LASUG Insite Plus Sitecore Connector
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1. The document discusses the InsiteCommerce Plus Sitecore connector, which connects the InsiteCommerce ecommerce platform to Sitecore to enable synchronized product content and user tracking. 2. It describes how the connector uses standard Sitecore APIs and pipelines to import products from InsiteCommerce into Sitecore and track user interactions and personalization. 3. The document provides an overview of how the connector works behind the scenes through the use of entity classes, repositories, and custom pipelines that interface with the InsiteCommerce REST API to synchronize product content and user events between the two systems.
LASUG Insite Plus Sitecore Connector
- 1. Making the Connection: InsiteCommerce & Sitecore Kautilya Prasad & Dan Solovay XCentium
- 2. On the menu… 1. What is Sitecore Commerce Connect? 2. What is InsiteCommerce? 3. The InsiteCommerce Plus Sitecore connector in action. 4. A look behind the scenes. 5. Q&A
- 3. What is Commerce Connect? • Framework for wiring up commerce systems to Sitecore • Imports products to Sitecore • Provides APIs for shopping funnel • Goals and Engagement Plans • Extensible architecture • Pipelines • Domain Objects • Repositories Commerce Connect Insite 4.1-4.x InsiteCommerce Plus Sitecore Sitecore 8.X
- 4. What is Insite Commerce ? • Deep integration capabilities • Manage products • Assign pricing • Maintain inventory • Order processing • Out of the box functionality • Search • Frontend • B2C and B2B ecommerce
- 5. Insite Commerce .. continued • Exposes rest APIs to interact with Insite • Multisite • Multi currency • Multi lingual • Customer based catalogues • Customer based pricing • Power platform for B2B
- 6. Insite Plus Sitecore Connect What is it? • Product • Connects Sitecore and Insite • Standardization • Standard Sitecore APIs used for information flow • Development • No knowledge of underlying Insite APIs required • Personalization • Track user history and personalize • Marketing • Monitor goals and Engagement Plans First Time User – Featured Products Returning Customer – Personalized Products based on history
- 7. Insite Plus Sitecore Connect… continued • Easy Integration • Bring Products into Sitecore • xDB • Track user activity, goals • Time to Market • Effort required for development • Unique Insite Features • Customer Based Catalogues • Pricing • Sitecore Commerce Connect 8.0 • Extensible and Robust
- 8. Insite Plus Sitecore Connect… continued Search capabilities • Implement Sitecore search • Insite search Mix product content
- 9. How does the Content Tree look like?
- 10. Demo
- 11. So, how does this all work? • Pipelines and Service Providers • Service Providers wrap pipelines • Pipelines interact with xDB and Sitecore Content • We implemented commands for talking to Insite 4.x Rest API • Entities and Repositories • Entity classes (product, category, etc.) are pure DTOs with no dependencies on Commerce System or Sitecore. • Repository classes provide access, mapping methods. • We extended both to provide some Insite specific features (Unit of Measure, Category images) • Product Sync • Loads “artifacts” first: images, classes, categories, global attributes • Then it updates each product • Insite Styled Variants as a challenge: attributes are contained in parent item.
- 12. Pipelines connect shop to Sitecore Pipelines exist for all user and shopping funnel events, with processors for all Sitecore communication. • Reading or saving commerce entities to Sitecore: • Recording to xDB (Goals, Events, Engagement Automation):
- 13. Pipelines connect Sitecore to Insite Sitecore provides stub methods for communication to External Commerce System… We override these to query the Insite API… … and write the results to pipeline argument properties.
- 14. So how is this content stored in Sitecore? • Commerce entities are defined as entity classes: • Repository classes map these to Sitecore items: • Repositories provide abstraction layer between code and persistence (items, user manger, or xDB)
- 15. Insite IDs are mapped to Sitecore IDs • MD5 hashing used to turn Insite IDs to Sitecore IDs: • Item.ID = MD5.ComputeHash(prefix + Insite ID) • Prefix is defined in repository parameters (e.g. “Product_”). • Faster than storing ID conversions, and does not use disk. • Ensures products consistently map to items
- 16. Repository configuration ties it all together • A type to manage the collection. • The branch template for creating items. • The location of the repository • The prefix for ID Generation
- 17. Repositories & entities are extensible 1. Add new base template 2. Override entity class definition in configuration 3. Extend repository class in configuration and extend mapping methods
- 18. SynchronizeProducts pipeline loads the repository
- 19. SynchronizeProducts has four steps • Synchronize artifacts: Categories, classes, manufacturers, • Load list of products • Synchronize each product entity individually • Synchronize each product attribute or relationship
- 20. Challenge of Styled Variants • Attributes are loaded before products, but for Insite Styled Variants, attributes are part of parent product. • Solution: • Call mini artifacts pipeline • Call mini product pipeline • Return to main product pipeline
- 21. To learn more… • Watch the series on YouTube “Master Sitecore” channel • Follow Kautilya’s blog posts at XCentium.com