Select, Map and Transform Your Product Data in Your PIM

Summary

After creating your product catalogs in your activation channel, you can now use your Product Information Management (PIM) system as the main source of truth. This allows you to easily choose, organize, and adjust your product data to meet the specific requirements of the retailer or marketplace.

 

Overview

The outcome of this functionality is an export of product information from your PIM to your activation channel, making it ready to use. It helps you select, map, and transform your product information to comply with the requirements of retailers or marketplaces.

For example, consider a scenario where multiple retailers require product information but with different attribute structures:

  • Retailer A requires the following attributes: "Identifier," "Product Name," "Description," and "Weight (Ounces)."
  • Retailer B requires attributes such as "Name in French," "Name in English," "Description 1," "ID," and "Weight (Kilograms)."

From the mapping screen, you can easily and efficiently transform your data using Excel-like functions to meet the unique requirements of each retailer.

The catalog mapping screen in your PIM is automatically synchronized with the activation app, ensuring you always have the latest set of channel requirements. This process can be repeated as often as needed, eliminating the need for manual mapping adjustments every time you export products to a retailer.

 

Activation and Catalogs for Apps

The Activation app uses the catalogs for apps technology to power its mapping and transformation solution. You will see references and links to the catalogs for apps documentation on this page

 

 

Product Information Mapping screen

After creating your product catalogs in the Akeneo Activation app, selecting "Go to Mapping" for a specific catalog will take you directly to the catalog mapping interface within your PIM.

 

 

 

 

Configure the product data mapping 

On the Mapping and Filtering screen, you can choose which products to export and refine your selection using filters. Here, you can also create the structure of your mapping and transform your PIM data.

For any catalog created in your activation channel, you can view the requirements (the list of required and optional attributes) from retailers or marketplaces. This allows you to accurately map and transform the data to meet the specific attributes required by the retailer.

Here are the main features available on the mapping screen:

  1. Target Name: Corresponds to the expected attribute as specified by the retailer or marketplace.
  2. Attribute Types: Easily distinguishable by icons next to their names, such as Text, Price, Image, or Measurement.
  3. Attribute Count: Displays the total number of attributes specific to a given family on the retailer or marketplace.
  4. Attribute Indicators: Yellow dots indicate required or conditionally required attributes. Conditionally required attributes may not always be obligatory, depending on other attribute values. Once filled, the yellow dot turns green, signifying a fully mapped attribute. Optional attributes do not have colored dots.
  5. Search Function: Quickly locate a particular attribute by entering its name, even partially, in the search bar.
  6. Source Information: Shows the source from the PIM that will be used to populate the retailer or marketplace attribute requirements.
  7. Requirements Helpers: Enable you to select the most appropriate source for each attribute. This information is derived from the retailer or marketplace-specific requirements for a given attribute, facilitating accurate mapping and data transformation.
  8. Source Designation: For each attribute, you must designate one or more sources by choosing from a dropdown list of attributes from your PIM. The available options may vary depending on the selected attribute, with further operations explained subsequently.
  9. Source Removal: You can remove a source, allowing you to refine the mapping as needed.
  10. Save Configuration: Upon completing the mapping and transformation process, clicking the "Save" button will preserve the entire configuration in your PIM, ready to be exported to the retailer or marketplace.

 

 

Errors on mapping

While mapping your products, if there are issues with the data you are trying to map and transform, error messages will appear, and red dots will be displayed next to the affected attributes.

 

Define your export data structure

Targets

We display the retailer or marketplace expected attribute type with iconography to make it easier for you to understand the retailer or marketplace expectations:

  • String
  • Boolean
  • Integer
  • Number
  • Date
  • Url/Links (sometimes used to send images)
  • String collection
  • Asset Collection
  • Measurement
  • Price
  • Limited List of String (possible values)

To ease troubleshooting, both attribute target codes and labels are displayed on the mapping screen.

 

Sources

The available list of attributes for the source depends on the format expected by the retailer or marketplace

  • Adding a source means selecting an attribute, a system property, or an association type
  • You won’t be able to select a string if the retailer or marketplace expects a date for instance
  • The goal is to improve the data quality on every channel
  • You can add any attribute type from the PIM except the table attribute
  • You can add association types: via product SKU or product model code
  • You can add PIM properties (family, enabled, categories, identifier)
  • You can generate static values
  • We can have up to 5 sources per target if you want to concatenate
  • To help you identify attributes quickly, attribute types on the sources are displayed
  • Sometimes, based on the retailer or marketplace requirement, possible values are provided to help with the data mapping and transformation. For a given attribute target, these values are the only values accepted by the retailer/marketplace

 

  • Catalog for Apps allows you to fetch any attribute type as a source to map it to the target's requirement
  • Sometimes, based on the retailer or marketplace requirement, possible or suggested values are provided to help with the data transformation

 

Once you've added a source, different options are available depending on the attribute you selected. If your attribute has a value per locale or channel, you may need to select which channel and/or locale you want the data to be exported from. For some attributes, additional options are available. For instance, you can choose between exporting the code or the label of the attribute option and select a separator (comma, semi-colon, pipe) if applicable.

For more details on currency, variations mapping, replacement values and sources refer to this article.


 

Transform your PIM data to comply with channel requirements

To ensure your PIM data matches what retailers and marketplaces expect, you can use scalable and powerful operations to transform your data.

To do so, you can use the Transformation section and the available source codes for formula. Refer to this article for more details.

Operation and formulas available depend on the selected source attributes. We leverage an easy to use DSL (Domain Specific Language) to give you maximum flexibility when transforming your data. 

Please review the Akeneo function list page to learn more about transformation functions and how to best achieve the data transformation you need. Functions can be nested and used multiple 
 

 

Best practices to onboard the DSL transformation block easily

Use Ready-Made Examples:

  • Start with examples like merging product images into one string:
  • MERGE([image_1, image_2, image_3])
  • This gives you "image1.jpg, image2.jpg, image3.jpg" quickly.

Combine Text Easily:

  • Use CONCATENATE to join words and attributes. For example CONCATENATE("Product: ", Name, " - Color: ", Color)
  • This creates "Product: Shirt - Color: Blue".

Check Your Work as You Go:

  • Watch the preview as you build your formula to see if it works. If the result doesn’t look right, adjust the inputs or function.

Fix Text Formatting Fast:

  • If the text looks messy, clean it up with UPPER or PROPER: PROPER("lorem ipsum") Changes "lorem ipsum" to "Lorem Ipsum".

Test One Function at a Time:

  • Start simple and build up. For instance, try SPLIT to break a string: SPLIT("red,blue,yellow", ",")
  • This gives ["red", "blue", "yellow"]. Then, you can add more steps later.
 

 

 

Selection

Before applying the transformation, you might be asked to select the format of the value you want to map. For instance, you can select the label, code, separator, etc. This operation will allow you to decide exactly what product information you want to transform for each source (from your PIM).

 

 

 

Configure your catalog product selection

From the filtering screen, you can add selection criteria to create your product selection for the particular family of products you are working with. 

By default, your entire product catalog will be selected (the amount of products will be displayed in the top part of the screen)

 

In clicking “the add selection criteria”, you can filter your selection by the same attribute sources that are available in the mapping screen.

Ex: you can filter by Status, Category, or Family, and add conditions and rules to fetch only specific products.

Refer to this article or more details on the filtering capabilities.

 

Same product in more than one catalog

We do NOT recommend having the same product in more than one catalog's selection as this creates a risk of overwriting the information when exporting the catalogs to the channel

 

 

 

Once you're done with your selection, mapping, and transformation, enable your catalog and click on “save" in the top right corner. This will save your family catalog mapping for the Activation channel you are currently working with. Then, you can go back to the Akeneo Activation, you are ready for the next steps: export your product catalog(s). 

To learn more about how to manage your different catalogs, you can refer to this article

 

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