Digital Showroom gets your product data from Akeneo PIM. You activate it once from your PIM as an Akeneo App. After that, Digital Showroom keeps your products up to date automatically, and your teams never have to re-enter product information. This article explains how to activate the connection, which authorizations it uses, how synchronization works, and what to do when it stops working.
To activate Digital Showroom, you need an Akeneo PIM user account that can connect Apps, and Digital Showroom must be part of your company's Akeneo subscription. If you are not sure, contact your Akeneo Customer Success Manager.
Activate Digital Showroom from Akeneo PIM
You start the connection from Akeneo PIM, not from Digital Showroom.
- Log in to Akeneo PIM.
- Go to Connect > App Store.
- Find Digital Showroom and click Connect.
- Review the authorizations Digital Showroom requests. See Authorizations requested by Digital Showroom.
- Confirm to authorize Digital Showroom.
When you confirm, Digital Showroom:
- Creates a catalog named Digital Showroom in your PIM. This catalog defines which products Digital Showroom can use. Akeneo PIM always creates it disabled, so you must enable and configure it. See Configure the Digital Showroom catalog.
- Sends an invitation email to the PIM user who activated the App. This person becomes the first Digital Showroom administrator and can then invite the rest of the team. See Manage users.
- Starts the first full synchronization of your products.
Until the invitation is accepted, Digital Showroom shows an Invitation Required page. Open the invitation email and follow the link to create your account.
Any PIM user without a Digital Showroom account who opens Digital Showroom from Akeneo PIM receives an invitation with the Administrator role. Control who can open the App in your PIM permissions, and check the user list in Digital Showroom regularly.
Configure the Digital Showroom catalog
The Digital Showroom catalog in Akeneo PIM sets the overall scope of products and values that Digital Showroom can show. Each Portfolio you create then narrows this scope for a specific audience.
- In Digital Showroom, go to Admin > Portfolios > PIM settings.
- Click PIM Catalog. The catalog opens in Akeneo PIM in a new tab.
- Enable the catalog.
- Set the product selection criteria, for example a Category or a Family.
- In the value filters, select the Channels, Locales, and currencies you want to use in Digital Showroom.
- Save the catalog.
Digital Showroom only offers the Channels, Locales, and currencies selected in the catalog when you configure a Portfolio. To learn more, see How to configure catalogs for Apps in the Akeneo PIM Help Center.
Authorizations requested by Digital Showroom
Digital Showroom never changes your products, Attributes, Families, or Categories. The only items it creates or changes in your PIM are the ones it owns: its catalog and its Excel export profile.
| Authorization | Why Digital Showroom needs it |
|---|---|
| Read products, catalog structure, Attribute options, Categories, Channel and Locale settings, association types | Display your products, their values, their Families and Attribute Groups, the Category tree, and associated products. |
| Read Asset Families and assets | Display product images, videos, and documents. |
| Read reference entities and their records | Display reference entity values, such as a brand or a designer. |
| Read, write, and delete catalogs | Create the Digital Showroom catalog, read its configuration, and recreate it if it was removed. These authorizations apply to App catalogs only, not to your product data. |
| Write export profiles, launch export jobs, and read export files | Generate Excel exports. Digital Showroom creates its own export profile in your PIM, runs it for the products a user selects, and downloads the resulting file. |
| Your identity (OpenID, email, profile) | Identify the PIM user who activates or opens the App, so Digital Showroom can invite them or sign them in. |
How product synchronization works
- First synchronization: after activation, Digital Showroom imports all the products of the catalog. Products appear progressively while the import runs. The duration depends on the size of your catalog, and you can start configuring your Portfolios in the meantime.
- Ongoing updates: Digital Showroom receives notifications through the Akeneo Event Platform when products, Attributes, assets, or reference entity records are created, updated, or deleted in your PIM, and updates its data automatically.
- Catalog changes: when you change the catalog's product selection in Akeneo PIM, Digital Showroom refreshes which products belong to it.
You do not need to launch any synchronization manually.
View your PIM settings
Go to Admin > Portfolios > PIM settings. The PIM Settings page shows:
- The number of available products: the products your PIM shares with Digital Showroom through the catalog.
- Selected channels: the Channels you can use in your Portfolios.
- Selected locales: the Locales in which users can view product information.
- Selected currencies: the currencies used to display prices.
Click PIM Catalog to open the catalog configuration in Akeneo PIM.
Troubleshooting
The App not accessible page appears
Digital Showroom is not activated for your company in your Akeneo subscription. Contact your Akeneo Customer Success Manager.
Some products are missing
- Go to Admin > Portfolios > PIM settings and check the number of available products.
- If the number is lower than expected, click PIM Catalog and check that the catalog is enabled and that its product selection criteria include the products.
- If the number is correct, check the product selection of the Portfolio. See Configure product selection.
Right after activation, the first synchronization may still be running: products keep appearing until it completes.
Excel export is unavailable
If users see Excel export unavailable, your connection was authorized before Digital Showroom needed the export authorizations. Digital Showroom notifies your PIM automatically. In Akeneo PIM, open Digital Showroom in your connected Apps and accept the updated authorizations. Excel exports work again right after.
The connection stops working
You cannot refresh the connection from Digital Showroom. To restore it, go through the activation again from Akeneo PIM: open Digital Showroom from Connect > Connected apps and confirm the authorizations. Digital Showroom then runs a new full synchronization.
If you remove the Digital Showroom App from Akeneo PIM, Digital Showroom deactivates the connection and deletes the product data it imported. Users can no longer browse products until you activate the App again and the new synchronization completes.