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User Guide
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.
Operating
IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce
The IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce, or Management Center, is a suite of tools to support store management, merchandising, and marketing tasks for business users (Sellers, Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers, and others).
Commerce Composer tool
Create pages and build layouts for your store directly in Management Center without involving IT by using the Commerce Composer tool. Take advantage of the tool's page design and management functions to improve your productivity and give you more control over the customer experience.
Managing layouts
The Commerce Composer tool provides templates and widgets for you to build layouts for your store pages without involving IT.
Layout assignments for category pages
The Commerce Composer tool provides templates and widgets for you to create layouts for department and subcategory pages. You can create a new layout and assign it to a single category page, multiple category pages, or all category pages in your catalog.
Example layout for a single category page
You can create a layout to render a single category page. This scenario is simple because you need to consider only one category when you are choosing and populating the widgets in the layout.

User Guide
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.
- Planning
  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.
- Installing
  Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Deploying
  The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
- Operating
  - IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce
    The IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce, or Management Center, is a suite of tools to support store management, merchandising, and marketing tasks for business users (Sellers, Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers, and others).
    - Planning to use Management Center
      If you are using WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, consider using Management Center to manage your store.
    - management-center/refs/rtfgetstart.htm
    - Management Center keyboard shortcuts
      Use the Management Center keyboard shortcuts to access user interface functions or complete tasks, using a single key or combination of keys.
    - Working in extended site stores in Management Center
      If your company operates an extended site, you can perform certain tasks directly from your extended site store within Management Center.
    - Manage content externally for use in Management Center
      If content management capabilities other than the functionality that is provided by default with WebSphere Commerce is required, WebSphere Commerce can be integrated with IBM Web Content Manager. If WebSphere Commerce is integrated with IBM Web Content Manager, you can use content from IBM Web Content Manager content libraries with Management Center objects.
    - Manage marketing externally with IBM Marketing Center
      If your site is integrated with IBM Marketing Center, Management Center users can open IBM Marketing Center from Management Center to upload promotion codes and to create and manage marketing campaigns.
    - Management Center user interface
      The Management Center user interface provides a usable, intuitive, and efficient way to complete your business tasks.
    - Using the Management Center
      The starting point for all Management Center tasks is to open the tooling. Afterward, you can use several methods to complete a task: by selecting menu options, by clicking toolbar buttons, by right-clicking and selecting menus, or by keyboard shortcuts.
    - Catalogs tool
      Use the Catalogs tool in Management Center to manage catalogs, categories, catalog entries, merchandising associations, product attributes, and attachments in your store. The Catalogs tool lets business users create, and manage online catalogs. Catalogs provide a way of organizing the products that you want to sell. You define catalog data in groups of categories and products. Catalog data contains descriptions and pricing information for products and services.
    - Marketing tool
      Use the Marketing tool in Management Center to create and manage marketing campaigns and other store content, excluding catalog content. You can use the extensive precision marketing features in the tool to deliver targeted marketing messages to customers.
    - Promotions tool
      Use the Promotions tool in Management Center to create and manage promotions that support the marketing campaigns for your site.
    - Assets tool
      As a Product Manager, Marketing Manager, or Category Manager, you can use the Assets tool to upload and manage your store assets. The term assets refers to web content that you use on your storefront and in marketing campaigns, such as marketing image files, catalog image files, PDF documents, and multimedia files.
    - Catalog Filter and Pricing tool
      Use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool in Management Center to create and manage catalog filters, price lists, and price rules. Sellers, Sales Managers, and Account Representatives can use the tool's flexible features to implement catalog filtering and pricing strategies that meet the site's business needs over time.
    - Installments tool
      Use the Installments tool in Management Center to create and manage installment rules that support the payment methods for your site.
    - Commerce Composer tool
      Create pages and build layouts for your store directly in Management Center without involving IT by using the Commerce Composer tool. Take advantage of the tool's page design and management functions to improve your productivity and give you more control over the customer experience.
      - Commerce Composer overview
        The Commerce Composer tool gives you the freedom to quickly create and assemble the contents of your store pages without involving IT. By using a library of prebuilt layout templates and widgets, you can manage store page layouts directly in Management Center. The Commerce Composer tool offers a streamlined workflow that improves your productivity and reduces time-to-market for your campaigns.
      - Managing pages
        By using the Commerce Composer tool, you can add URLs for new pages to your store whenever you need a new page. You can also manage the SEO data for content, category, and catalog entry pages to optimize your site for search.
      - Managing layouts
        The Commerce Composer tool provides templates and widgets for you to build layouts for your store pages without involving IT.
        Layouts, layout templates, and default layouts
        A layout is an arrangement of widgets that contain or retrieve store content. A layout is used to render a store page. You can create layouts in the Commerce Composer tool.
        Layout assignments for category pages
        The Commerce Composer tool provides templates and widgets for you to create layouts for department and subcategory pages. You can create a new layout and assign it to a single category page, multiple category pages, or all category pages in your catalog.
        Example layout for a single category page
        You can create a layout to render a single category page. This scenario is simple because you need to consider only one category when you are choosing and populating the widgets in the layout.
        Example layout for multiple category pages
        You can build a flexible layout that can render more than one category page. In this example, six category pages share a layout and use the same widgets, but certain widgets display content that is specific to each category. Creating this kind of layout can save you time, and can ensure that a set of category pages have a consistent design.
        Example layout for a category page and its subcategory pages
        This scenario demonstrates how to design a flexible layout that can render a parent category page and its subcategory pages. In this scenario, the parent category page has certain widget requirements that are different from the subcategory page requirements, but these differences can be managed with a single layout.
        Layout assignments for catalog entry pages
        The Commerce Composer tool provides templates and widgets for you to create layouts for catalog entry pages. You can create a new layout and assign it to the products in a specific category, or to individual products, or to all products in your catalog.
        Layout assignments for search terms
        You might want to customize the layout of the search results page for a specific search term. If so, you can create a layout and assign it directly to the search term. When a customer uses the search term to search your site, the search results page is rendered with your assigned layout instead of the default layout for the search results page.
        Creating a layout for a page
        You can create layouts for the pages that you manage in the Commerce Composer tool. This process involves assigning the layout to one or more pages, adding widgets to the layout, and defining the properties and content of each widget. You can then preview the layout in store preview and make refinements.
        Creating a layout for a search term
        You can create a layout that overrides the default search results page for a specific search term. For example, you might want to design a unique layout that is displayed whenever a customer searches for cameras to make the search results page more relevant to camera enthusiasts.
        Populating tabbed slots in layout templates
        Some layout templates contain slots that display the page content in tabs. You can add a title to each of the tabs and then add widgets to populate the tabs. It is not necessary to use all the tabs that are included in the template. For example, if the template has three tabs, you can leave the third tab empty so that the tab is not rendered on the page.
        Viewing the list of layouts that are assigned to a page
        For any page that you manage in the Commerce Composer tool, you can see the layouts that are assigned to the page in either a list view or a calendar view. These views are useful when you are planning new layouts or troubleshooting layout assignments in store preview.
        Copying a layout
        You can make a copy of any existing layout and use it as a starting point for a new layout. The copy is identical to the existing layout, including the page assignments and widgets.
        Viewing information about widgets in store preview
        When you are viewing a layout in store preview, you can open the Widget Information window to get information about a specific widget that is used in the layout. For example, you can view the widget name, type, slot position, and property settings, and get details about the widget content. This window is useful for troubleshooting widgets if they do not display the information that you expected.
        Viewing information about pages and layouts in store preview
        When you are previewing a page, you can open the Page and Layout Information window to find out whether the page is using an assigned layout or the default layout. The window also provides details about how layout assignments were evaluated. This window is useful for troubleshooting layout assignments.
      - Widgets for Commerce Composer
        A widget is a frame that displays a specific type of store content, such as ads, product recommendations, or navigational links. To create a layout, you add widgets to slots in a layout template, and then set the properties and content for each widget.
      - Organizing content pages and layouts with folders
        By using folders to group and organize your content pages and layouts, you can work more efficiently in the Store Management tool.
      - Tutorial: Creating a page and its layout by using the Commerce Composer tool
        In this tutorial, you use Management Center to create a new content page. You then build a layout for the page by using a selection of widgets from the Commerce Composer widget library.
    - Store Management tool
      As a Seller, Site Administrator, or Channel Manager, you can use the Store Management tool in Management Center to manage your stores. The Store Management tool in Management Center replaces all of the store management features in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, except store creation and the ability to suspend and resume stores. Continue to use the Store Creation wizard in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to create new stores; continue to use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to suspend and resume stores.
    - Workspace Management tool
      You can use the Workspace Management tool in Management Center to manage and edit workspaces and its tasks and task groups that you are authorized to work with.
    - Previewing a store
      Preview your store to ensure that changes made in Management Center show up in your store as expected. You can use store preview in production, authoring, and staging environments.
    - Management Center frequently asked questions (FAQ)
      Find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the Management Center.
    - Management Center Troubleshooting
      If you encounter issues with the Management Center that are not related to any specific tool, review this troubleshooting topic to solve common problems.
  - WebSphere Commerce Accelerator
    Use the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to maintain online stores.
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
- Tutorials
  WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
- Developing
  The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
- Compliance
  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.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
- Troubleshooting

Example layout for a single category page

You can create a layout to render a single category page. This scenario is simple because you need to consider only one category when you are choosing and populating the widgets in the layout.

The layout in this example can render the Apparel department page that is shown in the shaded area:

Catalog hierarchy for scenario one

Layout design

In this example, the layout contains 10 different widgets that are placed in eight slots:
Scenario one layout design

Scenario one layout design

To achieve these results, the slots are populated with the following widgets and content:

Explanation of how slots and widgets are populated in this scenario
Slot	Widget used	How to define the widget content
1	Breadcrumb Trail widget	The widget automatically retrieves the breadcrumb trail to the page.
2	Text Editor widget	Paste the HTML code that contains the ad copy directly in the widget.
3	Text Editor widget	Paste the HTML code that contains the ad copy directly in the widget.
4	Heading widget	The widget automatically retrieves the category name Apparel to use as the page heading.
4	Content Recommendation widget	Specify marketing content that contains the ad image directly in the widget, or run a web activity in the widget.
5	Category Navigation widget	The widget automatically retrieves the list of subcategory links.
6	Content Recommendation widget	Specify marketing content that contains the ad image directly in the widget, or run a web activity in the widget.
7	Content Recommendation widget	Specify marketing content that contains the ad image directly in the widget, or run a web activity in the widget.
8	Category Recommendation widget	Specify the category recommendations directly in the widget, or run a web activity in the widget.
8	Catalog Entry Recommendation widget	Specify the catalog entry recommendations directly in the widget, or run a web activity in the widget.