App overview

Summary

Akeneo Activation is a SaaS syndication app built and maintained by Akeneo. Its core function is to push product information from your Akeneo PIM to the retailers, marketplaces, and channels you work with — handling everything from catalog selection and data mapping to automated export and error reporting.

Because Activation is a SaaS product on the same modern infrastructure as other Akeneo PXM products, new features and channel connectors are deployed continuously without any action required on your side.

Easy configuration and set-up

Akeneo Activation is accessed directly from your Akeneo PIM under Connect > Connected Apps. Once connected, all channel and catalog configuration takes place in the Activation interface.

Key set-up capabilities include:

  • A guided configuration page for connecting Activation to your PIM and to target retailer or marketplace portals.
  • Quick set-up of Activation Channels, each of which holds one or more product catalogs tailored to a specific Family and retailer.
  • Support for mono-locale, mono-channel, and mono-store configurations as well as multi-locale, multi-channel, and multi-store configurations.

See Connect Akeneo Activation to your PIM for the full setup steps.

Data mapping capabilities

Akeneo Activation uses Catalogs for Apps technology to power its mapping and transformation solution. The mapping screen opens inside your Akeneo PIM from the Activation interface and displays the retailer's or marketplace's attribute requirements as targets.

Mapping capabilities include:

  • Map PIM source Attributes (or Association Types, Family, Categories, and static values) to retailer or marketplace target fields.
  • View required and optional fields, expected data types, and accepted value lists directly in the mapping screen.
  • Concatenate up to five PIM sources per target to build composite values.
  • Write data transformation logic using Akeneo's DSL (Domain Specific Language), or use the AI formula generator to produce transformation formulas from a plain-language prompt.

AI-powered mapping assistance

Akeneo Activation includes AI-assisted tools to speed up mapping:

  • Suggest — recommends the PIM source that best matches a given target, based on your catalog structure.
  • Generate mapping — applies AI suggestions in bulk across multiple targets.
  • AI confidence score and reasoning — each suggested source includes a confidence score and an explanation, so you can review and correct mappings efficiently.
  • Suggest a new attribute — if no suitable PIM Attribute exists for a required target, you can request a new one. A notification is sent to the PIM Admin, and you can track the request status in your PIM under My modelling suggestions.

See Select, map, and transform your product data for full mapping and transformation documentation.

Synchronization of categories, products, and product variants

Akeneo Activation exports product data from your Akeneo PIM to retailers and marketplaces, supporting all three PIM product structures: simple products, product models, and product variants.

Export capabilities include:

  • Automated product export to retailers and marketplaces via API, or via flat file (XLSX, CSV) for channels that do not support an API.
  • File-based exchange via SFTP or FTP connections.
  • Sync of images and other media stored in your Akeneo PIM or an external DAM.
  • Scheduled daily syncs to keep retailer and marketplace product detail pages up to date.
  • Delta export: only changed products are sent on subsequent exports, reducing processing time.

Catalog export reporting

Akeneo Activation provides real-time export reports accessible from the Reports tab and the Dashboard tab of each Activation Channel.

Reporting capabilities include:

  • Status of each export run: products fetched from the PIM, products sent to the channel, and — where the retailer supports it — products accepted by the channel.
  • Identification of export errors with log descriptions written for non-technical users.
  • Direct links from each error to the source of the issue in the PIM.
  • Dry-run export mode: validates your mapping and transformation without sending any data to the retailer or marketplace.

See Catalog export reporting for details.

Channel readiness and product grid

The Products tab inside an Activation Channel provides a product grid for reviewing how well your products meet the retailer's or marketplace's requirements, both before and after export.

From the grid you can search and filter products by readiness, export status, and error presence, sort by various product properties, sync the latest PIM updates, and download filtered results as an XLSX file. Clicking a product opens a detail view showing transformed attribute values, a Product readiness panel, an Errors panel, and an Activation Timeline with key lifecycle timestamps.

Enhanced content distribution

Akeneo Activation supports the distribution of enhanced content — such as Amazon A+ Content — created in a third-party application and associated with products in the PIM.

The workflow is:

  1. Create the enhanced content layout in a compatible third-party application.
  2. Publish the layout to your Akeneo PIM, where it is stored as a Reference Entity record.
  3. Associate the enhanced content with the relevant products or product families using a Reference Entity Attribute in the PIM.
  4. Map the Reference Entity Attribute to the enhanced content target (for example, A+ Document Template ID) in an Activation catalog.
  5. Export the catalog through Activation to distribute the enhanced content to the destination channel.

See Managing and distributing enhanced content for the full workflow.

Custom Channels

Custom Channels in Akeneo Activation let you ingest a retailer-provided XLSX or XLSM flat-file template and configure it as a self-service channel — without submitting a request to Akeneo. This is suited for retailers whose requirements cannot be met by standard Tailored Exports.

Custom Channels support required, optional, and conditionally required columns; hidden columns and limited or allowed values; multiple files or sheets; advanced spreadsheet formatting; and AI-assisted attribute mapping and transformation.

See Introduction to Custom Channels for more information.

Offer management

For channels that support offer data (pricing, stock, and condition), Akeneo Activation lets you view and manage product offers directly from the Activation Channel product grid. Offer data can be imported via the Offer API, FTP connections, or manual CSV upload, and exported — automatically or manually — from within the channel.

See Managing your product offers for details.

Order management

Akeneo Activation includes an order management module that acts as a bridge between marketplace order data and your external systems (ERP, OMS). The module fetches orders in real time from the marketplace, stores them, pushes them to a third-party system, and sends shipping confirmations back to the marketplace automatically.

The module also monitors the order flow and alerts you to errors, including connection issues and data disruptions.

Order management is currently supported for Amazon Seller Central, Mirakl-powered marketplaces, eBay, and Cdiscount.

See Manage orders within Activation for details.

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