In Supplier Data Manager (SDM), a field is the core data unit that represents a product attribute — for example, a product name, EAN code, or description. Every field in an SDM project has a set of configurable properties that control how it is identified, validated, transformed, and displayed.
This article describes each field property available in Supplier Data Manager.
Field identifier and label
Each field in Supplier Data Manager has two naming properties:
-
name: The unique technical identifier for the field. Used as the key in API payloads and configuration files. -
label: The human-readable display name shown in the SDM interface. Labels can be localized — for example, you can define anen_USvalue for English-speaking users.
Field type
The type property determines what kind of data the field accepts and how Supplier Data Manager validates and converts values during the Normalisation step.
SDM supports the following field types:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
string |
Free-text value. No constraints are applied — special characters, accents, and spaces are all accepted. |
html |
HTML-formatted text. |
number |
Numeric value. No constraints are applied by default. Supports complementary options: decimals, number_pattern, and number_substitution. |
select |
A value from a predefined list. Supports both single-select and multi-select modes via the multiple option. |
boolean |
A true or false value. |
url |
A URL string. SDM validates that the value is a well-formed URL. |
image_url |
A URL pointing to an image. SDM generates an image preview within the interface. Videos are not supported for this type. |
media |
Triggers the media files feature for file-based uploads. |
date |
A date value. The format property on the field determines how the date string is parsed. |
null |
Forces the field value to be empty. |
Each type supports additional complementary options configurable via the SDM API.
The following types are not supported in Supplier Data Manager:
hours, video, document, measures, price, composition, table attribute
For some of these, a manual workaround exists. See PIM Attribute Handling and Limitations.
Rules
The rules property is a list of validation rules applied to the field during the Normalisation step. Rules are hard requirements — if a field fails a rule, the job is blocked and the user cannot advance to the next step.
Each rule entry has the following sub-properties:
-
negate: Whether to invert the rule logic (take the opposite of the validation result). -
error: The error message displayed when the rule validation fails. -
group: The group this rule belongs to, used for conditional rule evaluation.
All rules on a field are combined with AND logic: every rule must pass for the field to be valid. SDM does not evaluate rules on empty fields unless the rule type is required, required_with, required_without, or required_on — or unless the field's requirement_level is set to required.
For the full list of rule types and their configuration options, see Rule & warning types.
Warnings
The warnings property works like rules, but is non-blocking: when a warning condition is not met, the user is alerted but can acknowledge the issue and continue to the next step.
Warnings share the same types and configuration options as rules. For details, see Rule & warning types.
Transformations
The transformations property defines a list of data manipulation operations applied to the field value during the Normalisation and Value Mapping steps. Transformations let you clean and reformat supplier-provided values — for example, standardizing text capitalization, removing extra whitespace, or padding short codes to a fixed length.
Transformations are applied in the order they are listed in the configuration. For the full list of available transformation types and their parameters, see Transformation types.
Requirement level
The requirement_level property controls how Supplier Data Manager handles empty values for the field:
-
required: The user must provide a value. An empty required field blocks the user from advancing past the current step. -
important: The user is warned if the field is empty but can still proceed. -
optional(default): The user is not warned or blocked if the field is empty.
Requirement levels can be overridden per step using the max_requirement_level step configuration. For details, see Requirement levels in SDM.
Description
The description property provides a localized explanatory text for the field, displayed to users in the SDM interface to help them understand what value is expected.
Mapping
The mapping property links the field to a source column in the supplier's input file. For details on configuring field mapping, see Mapping.
Force mapping
The force_mapping property locks the field's mapping configuration. When enabled, the mapping set for this field cannot be changed during the Mapping step.
Display group
The display_group property assigns the field to a display group, which controls how fields are grouped and presented in the SDM interface. For details, see Fields, Groups, Display Groups & Available Locales.
Default value
The default property specifies a fallback value that Supplier Data Manager applies when the field is empty or when the provided value cannot be converted to the expected type.