Integrate PIM with Configured Commerce

  • Updated

You can integrate Optimizely Product Information Management (PIM) with Optimizely Configured Commerce to manage all aspects of your ecommerce data. Some common patterns and best practices can help you with this integration, and you can customize it to fit your needs. 

The basic process involves: 

  • Design, configure, and load data.
  • Publish data to a sandbox site before your launch.
  • Maintain the catalog and publish changes after your site is live.

To view how your PIM implementation fits in with your overall Configured Commerce implementation, see the Implementation Timeline.

The following steps have dependencies and impacts on subsequent steps. Configure your property groups and properties, product templates, and categories before loading product data as a best practice.

Step 1: Design your data

Consider how you want your Product Detail pages to look on your Configured Commerce website. Planning saves time and effort during your implementation. See Design considerations for your data.

  • What information should be shown for each product?
  • How do you want customers to browse or search for products?
  • What product images or other assets do you want to include?

Step 2: Configure the integration

Configure the systems to work together.

  1. Organize your team – Understand PIM's roles and permissions, then configure your workflow and assignment property. Add team members and assign them to the appropriate products and roles. 
  2. Configure properties and property groups – PIM and Configured Commerce use properties to structure and define the product data model in the catalog and storefront. Properties include data elements that define your products for internal purposes like shipping weight or external purposes like attributes visible to a customer on your site. You should create property groups and then pull those groups into product templates.
  3. Create product templates – After defining your properties and property groups, create templates matching your product lines. Product templates define the properties of similar products used in PIM, such as shoes, shirts, and clothing accessories. Templates also enforce data governance and support auditing for incomplete products using properties designated as required or recommended.
  4. Define your taxonomy – Create categories for your customers to browse.
  5. Configure Settings – Configure system settings to customize your experience in PIM. For example, you can configure image sizes before loading assets.

Step 3: Load and publish your data

  1. Import product data – Create product records in PIM by importing data from your enterprise resource planning (ERP), suppliers, or other data sources and feeds. You should also import translations, related products, and product category assignments.
  2. Organize assets – Organize and import digital assets like product images, manuals, regulatory disclosures, and other documents that customers may need.
  3. Publish products – Begin publishing products into Configured Commerce.

Step 4: Maintain your data

After integrating PIM and Configured Commerce, maintain your product information, assets, and assignments.

  1. Maintain your product information – Keep your product information updated in PIM. You can search and filter for products you are assigned to find products to update, edit multiple products directly in the results grid, or select a product to edit in the product detail view. When your product data is 100% complete, you can approve and publish them to your Configured Commerce websites. 
  2. Identify gaps – Use collections and workspaces to identify information gaps, fix product data issues, and locate what products to work on now.
  3. Create product variants – Product variants let you group product variations, such as sizes or colors. Product variants require a separate product for each variation (the child product) and group them under a parent product.
  4. Use the dashboard and reports – The PIM dashboard provides an overview of your product data. Use the product dashboard to view an overview of your product data, with links pinned to collections and products by status. 

Step 5: Publish changes

Continue to update and publish your product information as needed. Your publishing process follows the workflow for review and approval you established during configuration. See also Publish Optimizely Product Information Management updates to Optimizely Configured Commerce.