The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
The integration between WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Order Management combines the industry-leading front-end capabilities of WebSphere Commerce with the proven, back-end order and inventory management features of Sterling Order Management.
To troubleshoot integration issues, review status codes.
Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
External systems integration is a key feature of the WebSphere Commerce solution. In WebSphere Commerce business logic is enabled for integration and built-in adapters and interfaces are provided for common integration points. Additionally, the WebSphere Commerce integration solution leverages integration standards by using various IBM connectivity solutions.
You can integrate IBM Watson Campaign Automation with WebSphere Commerce so that transactional emails are sent by IBM Watson Campaign Automation.
The integration of WebSphere Commerce and IBM Sterling Order Management delivers the strengths of both products.
For the Sterling Order Management integration with WebSphere Commerce, some prerequisites, system requirements, assumptions, and limitations apply.
The sample configuration for integrating with the Aurora starter store provides a preconfigured order management-to-storefront environment that you can test to understand the significant features of the WebSphere Commerce integration with Sterling Order Management.
Configuring and deploying WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Order Management for integration includes running provided activation scripts, defining properties for your implementation, granting permissions, and triggering agent and integration servers.
You can refer to this information if an error occurs during installation, configuration, or start up.
Errors can occur at various points within the order creation process. These are the errors that can occur during the order process, how the system attempts to resolve them, and (if applicable) what is required to configure error reporting.
The following table shows causes and corrective action for error codes encountered during pricing and promotion.
The following table maps the coupon validation status codes to the message and status attributes that are displayed to the end user.
During the order process, WebSphere Commerce uses order transfer status codes to indicate whether an order is transferred to or from Sterling Order Management. These codes are as follows:
To understand how Sterling Order Management integrates with WebSphere Commerce, review mappings between the two systems and integration flows.
WebSphere Commerce provides a listener for IBM MQ for inbound requests, and an adapter for IBM MQ for outbound requests, to integrate back-end, and external systems with WebSphere Commerce.
You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with an external content management system through a punch-out window from Management Center and through the web feed utility. You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with IBM Web Content Manager to provide Management Center users the ability to associate IBM Web Content Manager content with WebSphere Commerce objects.
IBM Worklight is a mobile application platform that you can use to develop cross-platform hybrid applications for the Aurora starter store.
Facebook integration relies on several Facebook plugins to add the Connect to Facebook, Like, and Send buttons to the Aurora starter store.
WebSphere Commerce provides a framework that you can configure to integrate your store with an external Web analytics solution. This framework includes a tag library that you can use in store page JSP files to provide appropriate analytics information to the external analytics system.
IBM Product Recommendations is an IBM Digital Analytics solution that you can subscribe to that automatically generates personalized product recommendations on the storefront. The recommendations are based on the browsing, shopping, and purchasing behavior of individual customers. If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you can display recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations on your store pages.
You can integrate Management Center with IBM Marketing Center, a cloud-based, all-in-one solution that combines customer analytics with real-time marketing. To integrate with IBM Marketing Center, you must configure the WebSphere Commerce biConfig.xml file to enable the integration. You can also configure single-sign on between Management Center and IBM Marketing Center.
To simplify the process of collecting and sending customer shopping behavior data to analytics providers, integrate WebSphere Commerce with IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX). IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX) is offered as part of the IBM Digital Analytics solution.
If your site is integrated with IBM Enterprise Marketing Management applications, such IBM Digital Analytics, IBM Product Recommendations, or IBM Marketing Center, you can administer the application features that your site uses. For example, you can administer IBM Digital Analytics based customer segments and import recommendations for IBM Product Recommendations.
Dynamic Pricing 16.4 is a cloud-based pricing system that analyzes real-time market data to provide suggestions on how merchandisers can react to competitor pricing and shifts in market conditions. Data can be fed to Dynamic Pricing from multiple sources, including WebSphere Commerce. You can configure WebSphere Commerce to export pricing data to Dynamic Pricing for pricing analysis and adjustment. The adjusted pricing data can then be imported from Dynamic Pricing to WebSphere Commerce, so the prices can be propagated to your live store front.
You can integrate Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX) with WebSphere Commerce so that you can import and export WebSphere Commerce customer segments as UBX audiences between third-party applications.
You can integrate Watson Content Hub with WebSphere Commerce, so that you can manage content in Watson Content Hub and then use the content in the Management Center Catalogs tool.
IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules BRMS is a business rule management system that allows developers to easily build and deploy rule-based applications that automate fine-grained, variable decisions used by business systems. You can use WebSphere ILOG JRules to build pricing rulesets, and then reference those rulesets from WebSphere Commerce price rules you create in Management Center.
WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.