Overview

The Channel Requirement Change Dashboard is a page designed to keep you informed about changes in requirements coming from retailers or marketplaces you work with. 

By listing major requirement changes impacting the catalogs sent to retailers and marketplaces, you can stay proactive and ensure your feeds remain accurate and complete.

Main features

• Understand changes in channel requirements: in a dashboard updated daily, you can easily review all the changes channels you work with generate, especially changes that may potentially block your syndication feeds.
• Make necessary updates:  each change is directly linked to the mapping in your pim where you can simply make updates to your product information. You can promptly act to improve catalog readiness, ensuring product uptime on your sales channels.

How does it work?

The dashboard aggregates the changes of all of your activation channels, it will be accessible from the left panel of the Akeneo Activation app, in a new tab called Requirements. A click on the tab will take you to the new dashboard.

Once on the dashboard, you will only see the change for the channels you are connected to and for the product types (families) you have created catalogs for.

Dashboard Functionalities

Requirement changes table

From here key data points are available in various columns to help you sort through the changes and refine your analysis

• Criticality: you can understand if a change potentially impacts your ability to syndicate your product data with labels for blocking and non-blocking. (read more about blocking changes in the dedicated section below) 
• Channel: you can see the activation channel the requirement changes came from
• Family: you can see the product type the requirement change belongs to 
• Date: you can see the date when we received the change
• Change type: you can see the type of change received by the retailer/marketplace. It could belong to an attribute and its values or a product type (family). 
  • See list below
    • Addition of a new product family
    • Change in attribute required-ness 
    • Addition, removal, or change in the attributes list
    • Change in attribute: 
      • Type
      • Label
      • Measurement family
    • Change in an attribute possible or suggested values
  • We show the before and after values where applicable, including attributes added, deleted, or changed in requirement status
    • ie:  a new attribute has been added, the label of that attribute and if it is required or not
• Attribute: you can see the label or the code of an attribute

Blocking Changes

Not all changes in requirements have the same level of criticality. Some might be potentially blocking your syndication feeds (for example: a new required attribute added that you were not aware of and therefore did not include in your mapping). We have defined a special filter: criticality, which includes if a requirement change creates a risk for your export to fail. We have also noted these changes with the label: Blocking/Non-blocking.

Here is the list of potentially blocking changes:

• Requirement status change
• Required attribute added
• Attribute type changed
• Measurement family changed
• Possible/Suggested values changed

Filtering Options

In the table, you can refine the list of changes by applying various filters:

• Criticality: simple select filter identifying which changes are potentially blocking or not
• Channels: multi-select filter for all the channels you are connected to
• Family: multi-select filter for all the families you have created catalogs for (this is indexed to the channels you are connected to).
• Types of Changes: simple select filter refining the type of change.
  • Attribute added
  • Attribute label changed
  • Attribute removed
  • Attribute type changed
  • Family added
  • Measurement family added
  • Possible values changed
  • Required-ness changed
• Time: simple-select filter change refining the date for when we received the change(s).
  • All (default option)
  • Today
  • Yesterday
  • This week (starting on Mondays)
  • Last week (previous 7 rolling days)
  • This month
  • Last month

To help you understand how many requirements change your default or filtered view return, we display the total count in the top right section of the filters section.

Impacted Catalogs - Direct Access to Catalog Mapping 

For each requirement change level, we point you to the catalog(s) impacted by the change and offer you direct access to the mapping in the PIM to make adjustments based on the type of change. Follow these steps to quickly act when blocking change appears.

1. When reviewing a requirement change, click on the impacted catalog(s) button in the change type column
2. In the change type modal, click on the open mapping button
3. You are then taken to your PIM, at the catalog mapping level, where you can make mapping changes (you still need to search for the attribute in the mapping search bar)
4. Click save to confirm your mapping changes and get your product catalog ready for the next export