Key concepts
Digital Showroom uses a set of core concepts that appear throughout the application. This article defines each concept and explains how they relate to each other, so you can set up and use Digital Showroom more effectively.
Portfolio
In Digital Showroom, a portfolio is a curated selection of products shared with specific user groups. Think of it as a customized view of your product catalog designed for a particular audience.
Each portfolio is linked to one PIM Channel and has its own configuration for:
- Which locales (languages) are available
- Which currencies are available for prices
- Which products are included (based on root category and filters)
- How products are displayed (grid columns, filters, details page layout)
- Which user groups have access
An administrator can create multiple portfolios, each tailored to a different audience. For example, one portfolio for your French sales team showing products in French with EUR prices, and another for your German buyers showing products in German with EUR and CHF prices.
See Manage your portfolios for instructions on creating and configuring portfolios.
Channel
In Digital Showroom, a Channel is an Akeneo PIM concept that represents a distribution context. Each Channel defines which locales and currencies are available for product data.
Every portfolio in Digital Showroom is linked to one PIM Channel. The Channel determines which locales and currencies the portfolio can use.
To learn more about Channels, see What is a channel? on the Akeneo PIM help center.
Locale
In Digital Showroom, a locale is a language-region combination (for example, en-US for English - United States, or fr-FR for French - France).
Digital Showroom uses two types of locales:
- Interface locale: The language of the Digital Showroom interface (menus, buttons, labels). Supports 11 languages: German (de-DE), English UK (en-GB), English US (en-US), Spanish (es-ES), French Belgium (fr-BE), French France (fr-FR), Italian (it-IT), Dutch (nl-NL), Polish (pl-PL), Portuguese (pt-PT), and Swedish (sv-SE).
- Catalog locale: The language used for product data (names, descriptions, attribute values). Available catalog locales depend on your PIM Channel configuration.
These are independent: you can browse the Digital Showroom interface in French while viewing product data in English.
Currency
In Digital Showroom, currencies determine how product prices are displayed. Available currencies come from the PIM Channel linked to your portfolio.
End users can switch between available currencies using the currency selector in the navigation bar.
User Group
In Digital Showroom, a user group is a collection of users who share access to the same portfolios. User groups are the bridge between users and portfolios:
- An administrator creates user groups and assigns portfolios to each group.
- Users are added to one or more groups.
- A user can access all portfolios assigned to their groups.
For example, a "France Sales" user group might have access to the "France B2B" and "France Retail" portfolios.
If your organization uses SSO (Single Sign-On), user groups can be mapped to SSO groups for automatic user provisioning. Users are then automatically assigned to the correct groups — and therefore portfolios — based on their SSO identity, without requiring manual assignment by an administrator.
See Manage user groups and Set up SSO for details.
Roles and permissions
Digital Showroom has two user roles:
| Role | Access |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Full access: create and configure portfolios, manage users and groups, set up SSO, customize branding, view analytics |
| User | Browse products in assigned portfolios, search and filter, view product details and assets, generate PDF exports |
An administrator assigns a role to each user when sending the invitation. See Manage users for details.
PIM connection
The PIM connection is the secure link between Digital Showroom and your Akeneo PIM. It uses the Connect Apps framework (OAuth 2.0) to authorize Digital Showroom to read your product data.
Once connected, product data synchronizes automatically in real time via the Akeneo Events Platform. When you update a product in the PIM, the changes appear in Digital Showroom within minutes.
See Connect your PIM for setup instructions.
Catalog
In Digital Showroom, the catalog refers to the Akeneo PIM Catalogs for Apps configuration that defines the overall scope of products shared with Digital Showroom. This catalog is set up inside your Akeneo PIM after you activate the Digital Showroom Connect App.
The catalog determines the total pool of products, locales, and Channel available to Digital Showroom. Portfolio-level filters then further refine this scope per portfolio.
You can view the total number of products available and navigate to the catalog configuration directly from Admin > PIM Settings in Digital Showroom.
To learn more, see PIM prerequisites and How to configure a catalog for an App on the Akeneo PIM help center.
Asset
In Digital Showroom, an asset is a media file attached to a product in the Akeneo PIM. Assets can be:
- Images (PNG, JPG, etc.)
- Videos (MP4, etc.)
- Documents (PDF)
Assets are organized into asset families in the PIM. In Digital Showroom, assets are surfaced to end users as Medias — this abstracts the underlying PIM asset family configuration. End users can browse, preview, and download product medias from the media gallery without needing to understand how assets are structured in the PIM.
PDF export
In Digital Showroom, a PDF export is a generated PDF document containing selected products with their details and assets. End users can:
- Select up to 100 products from the product gallery.
- Configure the export (name, sort order).
- Generate a PDF document.
Exports are available for download for 30 days after generation. See Export products to PDF and Manage your exports for details.