the data the order contains:

/Actindo.Extensions.Actindo.CommerceCloud.OrderDebug.orderDebug?connectionId=x&orderNumber=x&siteId=x

The x in the endpoint above must be replaced by the corresponding parameter information:

• Connection ID of the applicable connection. The connection ID is displayed in the ID column of the connections list in Actindo, see User interface Connections: Omni-Channel > Settings > Tab CONNECTIONS
• Order number of the applicable order. The order number is displayed in the Number column of the orders list in Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Merchant Tools > Ordering > Orders > Button Find
• Site ID of the site where the order has been placed. The site ID is displayed in the ID column of the storefront sites list in Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Administration > Sites > Manage Sites

Inventory endpoint

The following endpoint is used to re-trigger the complete inventory upload in Salesforce Commerce Cloud:

/Actindo.Extensions.Actindo.CommerceCloud.ReuploadStock.trigger?connectionId=x

The x in the endpoint above must be replaced by the connection ID of the applicable connection. The connection ID is displayed in the ID column of the connections list, see User interface Connections. Otherwise, you have to know the order number by heart.