Catalog Overview

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Catalog refers to a container or repository for product and content data, their related information within the Hybris Commerce platform. It is a structured way to organize, manage, and present products and their associated content in an e-commerce environment. Catalogs are used to create product listings, manage pricing and promotions, and provide a structured hierarchy for product organization. 

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Catalog management in Hybris refers to the process of organizing, maintaining, and optimizing product and content data within an e-commerce platform powered by Hybris Commerce. It involves the creation, editing, and distribution of product and content information to ensure that customers have access to accurate and up-to-date product/content listings. Effective catalog management is essential for providing a seamless shopping experience, improving product discoverability, and driving sales.

 

Hybris catalogs are are mainly of two types:

 

 

 

 

 

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1) Content Catalog: In Hybris Commerce, a content catalog is a crucial component that allows businesses to manage and organize content assets and information for their e-commerce platform. Content catalogs are used to create and maintain content-rich experiences for customers, helping to engage, inform, and convert them throughout their online shopping journey.

Content catalogs in Hybris provide a structured environment for managing various types of content, including text, images, videos, banners, and other multimedia assets.

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2) Product Catalog : Hybris offers a solid framework for creating and maintaining online product catalogs. A product catalog is a key element of Hybris that saves and arranges data regarding the goods you sell on your e-commerce website. A Hybris installation can have multiple catalogs, and each catalog can have multiple versions. 

Product catalogs are organized into categories. Categories help structure your product catalog by grouping similar products together. Products are the actual items you are selling, and they are associated with categories within catalogs. Each product has attributes such as name, description, price, and images.

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Catalog Versions

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Catalog versions represent different stages of your product and content catalog. Each catalog can have multiple versions, allowing you to manage and track changes to your product data over time. Common catalog versions include Online and Staged. Catalog versions maintain a history of changes, making it possible to roll back to previous versions if issues arise or if you need to revert to an earlier state.

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Types of Catalog Versions: 

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1) Staged Catalog Version:  The "Staged" catalog version is primarily used for staging and previewing changes to your product catalog. It serves as a sandbox environment where you can make modifications and experiment with product data changes before they go live. 

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Changes made in the staged catalog version are not immediately visible to customers. Instead, they are used for validation and testing purposes. This version allows you to review how the catalog will appear before publishing updates to the online catalog.

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The staged catalog version provides a controlled and isolated environment for making and validating changes. It helps ensure that any updates are thoroughly tested and reviewed.

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2) Online Catalog Version:  The "Online" catalog version represents the live and publicly accessible catalog that customers see when browsing your e-commerce website. It reflects the current state of your product catalog and is the version customers interact with for shopping.

 

The online catalog version is continuously updated to reflect changes in product data, such as new product additions, price changes, and stock availability, in real-time. Any changes made to the "Online" catalog version have an immediate and direct impact on the customer's shopping experience.

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Catalog Synchronization

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Catalog synchronization from a "Staged" catalog version to an "Online" catalog version is a critical process that involves moving changes and updates made in the staging environment to the live production environment. This process ensures that product data remains accurate and consistent for customers when they interact with your online store.

 

Before initiating catalog synchronization, you need to ensure that all necessary changes in the staged catalog version have been reviewed, tested, and are ready to go live. This includes checking product data, pricing, content, and any other catalog-related updates.

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Catalog Synchronization in Backoffice

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Catalog synchronization has multiple steps as explained below:

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Step 1: Select the catalog which you want to synchronize. Check all the necessary changes in the staged version you want to sync.

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Step 2: Select the target version you want to update.

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Step 3: Check the processes for the success/failure status. 

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Catalog Aware Item

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CatalogAware" items or "Catalog-Aware" items refer to products or items that are associated with a specific catalog or catalog version. Sometimes while creating the custom item type we have to create items which are catalog aware items. Catalog aware items are available for sync functionality. These item type are included when we are doing synchronization from Staged to online. 

 

 We have to add following custom properties in item declaration to make it catalog aware:

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1) catalogItemType: This will make this item type catalog item, enable the value as true. 

2) catalogVersionAttributeQualifier : This property will have the same catalogversion value which same item catalogversion attribute have. 

3) uniqueKeyAttributeQualifier: This value will be same as qualifier of unique attribute in the same item type and if there are multiple unique attributes then they would separate them by comma.

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1. <itemtype code="CustomCatalogAwareItem" autocreate=”true” generate=”true”>

2. <deployment table=" CustomCatalogAwareItem " typecode="12676"/>

3. <custom-properties>

4. <property name="catalogItemType">

5. <value>java.lang.Boolean.TRUE</value>

6. </property>

7. <property name="catalogVersionAttributeQualifier">

8. <value>"catalogVersion"</value>

9. </property>

10. <property name="uniqueKeyAttributeQualifier">

11. <value>"unicode"</value>

12. </property>

13. </custom-properties>

14. <attributes>

15. <attribute qualifier="unicode" type="java.lang.String">

16. <modifiers read="true" write="true" search="true" optional="false" unique=”true”/>

17. <persistence type="property"/>

18. </attribute>

19. <attribute qualifier="catalogVersion" type="CatalogVersion">

20. <modifiers read="true" write="true" search="true" optional="false"/>

21. <persistence type="property"/>

22. </attribute>

23. </attributes>

24. </itemtype>

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