Akeneo
In Akeneo PIM, there is a concept that helps you connect any third party you might think of to boost the powers of your PIM. It is called Connections.
For your PIM to work correctly, you first need to connect it to the data flows that are coming from your ERP, DAM, or even MDM. Once your products are enriched into the PIM, you need them to be delivered to all your channels, such as syndication, e-commerce, or publishing platforms, like EasyCatalog.
Configuring Akeneo
In order to export data to EasyCatalog, first you need to create a connection of type Data destination.
1. Create a connection
Here are the simple steps to create a connection:
Click on
Connect.Then on
Connection settings.Click on
Create.In the Label field, enter the name of your connector. For example, write
EasyCatalogorEasyCatalog connectorif you wish to connect your PIM to EasyCatalog. Sidenote: the code of the connection is automatically generated based on the label. You can keep it as is or change it. It's up to you!Choose the flow type of your connection.
Once your connection is created, you'll be able to assign it a picture in order to easily see which connection it refers to. For example, if your connection represents your connection to EasyCatalog, you may want to put a picture of the EasyCatalog logo, exactly like in the screenshot below.
After creating the connection, you'll also be given a set of credentials to authenticate your connector.
2. Choose your flow type
When creating or updating a connection, you must define a . It will determine the way your connection flows are monitored in the data flows dashboard.
This flow type has three available options you'll have to choose from. To create an EasyCatalog connection, you need to choose a destination connection flow type.
If you choose this option, the Data flows dashboard will focus on the data pushed outside Akeneo via this connection.
3. Grab your credentials
Whenever you create a connection, Akeneo automatically generates a set of credentials for you. These credentials are necessary if you want to make any API calls to the PIM or, in our case, use the Akeneo Enterprise Data Source in EasyCatalog.
These credentials consist of 4 different strings:
the
client id,the
secret,the connection
username,the connection
password.
To access the client id, the secret and the username, go to Connect > Connection settings and click on the connection you want to see the credentials. They are displayed on the right side of the screen in the Credentials column.
The password is only shown once to you after the connection creation. So, make sure you save it somewhere.
4. Set the connection permissions
For each connection, you can define a set of permissions that can restrict access to:
some API endpoints. In this case, those permissions are defined thanks to your
connection user role.some parts of your product catalog. In this case, those permissions are enforced thanks to the
connection user group. Note that they are only available in the Enterprise Edition.
Configuring the EasyCatalog Akeneo Data Source
EasyCatalog Enterprise module provides two Akeneo Data Sources: Akeneo and Akeneo extended. Both offer the same functionality but the extended version adds two additional filter options: by product Status and by product data Completeness.
Install the Akeneo Data Source provider
Select File> New > EasyCatalog Panel > Manage Enterprise Data Providers. The Manage Enterprise Data Providers dialog box will open. Select the Akeneo or Akeneo Extended data provider from the list and click the Install button.
The Akeneo Extended data provider offers two additional options: Status —allows you to filter imported products by its status, All, enabled or disabled— and Complete —you can import all productos or only the ones marked as completed by Akeneo.
Create a new Akeneo Data Source
Configuring a data source is a relatively simple task and principally involves specifying various values within the Akeneo Data Source Configuration dialog box:
As with all EasyCatalog data sources, the data source name must be unique and is used to identify your new data source. The name entered here will appear on the File→New→EasyCatalog Panel menu.
Enter the URL of the Akeneo server. EasyCatalog will connect to it when you create the data source and on subsequent Synchronize with Data Source operations.
Enter the credentials Akeneo created for your when configuring the connection.
Check this option if you want to import the field label name for each attribute. This allows you, for example, to use the label name in your catalog and automatically translate it into another language if you decide to import another language from Akeneo.
Check this option to import all the products for the main categories and also the ones for each subcategory.
If a product belongs to more than one category and you want to display it in your catalog once per category, check this option. EasyCatalog will modify the Akeneo product id by the product id and the category id fields.
Check this option to import the Akeneo reference entities into yor data source.
Click the Initialize button to test your Akeneo server connection using the provided credentials and initialize the Akeneo data provider. If the connection is succesful, the Default locale, Channel, Category and Locale will be editable and populated with your Akeneo values.
The Default locale is used to obtain the correct set of categories and channels. If All is selected, then the code will be displayed in the Category and Channel menu.
Select a channel name to import the products for a specific channel. Usually you will define one different channel for each output: digital, print, ecommerce, web, etc.
Select a category name if you only want to retrieve the products for that category; select All to import all the products for all the categories.
Select All if you want to import each field multiple times, once per language. EasyCatalog will concatenate the two letter Country Code Language to the field name. For example, the description field will be imported twice if your Akeneo PIM has two locales, one for Spain's Spanish (description_es_ES) and another for USA English (description_en_US).
Group you products by category
Use the EasyCatalog Data panel Group... menu option to group your products by category.This will greatly improve the usability of your data and will allow further pagination options.
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