Home
Documentation
HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
Customizing
The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
Presentation layer
HCL Commerce uses Java Server Pages (JSP) to implement the view layer of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The view layer is in charge of retrieving data from the database through the use of data beans and formatting it to meet the display requirements. The view layers determines whether the request is sent to a browser or streamed out as XML. JSP files present a clean separation between data content and presentation.
Customizing marketing
You can customize marketing features and objects to better meet the business needs of your site. For example, you can customize e-Marketing Spots, customer segments, activities, activity components, such as triggers, targets and actions, and more. Customization is supported for the Marketing tool in Management Center and for the storefront to display e-Marketing Spots.
Marketing customization: Management Center
There are many aspects of the Marketing tool that you can customize to suit the business needs of your site. For example, you can customize web and dialog activities, the Activity Builder user interface, e-Marketing Spots, and customer segments. Customization is supported for both the Marketing tool user interface and the marketing services.
Customizing triggers, targets, and actions
To provide business users with more options for web and dialog activities, you can create new triggers, targets, and actions to use in the Activity Builder for the Marketing tool. You can also change the behavior of existing triggers, targets, and actions.
Adding a trigger, target or action
You can add a campaign element, such as a custom trigger, action, or target, to the Activity Builder if the default campaign elements do not meet your business needs. You can then use your new campaign element in marketing activities.
Informing the marketing services of an external event for a trigger or target
If your custom trigger or target must detect an event that occurs on system that is external to HCL Commerce, then you must inform the marketing services of that event. To do so, call the Process MarketingTrigger service using a URL or using Java code. If your trigger or target detects an HCL Commerce event (or no event), you do not need to do this task.

Documentation
HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
- Getting started
  HCL Commerce has different advantages for business users, administrators and developers. HCL Commerce targets each of these roles with a tailored set of offerings so that each of your users can get maximum benefit.
- Installing and deploying
  Learn how to install and deploy HCL Commerce development environments and HCL Commerce production environments.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to HCL Commerce Version 9.1, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Operating
  Topics in the Operating category highlight tasks that are typically performed by business users, customer support representatives, to complete their day-to-day tasks in the operation of the HCL Commerce site.
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using HCL Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
  Topics in the Administering category highlight tasks that are typically performed by the Site Administrator, to support daily operations of the HCL Commerce site.
- Customizing
  The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
  - Customizing Management Center for HCL Commerce
    HCL Commerce allows you to pull the GIT bundle of Management Center source code and start the application locally to customize the Management Center.
  - Managed asset deployment
    Managed assets are files that are uploaded by business users to be used for store marketing, or to supplement products. They are added to HCL Commerce through the Assets tool or the Marketing tool in Management Center. By default, managed assets are extracted and deployed through the HCL Commerce EAR. To maintain performance in a large-scale production environment, site administrators must switch to alternative extraction and deployment methods for managed assets.
  - HCL Commerce development environment
    HCL Commerce Developer is the development toolkit for customizing a HCL Commerce application.
  - Functional architecture
    Functional architecture provides both the set of patterns used to implement the business functionality and the frameworks in which these business functions execute.
  - Persistent object model
    HCL Commerce deals with a large amount of persistent data. There are numerous tables defined in the current database schema. Even with this extensive schema, however, you might need to extend or customize the database schema for your particular business needs.
  - Creating your custom store
    After you install and set up your programming environment, you can create your custom store and customize your storefront. You must ensure that the store server is properly configured, and that your store assets are moved to the Store server.
  - Presentation layer
    HCL Commerce uses Java Server Pages (JSP) to implement the view layer of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The view layer is in charge of retrieving data from the database through the use of data beans and formatting it to meet the display requirements. The view layers determines whether the request is sent to a browser or streamed out as XML. JSP files present a clean separation between data content and presentation.
    - HCL Commerce Struts framework
      Struts is a well documented, mature and popular framework for building front ends to Java applications. To address concerns in software applications, it uses a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture: The Model represents the business or database code, the View represents the page design code, and the Controller represents the navigational code.
    - Spring framework
      The Spring Framework is a lightweight, open source programming and configuration model for developing Java based enterprise applications. This framework is used in HCL Commerce for building and configuring Management Center, including the managing of URL requests from Management Center to retrieve and process object data.
    - Management Center
      The Management Center for HCL Commerce framework is the foundation for HCL Commerce business user tooling. The business objects that are managed with Management Center are defined by the individual components that make up Management Center. The Management Center framework uses these definitions to provide the features that you can use to find, create, modify, and delete the defined business objects. If you plan to customize the Management Center, ensure that you understand the framework and all of the components that make up Management Center.
    - Developing Commerce Composer assets
      Enrich the capabilities of the Commerce Composer tool by developing your own widgets and templates, and extending other features and functions to suit your business needs.
    - Customizing promotions
      Customizing promotions can involve the customization of the promotion business user tools and the underlying promotion engine, which features a clean architecture supporting rich functionality, as well as a wide array of customization possibilities.
    - Working with the promotions component configuration file
      Some Management Center components, like the promotions component, have customizable configuration files. These files contain properties that control certain component features.
    - Customizing marketing
      You can customize marketing features and objects to better meet the business needs of your site. For example, you can customize e-Marketing Spots, customer segments, activities, activity components, such as triggers, targets and actions, and more. Customization is supported for the Marketing tool in Management Center and for the storefront to display e-Marketing Spots.
      - Marketing customization: Management Center
        There are many aspects of the Marketing tool that you can customize to suit the business needs of your site. For example, you can customize web and dialog activities, the Activity Builder user interface, e-Marketing Spots, and customer segments. Customization is supported for both the Marketing tool user interface and the marketing services.
        Customizing triggers, targets, and actions
        To provide business users with more options for web and dialog activities, you can create new triggers, targets, and actions to use in the Activity Builder for the Marketing tool. You can also change the behavior of existing triggers, targets, and actions.
        Marketing activity data storage and process flow
        If you are customizing triggers, targets, and actions, you must know which database tables store data about marketing activities. In addition, ensure that you understand what is happening behind the scenes when customers are experiencing your marketing activities. This knowledge can help you understand what you need to create or change to support a customized trigger, target, or action.
        Campaign element template definitions
        The triggers, targets, and actions that are used in marketing activities are based on templates. The templates are called campaign element template definitions. If you are customizing a trigger, target or action, ensure that you understand the purpose and structure of these template definitions before you modify an existing template or create a custom template.
        Campaign element task commands
        Each trigger, target, and action has an associated task command called a campaign element task command. The task command performs the work associated with the campaign element. The campaign element template definition must specify which task command to use.
        List of shipped campaign element templates and task commands
        Campaign elements have different requirements that depend on the element function. Reviewing details about the triggers, targets, and actions that are shipped with the Management Center can help you understand the requirements for a new campaign element. You can also view the API documentation for any of the task commands.
        Campaign element template parameters
        Campaign element template parameters specify the pieces of data that a campaign element task command needs to perform its function. The marketing services pass the data to the task command when a customer reaches the trigger, target or action in a marketing activity.
        Trigger parameters
        When a customer triggers a web or dialog activity, the marketing services pass trigger parameters to the task commands of all campaign elements within the activity flow. Trigger parameters are name-value pairs that contain the current context information for the activity. Campaign element task commands can then extract the relevant trigger parameters to perform their work.
        Types of dialog activity triggers and when they are processed
        Dialog activity triggers can be categorized into three types: customer event triggers, daily check triggers, and elapsed time triggers. If you are customizing a dialog activity trigger, it is important to understand when each type is processed, and the role of the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job. The trigger type also affects the task command function.
        How the marketing services record behavior for triggers and targets
        Certain triggers and targets in marketing activities record specific customer behavior. For example, the Catalog Browsing Behavior target records when customers browse specific parts of the store catalog so that Marketing Managers can target those customers in web and dialog activities. It is important to understand when the recording starts and stops, and what gets recorded.
        Ways to inform the marketing services of external or custom events for triggers and targets
        Certain triggers and targets in marketing activities must detect events. You might want to create a custom trigger or target that detects a custom event, or an event that occurs on a system that is external to HCL Commerce. If so, you can call the Process MarketingTrigger service to inform the marketing services that the event occurred. You can call this service a number of ways, by using a URL or by using Java code.
        Ranking list framework for marketing actions
        The ranking list framework for marketing actions enables the tracking of customer storefront actions. For example, by default, HCL Commerce tracks the number of times products are purchased and categories are viewed.
        Adding a trigger, target or action
        You can add a campaign element, such as a custom trigger, action, or target, to the Activity Builder if the default campaign elements do not meet your business needs. You can then use your new campaign element in marketing activities.
        Creating the campaign element template definition
        By creating the campaign element template definition, you define the blueprint for your campaign element. When you have defined the XML you require, you must add the template definition to the DMELETEMPLATE table as a new entry.
        Registering controller command names to match in a behavior rule
        If you are creating a new trigger, target, or action that specifies a controller command in its behavior rule, you must register the controller command in a custom version of the marketing component configuration file (wc-admin-component.xml). When you register the controller command, you must also specify the Web application paths to exclude when the controller command is run from that Web application. This ensures that the behavior rule will match only for applicable Web applications that use the controller commands.
        Creating the campaign element task command
        Create a new task command interface and its associated implementation class for your new campaign element. The task command performs the work for the campaign element, and it can also validate parameters if required.
        Informing the marketing services of an external event for a trigger or target
        If your custom trigger or target must detect an event that occurs on system that is external to HCL Commerce, then you must inform the marketing services of that event. To do so, call the Process MarketingTrigger service using a URL or using Java code. If your trigger or target detects an HCL Commerce event (or no event), you do not need to do this task.
        Defining icons to represent the campaign element
        You can create and load three versions of a custom icon to represent your new campaign element in the Management Center user interface. These images help business users identify the element when creating activities in the Activity Builder.
        Creating the object definition for the campaign element
        Create an object definition for the new campaign element to collect input from the Management Center user interface. When business users enters data about the new campaign element in a marketing activity, the object definition persists the data in two tables: DMELEMENT and DMELEMENTNVP.
        Creating the properties view for the campaign element
        If your new campaign element requires input from business users, declare the widgets to capture that input. By doing this, you create the user interface, called the properties view, for the new campaign element. In the Activity Builder, a campaign element's properties view displays below the work area when you click the campaign element.
        Creating the summary for the campaign element
        If you want to display summary text below the campaign element in the Activity Builder work area, create a new extension for this summary. In the Activity Builder, business users can read the summary text to quickly understand how an element is being used in a Web or Dialog activity.
        Adding the campaign element to the element palette in the Activity Builder
        You must include the new campaign element in the element palette so that business users can drag the new element from the palette into the work area.
        Creating and registering a serialization JSP file for the campaign element
        Create and register a serialization JSP file to take the authoring elements from the DMELEMENT and DMELEMENTNVP tables for your new campaign element and display them in the Management Center user interface. Business users can then set the properties for the campaign element in marketing activities.
        Ignoring shopper-selected facets for a 'Recommend Catalog Entry' action
        Within the Search conditions of a Recommend Catalog Entry web activity, you can configure the web activity to ignore customer selected facets as part of the criteria for recommended catalog entries.
        Changing the name of commands used in behavior rule matching
        Certain triggers, targets and actions have behavior rules defined in their campaign element templates that detect events. The marketing services detect that the event has occurred by matching a page URL command or a controller command. If your site uses command names that are different from the default HCL Commerce command names, then you must specify your site's command names in a custom configuration file so that the triggers, targets and actions work properly.
        Changing the behavior of an existing campaign element by customizing its template
        Certain details about how a trigger, target, or action works are defined in the campaign element template definition for the trigger, target, or action. To change any details in the existing campaign element template definition, create a customized campaign element template definition with the same name and any changed parameters. Then register your customized campaign element template in the DMELETEMPLATE table. As a result, the marketing services will use your customized template instead of the default template.
        About changing targets that detect or record user behavior
        If you are changing the default behavior of targets that detect or record user behavior, you should approach the customization in specific ways, depending on your customization goal.
        Changing the daily scheduled time for marketing triggers and lists
        You can change the time of day that the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job processes daily check Dialog activity triggers, and generates best-seller and top-browsed lists. By default, this happens at 2:00 AM each day. If this time is not appropriate, you can create a customized version of the wc-admin-component.xml file to specify a different time of day.
        Changing the default boost factor for the Specify Top Search Result action
        You can change the default boost factor for the Specify Top Search Results action in search rules. In doing so, you can change the strength in which your specified catalog entries are elevated in the search results.
        HCL Commerce search keyword matching behavior
        The Customer submits search trigger matches only on separate words in the customer's search.
        Adding support for dynamic catalog entry recommendations in an e-Marketing Spot
        Before a Marketing Manager or business user can take advantage of the dynamic recommend catalog entry action in a web activity, customization to store JSP pages can be required. As a store page developer, you can add support for using the dynamic recommend catalog entry action in an e-Marketing Spot. Support for this action must be added to the JSP file where the activity is to run.
        Adding support for the e-Marketing Spot properties action to an e-Marketing Spot
        As a store page developer, you can add support for using the e-Marketing Spot properties action in an e-Marketing Spot. Before this action can be used in a web activity, support for the type of property information that returns to the e-Marketing Spot must be added to the store page that the activity runs on.
        Adding e-Marketing Spot title support to existing e-Marketing Spot JSPs
        Before you can display marketing content as title or default title content in an e-Marketing Spot, you must add support for displaying title content in the e-Marketing Spot JSP file.
        Adding image map support to existing Aurora starter store e-Marketing Spot JSP files
        Before you can display marketing content with multiple click actions in an e-Marketing Spot, you must add support for multiple click actions in the e-Marketing Spot JSP file.
        Defining the event and parameters for the Wait for Event trigger
        Marketing managers require technical information from store developers to set up the Wait for Event trigger in a Dialog activity. This information includes the event name and the parameters that the marketing services use to detect that the event occurred. To gather this information, you must determine the type of event to match and then complete some steps to define the event and its parameters. Depending on the type of event, you might need to implement a service call with a custom URL, calling the event REST API, or by using custom Java code.
        Customizing the palette and template picker contents
        You might want business users to see a customized view of the element palette in the Activity Builder, or the New Activity From Template window (called the marketing activity template picker). If so, you can add or remove items from these views, or rearrange their contents.
        Customizing customer segments
        Business users create customer segments using the Customer Segments properties view in the Management Center Marketing tool. The properties view contains all the attributes for defining a customer segment, arranged in a series of tabs. To customize customer segment support for your site, you can add new attributes or remove those that your site does not use.
        Customizing e-Marketing Spot behavior
        There are a number of customization scenarios supported for e-Marketing Spots on your store pages.
        Customizing the Marketing tool to display catalog entry recommendations from an external system
        Marketing managers can boost sales by displaying relevant catalog entry recommendations to customers in e-Marketing Spots on store pages. To determine which catalog entries to recommend, your site might choose to use a system external to HCL Commerce, such as a product recommendation engine or a data warehouse. If so, HCL Commerce provides an infrastructure you can customize to retrieve the recommendations from the external system and display them to customers on your storefront.
        Customizing ribbon ads
        Ribbon ads draw attention to products on the storefront by overlaying the product image with informative text, such as New or Clearance. You can customize ribbon ads to suit your storefront design and marketing strategy.
      - Migrating from the V7 Accelerator based marketing e-spot code snippet to the Management Center based marketing e-spot code snippet
      - Adding an e-Marketing Spot to a JSP store page
        You can create a custom JSP file to add a custom e-Marketing Spot to a store page.
      - Adding an e-Marketing Spot to a React Store page
        You can create a custom e-Marketing Spot for the React Store page.
      - e-Marketing Spot (Management Center)
        Use the WebServiceeMarketingSpotDisplay.jsp sample snippet to display an e-Marketing Spot in a store page. The code uses Web services to call the marketing runtime to get the data to display in the e-Marketing Spot. Use this snippet for e-Marketing Spots that are used in Web activities managed with the Management Center.
      - Customizing the E-Marketing Spot widget
        Customize a provided widget to modify its behavior for use on your storefront. For this customization example, the E-Marketing Spot widget is customized to include a static message. To do this, you must copy the widget and all of its static dependencies to the custom store web archive, and update the widget JSP to properly reference its dependencies in both the custom store web archive and the IBM provided store web archive. For more information on E-Marketing Spot widget, see management-center/concepts/cpzwidespot.html. For more information about creating widgets, see Creating widgets
      - Email activities and custom activity template JSP files
        Email activities allow business users to deliver news and promotions to customers through email. These activities enable business users to reach customers who might not have visited your site in some time. These activities can also be used to keep regular customers up to date regarding up coming events or products.
    - Customizing price rules
      You can customize price rules to suit the business needs of your site. For example, you can create a new condition or action for business users to add to price rules. Customization is supported for both the Price Rule Builder tool user interface in the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool, and for the pricing services.
    - Customizing store preview
      You can customize store preview to add enhancements that help business users work more efficiently. These enhancements include the click-to-edit function and in-context preview function.
    - Customizing content versioning
      The content versioning feature is enabled for some objects in the Catalogs tool in Management Center. You can add or remove content versioning support for existing objects and custom objects by customizing both Management Center and HCL Commerce server.
    - Customizing the infrastructure component
      Customizing the infrastructure component provides you the ability to change configurable properties for Management Center and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) functionality.
    - Developing JSP pages
      To create JSP pages for HCL Commerce, you should have Rational Application Developer skills and JSP skills. You should also be familiar with JSTL.
    - HCL Commerce JSP programming best practices
      This section offers the following selection of JSP programming best practices, which promote development of reusable and easily maintainable JSP pages within the HCL Commerce store development framework:
    - Double-click handling in HCL Commerce
      The purpose of double-click handling in HCL Commerce is to prevent processing the same request twice to ensure data integrity within the system. When processing certain URL requests, such as OrderItemAdd, the double-click feature of HCL Commerce will identify whether the request from the online shopper is currently being processed and blocks the current request if that is the case.
  - Controller layer
    The Controller layer is the conductor of operations for a request. It controls the transaction scope and manages the session related information for the request. The controller first dispatches to a command and then calls the appropriate view processing logic to render the response.
  - Business logic layer
    The business logic layer is the business components that provide OAGIS services to return data or start business processes. The presentation layer uses these OAGIS services to display data, or to invoke a business process. The business logic provides data required by the presentation layer. The business logic layer exists because more than just fetching and updating data is required by an application; there is also additional business logic independent of the presentation layer.
  - Persistence layer
    The interaction between the business objects and persistence layer is isolated in an object called the Business Object Mediator. Business object document (BOD) commands interact with the Business Object Mediator to handle the interaction with the logical objects and how they are persisted.
  - Business model information model
    A business model, a representation of the business processes used throughout the site, provides a sample commerce solution which includes an organization structure, default user roles and access control policies, one or more starter stores, administration tools, and business processes that demonstrate best practices. A business model can be customized to support business requirements and scenarios. HCL Commerce provides sample business models that show some common commerce solutions. These business models are created by setting up an organization hierarchy structure, access control policies, stores, and contracts that help satisfy the necessary business requirements.
  - Business models
    Before starting to develop your site with HCL Commerce, you need to determine the business model supported by HCL Commerce that best represents the purpose of your site. Usually sites created with HCL Commerce will be implemented based on of one of these business models.
  - Store data information model
    Store data is the information that is loaded into the Transaction server database, which allows your store to function. The URL Registry Entries and View Registry Entries packages are included in the diagram, but they are not database assets. These entries are presentation configuration (that is, struts actions and forwards) that must be deployed. URL registry entries are shown in the diagram to illustrate the entire store data information model. To operate properly, a store must have the data in place to support all customer activities. For example, in order for a customer to make a purchase, your store must contain a catalog of goods for sale (catalog data), the data associated with processing orders (tax and shipping data), and the inventory to fulfill the request (inventory and fulfillment data).
  - Customizing HCL Commerce
    You can extend the HCL Commerce product to fit your business needs. This topic describes the prerequisite skills and required knowledge that you need to customize business logic. After you have the required knowledge, use HCL Commerce Developer to take tutorials that guide you step-by-step through various customization scenarios.
  - Run Engine command framework
    The Run Engine command framework provides predefined commands, that you can use to change environment parameters or container configurations. This framework is built into the HCL provided Docker images.
  - GraphQL for HCL Commerce
    The GraphQL markup language is available for any API. It is a server-side interpreter for processing queries using a data type system you design. With GraphQL, your data and code are independent of any database or storage system.
  - Representational State Transfer (REST) services
    HCL Commerce uses Representational State Transfer (REST) services to provide a framework that can be used to develop RESTful applications on several platforms. These platforms can include web, mobile, kiosks, and social applications.
  - Web services
  - Search
    HCL Commerce comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in HCL Commerce provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on industry standards, HCL Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization. Starting with Version 9.1, HCL Commerce Search with Elasticsearch microservices manage indexing and other crucial tasks, with no performance impact on the storefront or transaction server.
- Tutorials
  HCL Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your HCL Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
  Topics in the Samples category highlight the various samples that are provided with HCL Commerce.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage HCL Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of HCL Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
  Topics in the Performance section describe the means by which to plan, implement, test, and re-visit the optimization of HCL Commerce site performance.
- Troubleshooting
  Topics in the Troubleshooting section highlight common issues that are encountered with HCL Commerce, and how they can be addressed or mitigated.
- Reference
  Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.

Informing the marketing services of an external event for a trigger or target

If your custom trigger or target must detect an event that occurs on system that is external to HCL Commerce, then you must inform the marketing services of that event. To do so, call the Process MarketingTrigger service using a URL or using Java code. If your trigger or target detects an HCL Commerce event (or no event), you do not need to do this task.

Before you begin

Read Ways to inform the marketing services of external or custom events for triggers and targets.

Procedure

Determine the best way to call the Process MarketingTrigger service to inform the marketing services of the external event.
To ensure the marketing services have the customer's personalization ID available for the marketing activity:
1. Provide an implementation of MarketingServicesTaskCmd that implements the method getPersonalizationId. This method must map from the external identifier of the customer to the HCL Commerce identifier for the customer (personalizationId).
2. Register the task command in the CMDREG table.
  Here is an example of the SQL statement to register this type of task command:
```
INSERT INTO CMDREG (STOREENT_ID, INTERFACENAME, CLASSNAME) VALUES (0, 
'com.ibm.commerce.marketing.dialog.util.MarketingServicesTaskCmd', 
'com.mycompany.marketing.dialog.util.MyCompanyMarketingServicesTaskCmdImpl');
```
Implement the Process MarketingTrigger service call from the external system using either a URL or Java code.