Channel specific references

General

This feature allows to maintain channel specific references for products, variants and items. This includes all kinds of merchandising associations (see Merchandising associations between products and items) between objects of type product, variant or item.

So it gives more meaning to the reference type. For example having a "Cross sell" reference for special channels like the Web shop.

Technically it means, that the ArticleReferenceType repository entity type and all custom entities which are based on this entity type have got an additional logical key "Channel".

By default this feature is disabled to be compliant with older versions and the logical key for channel is set to "Default channel".

Enabling channel specific references

Product 360 Repository

In order to enable the feature, set the channel logical key to editable = true and the corresponding field to editable = true, visible = true. If needed, please also adjust the export purpose of the field. If you want to use the channel field for item/variant/product search, set visible from top = true, too.

For entities ArticleComponent (Component), ProductReference (Higher-level product), SuperordinateProductReference (Higher-level product) and VariantReference (Higher-level variant) the channel selection is not supported and the logical key must not be enabled in the repository.

images/download/attachments/255732574/repo_LK.png

images/download/attachments/255732574/repo_field.png

Web UI

There are changes in list model and form definitions in the Web UI regardless of whether the feature has been enabled or not in a customer's environment. The logical keys "Channel" have been added. By default, the new definitions are created during the P360 Server startup. Please adjust customer specific web definitions as well.

The channel logical key should be also added in flexible UI templates.

Migration

There are changes in the repository and the database regardless of the customer enabling the feature or not.

Limitations

  • Reference Graph doesn't consider any channel selection and shows references for all channels.

  • For reference types "Component", "Higher-level product" and "Higher-level variant"the channel selection is not supported.

  • GDSN specific reference type "Next lower level" can be used only with default channel, other channels are not supported.