Overview

Akeneo Activation enables you to distribute enhanced content, created in a third-party system, to your various retailer and marketplace channels. This capability fetches, stores, and transforms your enhanced content to meet the specific requirements of each destination, starting with A+ Content for Amazon.

The journey for distributing enhanced content follows a standard data flow:

• Creation: Enhanced content is built in a third-party application (easily connected to the Akeneo ecosystem)
• Association: The content is then sent to your Akeneo PIM and associated with the relevant products or product families.
• Distribution: The content is mapped within an Akeneo Activation catalog and distributed to the downstream channel.

End-to-End Workflow

The following steps outline the complete process, from creating your content to verifying its delivery to the destination channel.

1. Create Enhanced Content in a Third-Party System

First, create your enhanced content using an external application, such as the Plezio Pitch App by Sitation. While the specific steps depend on the application, the general process is as follows:

1. Launch the application from your Akeneo PIM's Connect menu.
2. Once in the app, create a new layout and give it a name.
3. Select the Akeneo PIM family you wish to use as a data source to populate the layout.
4. Construct the layout content blocks, ensuring they meet the destination channel's specifications (e.g., Amazon's A+ Content requirements on image sizes).
5. Populate the content blocks by fetching data directly from your Akeneo PIM attributes or external URL's.
6. Save the layout in the app. You can preview the final document using a PIM product's UUID to validate it against different products within the family.
7. Publish the completed layout to your PIM.

• Example of the layout creation using the Plezio Pitch 

2. Manage Content Layouts in the PIM

Once published from the third-party system, the enhanced content layout is saved in your PIM as a Reference Entity. The key identifier for this layout is the layout ID, which is stored as an attribute within the reference entity record.

3. Associate Enhanced Content with Products

Next, you must link the enhanced content layout to the appropriate products or product families within your PIM.

1. Create a PIM Attribute: In your PIM, create a new attribute to store the association.
2. Attribute Type: Set the type to Reference Entity single select or Reference Entity multi-select, depending on whether you need to associate one or multiple layouts per product. 
3. Assign Attribute to a Family: Add this newly created attribute to the specific product family that will use the enhanced content.
4. Associate the Layout: Navigate to a product's detail page. In the new attribute field, select the enhanced content layout(s) you want to associate with that product. This can be done manually per product or automated using bulk actions, the rules engine, or workflows.

4. Map Enhanced Content in an Activation Catalog

1. With the enhanced content and product association established in the PIM, you can now map the content in Akeneo Activation.
2. Navigate to your Activation Channel and open an existing catalog or create a new catalog.
3. Go to the Mapping page.
4. In the target attribute search bar, look for A+ Document Template ID.
5. To map with a PIM Source, select the reference entity attribute you created in the previous step.
6. Once selected, a dropdown with multiple reference entity attributes will be available; select the specific reference entity attribute that stores the layout identifier, which is layoutID.
7. Complete the mapping for any other required attributes.
8. Save your mapping.

5. Distribute Content via Activation

Once the mapping saved, Activation will fetch the complete enhanced content layout file associated with your products (along with all the data composing the layout). You can verify this association in the products tab of your Activation channel.

You can now distribute the enhanced content:

• Manually: Launch the export job from the main task launcher in Activation.
• COMING SOON Automatically: Configure a schedule for the export job in your Activation channel settings. 

6. Verify at the Destination

Finally, confirm that the enhanced content has been successfully delivered and associated with its corresponding product on the destination channel. For example, to verify A+ Content, log in to your Amazon Seller Central account and check the product's A+ Content manager to see if the new content appears.

You can create, update, and distribute your enhanced content as often as needed using this workflow.