10015---Synchronization Guide

Catalog versions can be synchronized in aone-directional way for updating a catalog version according to another. 

This way you can transfer catalog content between the catalog versions whichrepresentsteps in your catalog maintenance process. 

You can synchronize catalog versions, even if they are of the same or different catalogs within your hybris Commerce Suite.

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Synchronizing Catalogs

The catalog that is online, and therefore visible to customers, is often not the only catalog that your platform contains; 

usually, you have several non-visible catalogs as well that you can work with. This has the advantage that 

you canassembleseveral catalogs in advance so you can use them when needed, for example, 

when seasons change and your productportfolioneeds to match that.

For transferring the differing content between two catalogs you use synchronizing operations among subordinate catalogs versions.

Note

From a technical perspective, there is no difference between catalogs or catalog versions. For example, 

the online catalog is different from the catalog that is hidden only because of access rights.

How Does Synchronizing Work?

The single catalog that is visible to your customers is called online, and the catalogs that are not visible to customers are staged. A standard synchronizing operation is the act of updating the online catalog with at least one of the staged catalogs. If you synchronize a staged catalog, the online catalog will then contain all values from that staged catalog.

A synchronizing operation can be applied to an entire catalog version, but  it can also be applied to selected categories or products. 

Synchronization works in a unidirectional manner only, from staged to online. 

However, you can apply two synchronizing operations to establish bi-directional update procedures.

Note

You can also change access rights of the staged catalog to be the online catalog. However, hybris does not recommend 

this solution because you will not have a backup of your online catalog. Synchronizing is easy and can be fully automated.

Figure: This illustration depicts a sample catalog system consisting of Catalog 1 with three versions and Catalog 2 with two versions. 

You may want such a setup if, for example, you have several suppliers who have product catalogs of their own. 

The dotted lines represent customized synchronizations, and the solid line represents the default synchronization: 

Default:Staged → Default:Online. Read more about catalog systems in the Configure Synchronizations for a Catalog System section below.

Synchronization Statuses

• : This status means that the source item is synchronized with the target item.
• : This status means that source item has been changed and needs synchronization with the target item.
• :This status means that an initial synchronization is needed. The source catalog version has never been synchronized with the target catalog version. Since synchronizing single items is disabled, you need to Synchronize an Entire Catalog Version

Each synchronization execution produces synchronization timestamps. See the following document for more information: No Changes in a Synchronized Catalog Version After the Synchronization Was Modified?.
Since hybris Commerce Suite version 5.1, the logic evaluating the Initial synchronization needed status checks to see if any timestamps exist for the source catalog version. In other words, it checks if the catalog has ever been synchronized.

It is possible to change the logic by introducing the following configuration entry:

catalog.synchronization.initialinit.check.timestamps=false

In this case, the status will be evaluated based on the executions of synchronizations as Cronjobs (Configure Synchronizations as CronJobs).

Note

If you set the catalog.synchronization.initialinit.check.timestamps=false and clear the historical synchronization Cronjob execution items

 from your system, you will see the  status for your catalog version. This is the default evaluation logic for hybris Commerce Suite versions prior to 5.1.

About Synchronizations

A synchronizing operation is held in a synchronization object referencing the source and the target object. Thus, synchronizations are definitions of how products and their data such as names, descriptions, and prices will be copied into the target catalog.

You can create, edit, and delete a synchronization using the hybris Management Console (hMC). Each synchronization is bound to the catalog version that is used as the synchronization source.

Optional Multithreaded Catalog Synchronization

To support systems with a large numbers of products, the hybris Commerce Suite supports Multithreaded catalog synchronization operations. 

For details, see the Multithreaded Catalog Synchronization document.

Editing Synchronization Rules

To edit synchronization:

1

Log into the hybris Management Console and navigate to Catalog > Catalogs.

The result view displays an explorer tree of available catalogs.

Note

Depending on your user account's access rights, some steps of these instructions might not work for you because you don't have sufficient access rights for the respective hybris Management Console elements.

2

Expand the Default catalog and select a Catalog Version. Open its Catalog version editor with a right-click command.

3

On the Catalog Versions tab, right-click on one of the listed synchronizations and choose Edit to open the Synchronization editor.

4

On the Synchronization Settings tab, set the synchronization rules of how product data is copied to the target catalog version:

• Basic Setting:  You can decide whether missing objects in the target catalog version should be created. Furthermore, you can decide that existing products in the target catalog version that do not exist in the source catalog version should be removed. Alternatively, only products that exist in both the source and the target catalog versions are synchronized.

• Language Settings: Define the languages of products attributed to be synchronized.

• Synchronization User/Groups: Before version 4.1.2, only users with granted write permissions for the target catalog version were able to initiate a synchronization process.
  Since version 4.1.2, you can explicitly define those users and groups which are permitted to initiate such a process although they don't have such write permissions.
  If the option, Respect sync. permissions only is checked, only the defined sync. users will be allowed to synchronize. If it is not checked, then a user with granted write permissions for the target catalog version will be allowed to do so, too,

• Type Settings: Set the root types that are analyzed in case of complete synchronizations of catalog versions. Such synchronizing procedures searches for new, changed, updated, and removed items of the listed types.

You can only add disjunctive types; that is, you cannot add types that have a common instance. For example, adding Product and Variant product will generate an error.

5

The Synchronization Properties tab lists all properties that you may have published with another catalog version. Browse the tree to expand available properties. Any selected property is updated in the target catalog, and any unselected properties keep their values. This enables you to merge content from several catalog versionsnto a s

ingle one, and split them into individual catalogs again.

Starting Synchronization

The hMC enables you to synchronize catalog versions completely or in parts. The following sections describe the different synchronization scopes.

Checking the Impact of a Synchronization

1

In the explorer tree, navigate to Catalog > Catalog Management Tools > Version Diff.

2

Select a synchronization in the Value drop-down list box.

3

Click the Search button to display a list of changes that will be generated by performing a synchronization.

Checking the Impact of a Synchronization

1

In the explorer tree, navigate to Catalog > Catalog Management Tools > Version Diff.

2

Select a synchronization in the Value drop-down list box.

3

Click the Search button to display a list of changes that will be generated by performing a synchronization.

Synchronizing Catalog Versions

To synchronize an entire catalog version:

1

In the explorer tree, navigate to Catalog > Catalog Management Tools > Synchronization.

  2

On the Source tab, select a synchronization by clicking a text cell. To continue, click the Next button.

3

On the Target tab, select the catalog versions that you want to updat and in the Logging section, set what details you want to be informed about during the synchronization process, and at what debug level.

4

Cick the Start button to continue.

 The Force Update option forces synchronizing items again that normally would have been skipped as being up to date. It has no effect on new or deleted items.

Figure: hMC explorer tree on the left with expanded Catalog Management Tools

The synchronizing operation might take a while. When it is complete, a Summary report is displayed.