Setting Up Shared Catalogs

Summary

Create a new Shared Catalog

To start setting up Shared Catalogs, you must first create a Shared Catalogs export profile on Akeneo PIM.

Log in with a user account and ensure your have the export profile permission (more information in Manage the interface and actions accesses article)
Then, go to the Exports menu
And, click on Create export profile

Fill in the following fields with:
- A unique code
- A name to easily identify the catalog linked to this export profile

Then, select the option Send to Shared Catalogs in the job list.

Click on Save to finalize the export profile creation. You will be redirected to the export profile details screen, where you can then configure your Shared Catalog.

Configure which data your users see

Go to the Content tab to configure which data your users will access.

From this page, you must select a Channel and Locales. These fields allow you to filter product data your users will access in Shared Catalogs.

Then, you can choose which attributes you want to share. By default, all attributes are shared. To change this behavior, click Edit. A configuration page opens and you can drag and drop the attributes to display in your shared catalog. Click Save when you're done.

Shared Catalogs attribute order is the same as in the PIM. If you encounter issues, we recommend that you go to your PIM settings and manually reorder your attributes inside attribute groups.

Finally, using the Preset attribute filters field, you can choose which attributes will be available as filters in the shared catalogs product grid.

Configure which products your users see

To configure your catalog product selection, go to the Content tab.

The Filter the products section this part allows you to filter your products using product attributes and system properties such as Family, Category, Status, Completeness, or even use a list of Identifiers. Using the button Add attributes, you can add any attribute to use them to filter your products.

To know how to handle the filters in detail, look at Filter your product selection.

Please note that Shared Catalogs manages locales with text-only codes. Locales containing numbers should not be used to create a catalog.

To maintain high performance, Shared catalogs have the following product limits:

Serenity or Flexibility v7.0: Maximum of 200,000 products at creation.
Flexibility 6.0 or older: Maximum of 100,000 products at creation.

Please note that the limit may vary depending on the PIM activity (number of products updated per hour).

After creating the Shared catalog, you can increase the number of products, but it must not exceed 500,000.

Important: If your Shared catalog exceeds the product limit at creation, you cannot reset your catalog. E.g: if you are in Serenity and create a shared catalog with 200,000 products and then add another 200,000 products during next synchronization, totaling 400,000 products, you will not be able to reset or modify the catalog because Shared catalogs can only manage up to 200,000 products at a time. Therefore, you will need to proceed in batches.

This Recipients tab allows you to give access to the current Shared Catalog using email addresses.

Add Recipient

An email address identifies a recipient. To grant a new recipient access to your Shared Catalog, you must write their email address in the dedicated field and click on Add. The recipient is added, and their email address appears in the list.

To save time, you can add multiple recipients by Copy/pasting a list of email addresses with separators (space, comma, semicolon, or line break are supported) and then, click on Add. All email addresses will be automatically added to the recipient list.

The recipients will receive an email with instructions on “how to create an account” or, if they are already Shared Catalogs users, directly access the login page of the new Shared Catalog.

Don’t forget to click on Save and Share if you want to give direct access to your new recipient.

Remove a recipient

If you need to revoke one recipient's access to the Shared Catalog for any reason, use the cross icon to remove the recipient's email address from the list.

Don’t forget to click on Save and Share to validate your action. Otherwise, the email address won’t appear in the list, but the recipient will still have access to the Shared Catalog.

add recipient screen

To send a new invitation email to your recipient, you can delete it, save your Shared Catalog profile and only add it again after 10 minutes. Otherwise, the recipient will not receive the email as our sychronization process will detect the updates only every 10 minutes.

Customize the branding

To customize your Shared Catalog portal to fit your corporate brand identity, you have 3 options:

LOGO: Add your brand logo
COVER: Select a cover image for the portal login page
COLOR: Define an accent color for headings, some text, icons and some other UI elements.

Add / Update the logo

You can drag and drop or select a file to upload your logo. PNG and JPG formats are supported. The file's maximum size is 2 MB.

This image will be displayed on the Shared Catalogs login page. For an optimal appearance in both formats, we recommend an image in portrait orientation with dimensions of at least 1080px x 1280px in PNG or JPG format.

On the login page, the appearance of the cover image may vary depending on the size of a user’s browser. The zone in the center of the image can be considered a “safe-space” for the most important parts of your chosen image (e.g. if the image contains logo, text, etc).

Please follow the same process as for the logo.

Define or update the accent color

One accent color can also be selected. It will apply to specific areas of the Shared Catalogs portal and the PDF exports. To ensure good visibility and accessibility, choose a color highly contrasted against a white background (e.g., a navy blue will be more contrasted than a light pastel blue).

Remove these branding options

If you want to remove your logo, click on the cross in the right corner. A Shared Catalogs logo will be displayed by default if you haven't defined one yet. The exact process applies to the cover and the accent color.

You can customize one or all these options, or you can skip this step. In the latter case, the default settings will apply.

Cover & font color options are only available for Serenity & Flexibility version 7.0 PIM users

Configure PDF settings

To suit your brand guidelines, you can customize your PDF exports with a cover page and style options.

Manage your cover page

Upload your cover page

Go to the PDF settings tab of your export profile.
Click on Upload Cover. A new modal window will appear.
Fill in the required information:
• Name: Enter the name of your cover. This name will appear in the export configuration popin on Shared Catalogs.
• Upload cover: Upload the cover file in PDF - A4 format (the file size must not exceed 10MB).
• Status: Choose whether to activate or deactivate the cover.
• Set as default cover: Check this option if you want this cover to be the default for future exports (users can still choose a different cover if they prefer).
Once all fields are filled, click Save.

Edit the Akeneo default cover

Go to the PDF settings tab of your export profile.
Click on Upload Cover. A new modal window will appear.
Fill in the required information:
• Upload cover image: Upload the cover image in PNG or JPG format (the file size must not exceed 10MB).
• Status: Choose whether to activate or deactivate the cover.
• Set as default cover: Check this option if you want this cover to be the default for future exports (users can still choose a different cover if they prefer).
Once all fields are filled, click Save.

Adapt PDF style

Font

You can now set the font for all text and titles in your PDF export.

List of available fonts:

Lato (default)
Roboto
Open Sans
Lora
Merriweather
Montserrat
Source Code Pro
PT Serif
Noto Sans
Playfair Display

Font color

Select a color for your text and titles using a hex code.

Background color

Choose a color to use for your document background using hex code.

Branding color

Choose a color to use as an accent for title underlines using hex code.

Logo

Upload a PNG or JPG logo to display at the top center of each page (except the cover page).

Recommended size: 270px x 50px
Maximum file size: 10MB

Congratulations on creating a Shared Catalog! In a few minutes, the recipients will receive an email with instructions on how to access the new shared catalog.

Do not worry if all the products are not immediately visible in the newly created Shared Catalog. Depending on its size it can take some time to synchronise everything properly.

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