Indexing contract prices in

You can index prices in . For example, you can build the price index by issuing the Calculate Price RESTful call, and then indexing contract prices.

Prices in

Prices that are returned by are either indexed or calculated:
  • Offer prices, or default contract prices, are indexed directly from the default contract of the owning store.
  • List prices are indexed directly from the or database tables, depending on the price source.
  • Contract prices are calculated based on the selected contract. They are then indexed and stored in the designated Price index of . This data is later copied back into the Product index to be used with the Query service API for filtering, sorting, and displaying.
    Note: This copy operation only takes place when the newly calculated contract price is different from the previously calculated price. The reason is to avoid any unnecessary updates to the Product index.

Indexed prices are populated quickly, but not evaluated dynamically. To ensure that the storefront displays accurate prices, adjust the frequency of the price calculation operation to suit your business needs.

Indexing prices

  • You can calculate and index prices by using the Build Index RESTful call. For more information, see ../../install/tasks/tig_install_v91search.html.
  • The Calculate Price RESTful call updates the information in the price index whenever required based on the pricing model your store uses. The ContractPriceCalculate job command is used for calculating prices on a schedule for all catalog entries that belong to a specific master catalog. The catalog entry price is calculated for all contracts that belong to the store. For more information, see Creating and scheduling the ContractPriceCalculate job .
  • When indexing contract prices, ensure that the value of wc.search.priceMode.compatiblePriceIndex is set to 1.0 in the STORECONF table:
    
insert into storeconf(storeent_id,name,value) values('storeent_id', 'wc.search.priceMode.compatiblePriceIndex', '1.0');

Calculating prices

Prices can be calculated either fully, or for a specified catalog entry, contract, or currency. The calculation is performed as a background job on the Transaction server. This task can take a considerable amount of time to finish depending on the number of contracts involved and the size of each price list. Only the status of the price calculation job submission itself is returned initially, not the status of the entire price calculation task.

Recalculations logic

  • Contract IDs are not validated when passed in as a separate parameter, so that future contracts show the correct prices when you preview a future date in store preview.
  • All expired and suspended contracts are safe to remove from the Price index. This is to avoid copying expired contract price data back to the Product index.
  • If a contract is suspended and inactive, the contract price is removed. If a business user resumes the contract and it becomes active again, the price is not shown in the storefront until the price is calculated again for the resumed contract.
  • When an invalid product, contract or currency is passed in, the logic ignores, and therefore does not index invalid values.
  • If a contract passed in is expired or suspended, it is deleted and purged from the calculation result. Otherwise, if a contract that will be active at a future date is passed in, it is indexed. That is, even though it is not currently active at the time of the price recalculation.
  • The storeId and currency parameters cannot be specified with any other parameters.

and NiFi processes

  • When the receives a data import/build command, it launches worker threads to pre-process all contract price data. The command that launches these processes is:
    POST: https://CommerceServerName​​​:ts-app-port/wcs/resources/admin/index/dataImport/build?connectorId=price&indexSubType=Price&storeId=12​
    POST: https://CommerceServerName​​​:ts-app-port/wcs/resources/admin/index/dataImport/build?connectorId=auth.price&indexSubType=Price&storeId=12​
    This command takes two additional parameters.
    numWorkers
    Controls the number of worker threads to be used for pre-processing contract price calculation.
    flushSize
    Controls the size of each request body when sending to NiFi.
  • Once pre-processing is done, the result is stored in the TI_OFFER and TI_OFFERPRICE database tables. At this time all the worker threads are terminated and the main flow streams the result to NiFi, using the flushSize parameter to determine the size of each request payload. The default value of flushSize is 1000.
  1. Each calculated price request (with default size of 1000) is sent to the NiFi Auth.price connector.
  2. Inside this price connector, the flow file is transformed into a bulk request to be sent to the Auth.price index.
  3. At this time, while the list of catentries is still present in the dataflow, CopyLink uses this list of IDs to determine whether to actually copy to the Product index or not. Only the updated numbers are copied, instead of copying everything over.
    • The process waits until the copying is completed before continuing.
    • Dataflow with the current run ID ends at the Terminal stage and is disposed of through the Terminal Service, which produces an entry in the Log index in .
  4. The transaction server receives the dataimport/build command and launches worker threads to pre-process all contract price data.
In addition, you should use the following command to query the status of this Price Cacluation from the instead of Search's Ingest endpoint. For example: 
https://TSHost:TSPort/wcs/resources/admin/index/dataImport/status?jobStatusId=100

Workspace preview

When you use workspace preview:
  • B2B prices that are shown in store preview are only from approved content.
  • Future prices can be previewed if the appropriate future contract is indexed. The future date is respected in the preview context and shows the correct contract for viewing.
  • Prices cannot be associated with new non-approved content, such as previewing a non-approved new product that does not belong to any contract.
  • When a business user changes the contract price and wants to preview such changes in the workspace store preview. Without recalculation, such changes cannot be previewed. You must run the contract price recalculation to capture the changed prices into the Price index, which is then copied back to the Product index. This operation allows affected products to pick up the new contract related price changes.