Overview

In Supplier Data Manager (SDM), a Project — also called a "Workflow" in the end-user interface — is the core organizational unit for managing supplier data. It groups together all the configuration needed to coordinate data collection and processing between your organization and its suppliers: field definitions, processing steps (modules), supplier access portals, output formats, and destination systems.

Project properties

Each Project in Supplier Data Manager has the following configurable properties:

• Organization: the organization to which the Project belongs.
• Name: a label used to identify the Project across the SDM interface.
• Description: an optional free-text description of the Project's purpose.

• Workflow state: indicates the operational stage of the Project:

  • Live: active production Projects receiving real supplier data.
  • Test: Projects used for testing and validation, not counted as production traffic.
  • Onboarding: Projects being set up for the first time. This is the default state for new Projects.

• Billing status: controls whether the Project is included in billing:

  • Billed: standard billable Projects. This is the default for new Projects.
  • Not Billed: Projects excluded from billing (for example, internal test Projects).

• Fields, Groups, Display Groups & Available Locales: the data fields available in this Project and how they are organized and localized.

• Steps: the ordered sequence of processing operations (modules) that incoming supplier data passes through. Each step corresponds to a specific SDM module. See the modules overview for the full list of available step types.

• Destinations: the external systems to which Supplier Data Manager exports processed data. A Project can have zero or more destinations. Each destination has:

  • Name: an identifier for the destination (for example, the name of the target system).
  • Type: the category of the destination system. Supported types are: PIM, ERP, CMS, Marketplace, PLM, OMS, MDM, Pricing, or Homegrown. The default type is PIM.

• Supplier Access: the supplier portal(s) associated with this Project, controlling which steps suppliers can access and submit data to.

• Output formats: the file format configurations used to generate downloadable export files at the end of a completed job.
• Variant Params: variant configuration options used when connecting SDM to Akeneo PIM.

Project step validation

The Project Step Validation section on the Project page lets you run a validation check across all active steps to detect configuration errors before they affect live jobs. This check also runs automatically in the background whenever you add or update a step.

The validation is purely informative — it does not block edits. Its purpose is to surface configuration problems you can investigate and resolve yourself. You can also copy a validation error message and paste it into the SDM AI Assistant, which will help explain the issue.

A Project can be in one of the following validation states:

• Unchecked: no validation has been run yet.
• Checking: a validation check is currently in progress.
• Success: all active steps passed validation with no errors.
• Error: one or more active steps have validation errors to review.

The screenshot above shows a Project in Success state in Supplier Data Manager, with the Project Step Validation section indicating all active steps have passed validation.

The screenshot above shows a Project in Error state in Supplier Data Manager, with the Project Step Validation section highlighting active steps that have configuration errors.