Manage versions of catalog objects (catalog entry, category, sales catalog)

Here are some examples of content versioning activities that Product and Category Managers can perform using the Catalogs tool:

• Create a version of a product or SKU before making short-term changes, and then restore to the previous version when the promotional period is over.
• Create a version of a business object, and test the changes. To backout unsatisfactory changes, restore to a previous version.
• During the holiday season, you can create a version of a product. The product's image and description are changed to market it for the holiday season. After the season is over, restore to the baseline version.

The ability to version business objects provides the following business benefits:

• Allows Product Managers to test changes before they are committed
• Increases productivity by removing the need to manually redo changes.
• Increases effectiveness by updating catalog objects targeted for promotional events and restoring to previous versions.
• Business users can perform any versioning operation: create, view, copy and restore a version of a business object, while working under a task within a workspace.

By versioning business objects, Product Managers and Category Managers can:

• Create, restore, delete, and view versions of business objects.
• Make temporary changes to objects to target specific events such as a seasonal sale.
• Captures a snapshot of catalog objects.
• Create a version of a business object for testing purposes.
• Manage content requiring approval under a workspace.

As a feature of WebSphere Commerce, content versioning capabilities are easily leveraged by the following user roles:

• Administrator who wants to implement automatic versioning of objects (for example, on stageprop) and also manage the size of the version repository using DBClean.
• Product Manager or Category Manager who wants to manage versions of business objects (sales catalog, category, or catalog entry) in the Catalogs tool.
• Application developer who want to add support for additional objects and their properties.