Meet the "Connect" menu

You need to gather all your product data, which is why you use Akeneo PIM. But you also need to retrieve product data or share them, right?

Indeed, for your PIM to work correctly, you first need to connect it to the data flows that are coming from your ERP, DAM, or even MDM.
Once your products are enriched into the PIM, you need them to be delivered to all your channels, such as syndication, e-commerce, or publishing platforms.
Maybe, you also need to connect your PIM to a translation tool to enrich your data more efficiently. You can also consider combining the PIM with BI tools to get reports on the enrichment workload.

In the PIM, there is a concept that helps you connect with any third party you might think of to boost the powers of your PIM. It is called Connections.

Want to know more? Ellen is going to give you some pointers on what this amazing feature is about.

To get a complete definition of what connections are, you can read our article What is a connection?!

Steps to a successful connection

Wondering how to properly connect your PIM to third-party solutions such as ERPs, DAMs, MDMs, e-commerce platforms, translating, and syndication tools...?

You have landed in the right place! Here are the 3 crucial steps for a good connection.

Step 1 | Create a connection

To do so, you can follow the dedicated article right here.

Step 2 | Activate an existing extension or develop your own from scratch

It totally depends on which third-party you want to connect with.

Thanks to our community and partners, plenty of extensions are ready to be activated on your PIM. To find them, go to your PIM Connect menu, click App Store, and here you are!

The App Store page allows you to access Akeneo App Store and display all the extensions compatible with your PIM. For example, if you want to connect your PIM to Magento 2, we provide the Akeneo connector.

So, your first reflex should be to check if there is already an existing extension on the Akeneo App Store for your needs.

There may be some third parties for which no API-based extension was created and available on the Akeneo App Store. In this case, you will have to develop it to cover your own needs.

We provide guides to help you with this task. For example, here is how you can connect to a DAM with our API. If you can't find a guide covering your use case, we recommend you get familiar with our API documentation.

Step 3 | Use the credentials in the extension

That's the easiest part. When you create your connection, the PIM provides you with credentials: a client id, a secret, a username, and a password. Put those credentials into your extension. They will be used to authenticate your API calls.

And... that's it! 😃

You can now enjoy your connection. To monitor how your connection is working, you can go to Data flows. Eager to know more? Click here!

You still have questions on how to connect the PIM to third parties properly? Our API website has a "How to connect the PIM" guide. Don't hesitate to have a look at it!

Why should I use the API?

You may have understood we recommend using our API to create a PIM extension.

Here is why.

1. The API is the most stable way to create extensions. It means that API-based extensions don't need to be migrated whenever your PIM is updated to a newer version. This is a big plus when you know that the cost of a migration project is usually quite high.
2. We worked a lot to improve the performance of the API. For example, when exporting products through the API, you will experience a better speed than using our basic CSV export stack.
3. This is the only way to connect the PIM for our SaaS customers. You can use it to create workflows around your PIM that will create or request products, depending on your needs.

You can also find more reasons to connect the PIM via the API directly on our API documentation website!