Having created your product catalogs within your activation channel, you can now utilize your PIM, which serves as the ultimate source of truth, to seamlessly choose, map, and refine your product data to align with the specific criteria of the retailer or marketplace

Overview

This feature consists of an export of product information. It helps you to select, map, and transform your product information to comply with the retailer's requirements.

As an example, consider a scenario where multiple retailers require product information but with distinct attribute structures:

• Retailer A necessitates the following attributes: "Identifier," "Product Name," "Description," and "Weight (Ounces)."
• Retailer B, on the other hand, expects attributes such as "Name in French," "Name in English," "Description 1," "ID," and "Weight (Kilograms)."

With this functionality, you gain the capability to effortlessly transmit your product information to the Akeneo Activation app. From the mapping screen, you can conveniently modify attribute names and perform unit conversions to accommodate the unique requirements of each retailer.

You can streamline your workflow directly within your Akeneo PIM by synchronizing it with the activation channel in the Akeneo Activation app, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the precise requirements of each retailer or marketplace. This process can be repeated as frequently as needed, eliminating the need for manual mapping adjustments every time you export products to a retailer.

Product Information Mapping screen

After creating your product catalogs within the Akeneo Activation app, when you select "Go to Mapping" for a specific catalog, you will seamlessly navigate to the catalog mapping interface within your PIM. From this screen, you will not only have access to the catalog you are currently editing but also see a comprehensive list of all other catalogs you have created in the Akeneo Activation app.

This consolidated view allows you to effortlessly search through all your catalogs, enabling you to efficiently update the mapping for any catalog that has been generated within the Akeneo Activation App directly from this interface.

On the Mapping and Filtering screen, you can choose which products to export and refine your selection using filters. This is also where you can create the structure of your mapping. Specifically, for a particular product family, you can view the requirements from the retailers or marketplace to accurately map and transform the data to meet the retailer's specific attributes.

You can view the full list of required, conditionally required, and optional attributes for a particular family on the retailer or marketplace side. Here are the main features available on the mapping screen:

1. The "Target Name" corresponds to the expected attribute as specified by the retailer or marketplace.
2. Attribute types are easily distinguishable by icons positioned to the left of their names, such as Text, Price, Image, or Measurement.
3. The total count of attributes specific to a given family on the retailer or marketplace is displayed here.
4. Orange dots indicate required or conditionally required attributes. Conditionally required attributes may not always be obligatory, depending on the values associated with other attributes. Once filled, the orange dot transitions to green, signifying a fully mapped attribute. Optional attributes are devoid of colored dots.
5. You can swiftly locate a particular attribute by entering its name, even if only partially, in the search bar.
6. This represents the source from the PIM that will be used to populate the retailer or marketplace attribute requirements.
7. The "Requirements Helpers" enable you to select the most appropriate source for each attribute. Whenever available, this information is derived from the retailer or marketplace-specific requirements for a given attribute, facilitating accurate mapping and data transformation.
8. For each attribute, you must designate one or more sources by choosing from a dropdown list of attributes from your PIM. The options available may vary depending on the selected attribute, and further operations will be explained subsequently.
9. You have the flexibility to remove a source, allowing you to refine the mapping as needed.
10. Upon completing the mapping and transformation process, clicking the "Save" button will preserve the entire configuration in your PIM, ready to be exported to the retailer or marketplace.

 

These details provide a comprehensive understanding of the catalog mapping process within the Akeneo Activation app, ensuring precise alignment with the retailer or marketplace attribute requirements

 

 

Errors on mapping

While mapping your products, should there be issues with the data you are trying to map and transform, error messages will come up and red dots will be displayed next to impacted attributes

 

Define your export data structure

Targets

We display the retailer or marketplace expected attribute type with iconography to make it easier for you to understand the retailer or marketplace expectations:

• String
• Boolean
• Integer
• Number
• Date
• Url (sometimes used to send images)
• String collection
• Measurement
• Price
• Limited List of String (possible values)

Sources

The available list of attributes for the source depends on the format expected by the retailer or marketplace

• Adding a source means selecting an attribute, a system property, or an association type
• You won’t be able to select a string if the retailer or marketplace expects a date for instance
• The goal is to improve the data quality on every channel
• You can add any attribute type from the PIM except the table attribute
• You can add association types: via product SKU or product model code
• You can add PIM properties (family, enabled, categories, identifier)
• You can generate static values
• We can have up to 5 sources per target if you want to concatenate
• Sometimes, based on the retailer or marketplace requirement, possible values are provided to help with the data transformation (see example below)

• Sometimes, based on the retailer or marketplace requirement, suggested values are provided to help with the data transformation

Source attribute compatibility scenarios while mapping your PIM data

Once you've added a source, different options are available depending on the attribute you selected. If your attribute has a value per locale or channel, you may have to select from which channel and/or from which locale you want the data to be exported. But for some attributes, more options are available. For instance, you can choose between exporting the code or the label of the attribute option and which separator (comma, semi-colon, pipe) you want, when applicable.

Working with operations on sources

You can use operations to share the most meaningful values for your stakeholders by adapting your PIM values differently to make sure they match what the retailers and marketplaces are expecting.

Operation depends on the selected source attributes. 

Below you can find the list of different operations available given your PIM attribute source and the destination target from the retailer or marketplace:

Here are the details of the different operations you can do:

Boolean: Yes/No replacement

Replace the default values with your value (only available for the "Yes/No" attribute or the "Enabled" system property).

Replacement

Replace the values with your own (only available for simple select, multi-select, reference entities single link or multiple link attributes).

Use default value when empty

Define a default value when the source value is empty.

Conversion

Convert measurement units within the same measurement family (only available for measurement attributes used as a source).

Rounding

Round measurement values, choosing from Round, Roundup & Round down, and define the number of digits - up to 12 - after the decimal separator (only available for measurement attributes used as a source).

Concatenation

Concatenate different sources by displaying up to 4 per column. Click on Add text to add more details and create a separation between sources.

Clean HTML tags

Clean all the HTML tags automatically in your text attributes used as a source.

Truncate

Truncate automatically the value in your text attributes used as a source. You can select after which character you would like to truncate

Case change

You can change the casing of the value in your text attributes used as a source. The different options are available to you:

• Keep current case
• Upper case
• Lower case
• Capital case
• Sentence case

Selection

Select the format of the value you want to map. For instance, you can select the label, code, separator, etc. This operation will allow you to decide exactly what product information you want to transform for each source.

Filtering your product catalog

From the filtering screen, you can add selection criteria to create your product selection for the particular family of products you are working with. 

By default, your entire product catalog will be selected (the amount of products will be displayed in the top part of the screen)

In clicking “the add selection criteria”, you can filter your selection by the same attribute sources that are available in the mapping screen.

Ex: you can filter by Status, Category, or Family, and add conditions and rules to fetch only specific products.

Once you're done with your selection, mapping, and transformation click on Save in the top right corner. This will save your family catalog mapping for the activation channel you are currently working with. Then, you can go back to the Akeneo Activation app to export your product catalog(s). You can learn more about it in the following article.