Integrate PIM with Commerce Connect

  • Updated

You can integrate Optimizely Product Information Management (PIM) with Optimizely Commerce Connect 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. 

Step 1: Design your data

Consider how you want your Product Detail pages to look on your Commerce Connect 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?

Planning saves time and effort during your implementation. For example, you can match your Commerce Connect classes to PIM's product templates to reduce challenges when syncing products.  

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. Sync properties from Commerce Connect – PIM and Commerce Connect 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. The sync also pulls product relationship types, product classes, and languages. Commerce Connect has information in their property types, which you should import into PIM through an initial sync. 
  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 whether products require content for multiple languages to publish. 

Step 3: Load and publish your data

  1. Import product data – Create product records in PIM by importing spreadsheet 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 Commerce Connect.

Step 4: Maintain your data

After integrating PIM and Commerce Connect, 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 Commerce Connect websites. 
  2. Identify gaps – Use collections and workspaces to identify different sets of products with information gaps. 
  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.