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Process documentationCreation of Product Catalogs

 

You use product catalogs to group together products to present them in the Web shop, Interaction Center, or in other forms of media, for example printed format or CD-ROM.

Prerequisites

  • You have created products in your product master in SAP CRM under Accounts and Products.

  • You have carried out the customizing activities for the product catalog in Customizing under Start of the navigation path Customer Relationship Managment Next navigation step Master Data Next navigation step Product Catalogs End of the navigation path.

  • You have set up organizational data determination in Customizing under Start of the navigation path Customer Relationship Management Next navigation step Master Data Next navigation step Organizational Management End of the navigation path.

  • You have created an organizational model for sales organizations and distribution channels in SAP CRM using transaction PPOMA_CRM.

  • If you are planning to use the catalog views in your Web shop, you have selected the flag for Catalog Determination on the Catalog tab page in the CRM Web Channel Shop Management application.

Process

To create a product catalog, you carry out the following activities in SAP CRM:

  1. Define catalog type.

  2. Create catalog variants.

  3. Create catalog areas.

    You can create new catalog areas or copy them from an existing catalog. You can copy individual catalog areas both within the product catalog and from other product catalogs.

  4. Assign products.

  5. Assign multimedia objects

    You can assign multimedia objects, such as photos or videos to catalog areas and items. This is particularly useful if you are using your catalog in the Web shop.

  6. Manage lists of catalog characteristics.

    You use lists of characteristics to display attributes and values in the product catalog, for example, a t-shirt can have the attribute size and the value XXL. For more information, see List of Characteristics.

  7. Create catalog views.

    You use catalog views to display different parts of a catalog variant to different customers.

  8. Activate catalog, areas, and items

    You activate catalog variants, areas, and items so that they can be released for publication in the Web shop, or exported to business partner file systems using an XML export.

    You can activate areas of a variant individually, or along with their subareas and items.

    Once activated and published, you can then return to the same catalog variant and create a new working version, in which you can make changes.

    Depending on the activation status you can have two different catalog versions at any one time:

    • Active version

      When you create a catalog you have to activate the areas, products, and catalog to index it for use in the Web shop, The active version displays all your saved changes to the catalog which have been activated.

    • Working version

      To make changes to an active version of a catalog you need to create a working version. Until you activate these changes you can display both the current working version and the original active version of the catalog. Once you activate your changes, the working version ceases to exist and a new active version is created.

    In addition to the above catalog versions, you can also choose the status Most recent version in catalog maintenance. In this case the system displays the most recent version of the catalog. This is either your current working version, if one exists, or the most recent active version if no working version exists.

Once you have created your catalog you can carry out the following activities to publish your catalog in the Web shop or send it to customers in printed format:

  • Index catalog

    You use catalog indexing to copy, or replicate, your products from the CRM system to the Index server, for example the TREX server. Once indexed these catalogs can then be used in the Web shop. You must first of all index the entire contents of a catalog, and after this you can carry out delta indexing when you make changes to the catalog data. For more information, see Product Catalog Indexing.

  • Perform XML exports

    You can use an XML export to export catalogs from SAP CRM to business partner file systems. The export uses business partner profiles, which you create in SAP CRM.

    You can export the entire contents of a variant or only delta content and you can schedule the export as a periodic batch job, or run it in the background.

    For more information, see XML Export of Catalog Variants.