Home
Documentation
This Help Center provides documentation on all aspects of the HCL Commerce+ product, from installation and deployment to operating and customization.
Operating
The topics in this section focus on tasks that are performed by business users, marketers, and customer support representatives to connect with partners and attract and satisfy customers.
Business Tools
Commerce+ allows you to manage various business tools such as Promotions, Catalog, Promotions, Inventory, and so on. Users accessing at least one business tool can see the Business Tools menu. The user can see tools that are accessible to the current user.
Marketing Tool
Use the Marketing tool in the Commerce Lab 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.
Managing feeds for e-Marketing Spots
For e-Marketing Spots, feeds provide a means to syndicate marketing information for display in feed readers.
Feeds for e-Marketing Spots
You can offer the marketing information displayed in any e-Marketing Spot as a feed. This way, your customers can subscribe to a feed that interests them and automatically receive updates in a feed reader, without having to visit your store.

Documentation
This Help Center provides documentation on all aspects of the HCL Commerce+ product, from installation and deployment to operating and customization.
- Overview
  Welcome to the HCL Commerce+ overview. Explore these feature overviews to learn how Commerce+ operates. Refer to the related links listed at the end of each topic to access expanded product documentation.
- Deploying
  This section provides details on deploying HCL Commerce+. It explains how to download the Docker images and Git bundles that comprise the product, how to create a minimal environment, and how to plan for a full deployment. It details supported software versions, patches, and configurations to ensure the platform performs well.
- Migrating
  The following topics show how to migrate an existing HCL Commerce Version 9.1 environment to Commerce+. The process consists of an initial migration of your database contents. This is followed by a code migration. Both are fully described.
- Operating
  The topics in this section focus on tasks that are performed by business users, marketers, and customer support representatives to connect with partners and attract and satisfy customers.
  - Commerce Lab
    Accessible through a web-based interface, Commerce Lab enables users to manage all key aspects of their commerce operations, including catalogs, marketing, pricing, users, stores, customers, workspaces, sellers, and administrative functions—empowering teams with greater flexibility and control.
  - Business Tools
    Commerce+ allows you to manage various business tools such as Promotions, Catalog, Promotions, Inventory, and so on. Users accessing at least one business tool can see the Business Tools menu. The user can see tools that are accessible to the current user.
    - Search Tool
      The Search tool is accessible from the Commerce Lab. It enables several functionalities related to search, such as Search Term Associations, Search Analytics, Search Templates, and so on. It allows the admin to preview the search terms displayed on the storefront and delivers customized search results when customers search the storefront. Search analytics helps customers to understand the patterns and items users are searching.
    - Catalog Filter and Pricing tool
      Use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool in Commerce Lab 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.
    - Catalogs tool overview
      Use the Catalogs tool in the Commerce Lab 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 the Commerce Lab 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.
      - Managing web and dialog activities
        Web and dialog activities are used to deliver brand or promotional messages to customers through a variety of methods.
      - Managing email activities
        Email activities are managed by Marketing Managers to keep a site's targeted marketing efforts organized.
      - Managing marketing experiments
        Marketing experiments are managed by Marketing Managers. They are used to test the effectiveness of brand or promotional messages on the web.
      - Managing custom activity templates
        To save time, create custom activity templates to use as a starting point for creating web and dialog activities.
      - Managing activity statistics
        The Marketing tool gathers and displays various types of statistical data about your web, dialog, and email activities.
      - Managing marketing content
        Marketing content is managed by marketing managers. It is used to deliver marketing messages to customers, as part of campaign activities.
      - Managing customer segments
        Marketing Managers create customer segments to use as targets for marketing campaigns and promotions.
      - Managing e-Marketing Spots
        Marketing Managers create and manage e-Marketing Spots to ensure store pages are filled with relevant, compelling images, and information.
      - Managing feeds for e-Marketing Spots
        For e-Marketing Spots, feeds provide a means to syndicate marketing information for display in feed readers.
        Feeds for e-Marketing Spots
        You can offer the marketing information displayed in any e-Marketing Spot as a feed. This way, your customers can subscribe to a feed that interests them and automatically receive updates in a feed reader, without having to visit your store.
        Content of e-Marketing Spot feeds
        When you decide to offer an e-Marketing Spot as a feed, you must decide which data to display to customers in the feed reader. The data can be images or text, or both.
        Personalization in e-Marketing Spot feeds
        E-Marketing Spot feeds can display web activities that use targets to personalize the marketing information; however, the targets are supported only in certain scenarios. Before offering targeted information in a feed, you should understand target behavior and limitations.
      - Managing email templates
        Email templates, managed by Marketing Managers, are the basis of email activities delivered to customers.
      - Managing campaigns
        Campaigns are managed by Marketing Managers, in order to keep a store's marketing activities organized.
      - Organizing marketing objects with folders
        You can use the Commerce Lab Marketing tool to create and manage folders for organizing your marketing content, customer segments, activities, and e-Marketing Spots. By using marketing folders to group and organize your marketing objects you can simplify browsing for and managing your marketing objects.
      - Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
        Find answers to some frequently asked questions about using key features of the Marketing tool and completing tasks.
      - Troubleshooting
        If you encounter issues while you are using the Marketing tool, review troubleshooting information to solve common problems.
    - Inventory tool
      Commerce+ offers various Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs). This section explains the Commerce Lab tooling support for the Inventory.
    - Promotions Tool
      Use the Promotions tool in Commerce Lab to create and manage promotions that support the marketing campaigns for your site.
    - Customer Management
      Customer Management tools are used to manage business accounts and catalogs for Commerce Lab.
    - Store Management
      Store management tool allows you to manage stores, taxes, shipping, and installments through the Commerce Lab.
    - Workspace Management tool
      The Workspace Management tool is a graphical user interface tool that is used to manage workspaces and workspace-related activities. It provides a single view across all workspaces and all tasks in the workspaces where managers can see how work is progressing.
  - Analytics Tool
    Commerce Lab has the Analytics tool listed in the hamburger menu.
- Administering
  The site administrator performs the tasks needed to support day to day operations of the Commerce+ site.
- Extending
  Using Commerce+'s xC programming model, you can use HCL-provided extension points to extend existing Commerce logic. You can implement these extensions with the xC Customization toolkit provided by HCL. Commerce+ also provides Packaged Business Capability integrations that extend the product's reach and functionality.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of 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 Commerce+ site performance.
- Troubleshooting
  Topics in the Troubleshooting section highlight common issues that are encountered with Commerce+, and how they can be addressed or mitigated.
- Reference
  Topics in the Reference section contain all of the Commerce+ reference documentation.

Feeds for e-Marketing Spots

You can offer the marketing information displayed in any e-Marketing Spot as a feed. This way, your customers can subscribe to a feed that interests them and automatically receive updates in a feed reader, without having to visit your store.

Marketing information that is frequently updated and compelling can be a good candidate for a feed, for example:

Deal of the day
Featured products
Current promotions and sales
Store news
Other content that promotes your brand, such as a recipe of the week or a daily trivia question

If your store has an e-Marketing Spot that displays this kind of marketing information, consider offering the e-Marketing Spot as a feed.

Feed URLs

The feed URL is the Web address for the e-Marketing Spot feed. Each e-Marketing Spot in Commerce Lab has an associated feed URL. The feed URL is displayed on the properties view for the e-Marketing Spot in Commerce Lab. If you copy the feed URL and paste it into a browser or news reader that supports Atom-format feeds, the text and images from the e-Marketing Spot will display. Here is an example feed URL for the HomePageDealOfTheWeek e-Marketing Spot:

http://mysite.example.com/wcs/resources/stores/715838084/MarketingSpotData/AppliancesProductRight_CatEntries?responseFormat=atom&langId=-1&currency=USD

You can use this feed URL to:

Allow customers subscribe to feeds by providing them with this feed URL so they can paste it into a feed reader or browser. For example, some stores include a feed page that provides customers with a list of all available store feed URLs.
View the contents of the feed for testing purposes or when customizing the feed.
Specify the feed to use when creating a remote widget using a widget editor.

Note that the URL on the properties view for the e-Marketing Spot does not contain parameters that are context-specific, for example, language and currency. In these cases, the feed uses the store default values.