Enabling shopping flow preview for workspaces

Enabling shopping flow preview in workspaces allows users to preview how their changes affect the experience of a customer when the customer is completing a shopping flow.

When you enable the shopping flow preview for workspaces, some objects and actions are not supported:
  • While you are previewing a store shopping flow in a workspace, the following limitations apply:
    • OracleShopping flow preview is not supported.
    • DB2Shopping flow preview is supported for stores with either the non-ATP or the no-Inventory inventory systems, except the following scenarios:
      1. Customer specifies a shipping instruction for the order during the shopping flow.
      2. Customer adds a static kit or dynamic kit into a shopping cart during the shopping flow.
      3. Customer places an order with tax applied during the shopping flow.
      4. Customer places an order under the store whose price refresh flag is 1, 2, or 4. See the PRICEREFFLAGS column of the STORE table for detailed usage.
      5. Customer inputs a promotion code for the order during the shopping flow.
      6. Customer inventory system is non-ATP and inventory is configured as UPDATE mode (INVENTORYFLAGS is not 1 or 3).
    These limitations result because they require that unmanaged assets in the base schema to be updated during the shopping flow. However, these assets also have foreign key constraints on managed assets in the write schema. For example, when a customer specifies a shipping instruction for the order, it attempts to create a record in the SHIPINFO table. However, in a workspace, the SHIPINFO table is an unmanaged asset, and the ORDERS_ID column has a foreign key constraint to the ORDERS_ID column of the ORDERS table. The ORDERS table is a managed operational asset in the write schema, which causes the update on the SHIPINFO table to fail. As a result, the shopping flow cannot be completed.
  • Revenue from views and clicks in web activity experiments do not calculate in Store Preview when you are working in a workspace.
  • You cannot test Dialog activities in Store Preview when you are working in a workspace.
  • Events that occur in store preview when you are working in a workspace are not visible when you are working on approved content.

    For example, view and click events for an e-Marketing Spot that accumulate in workspace Store Preview are not reflected in statistics that are visible when you are previewing approved content. In addition, behavior (catalog browsing behavior, online behavior) that occurs in workspace Store Preview is not considered for target evaluation when you are previewing approved content.

  • Searching for extended site store catalog entry description override information is not supported in store preview within workspaces.
    • Workspaces store preview support for searching for extended site store catalog entry description override information is provided by default.
For more information about limitations in workspaces, see Workspaces limitations.

Procedure

  1. Copy the following file to a temporary location:
    • WC_eardir/xml/content-management/wc-order-resource-managers.xml

    Do not directly modify this file. For more information, see XML configuration directory.

  2. Open the temporary copy of the file in a text editor.
  3. Find the <wc:OperationalResources> element.
    Add the following information to the element:
    <wc:OperationalResource name="ORDTAX" 
      resourceClassName="com.ibm.commerce.taxation.objects.OrderTaxAccessBean" 
      managed="true" resource="ORDTAX" /> 		
<wc:OperationalResource name="ORDITAX" 
      resourceClassName="com.ibm.commerce.taxation.objects.OrderItemTaxAccessBean" 
      managed="true" resource="ORDITAX" /> 		
<wc:OperationalResource name="SHIPINFO" 
      resourceClassName="com.ibm.commerce.order.objects.ShipInfoAccessBean" 
      managed="true" resource="SHIPINFO" /> 		
<wc:OperationalResource name="OICOMPLIST" 
      resourceClassName="com.ibm.commerce.order.objects.OrderItemComponentAccessBean" 
      managed="true" resource="OICOMPLIST" /> 		
<wc:OperationalResource name="ORDIOFFER" 
      resourceClassName="com.ibm.commerce.order.objects.OrderItemOfferRelationshipAccessBean" 
      managed="true" resource="ORDIOFFER" /> 		
<wc:OperationalResource name="ORDITRD" 
      resourceClassName="com.ibm.commerce.order.objects.OrderItemTradingRelationshipAccessBean" 
      managed="true" resource="ORDITRD" /> 		
<wc:OperationalResource name="ORDPROMOCD" 
      resourceClassName="com.ibm.commerce.order.objects.OrderPromotionCodeAccessBean" 
      managed="true" resource="ORDPROMOCD" /> 		
<wc:OperationalResource name="ORDITPROMOCD" 
      resourceClassName="com.ibm.commerce.order.objects.OrderItemPromotionCodeAccessBean" 
      managed="true" resource="ORDITPROMOCD" />
  4. Save your changes.
  5. Update WebSphere Commerce with the updated file. For more information, see the Updating enterprise application files topic. Ensure that you follow the instructions for updating a single file.

    You need the following information:

    OptionDescription
    Enterprise application name WC_enterprise_application
    Relative path to file xml/config/wc-workspace.xml
  6. Run the UpdateWorkspacesSchemaTable Ant script to migrate these tables from unmanaged assets to operational assets in the workspace.
    Refer to Ant target: CM_updateWorkspacesTable.
  7. Stop and restart WebSphere Commerce.