The information contained in this section applies to IBM WebSphere Commerce Version 7.0.0.9 and Feautre Pack 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in new editions.
The IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce, or Management Center, is a suite of tools to support store management, merchandising, and marketing tasks for business users (Sellers, Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers, and others).
As a Product Manager, Marketing Manager, or Category Manager, you can use the Assets tool to upload and manage your store assets. The term assets refers to web content that you use on your storefront and in marketing campaigns, such as marketing image files, catalog image files, PDF documents, and multimedia files.
Use the Assets tool to create, change, and delete attachments.
Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
Review this section for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
Before you migrate WebSphere Commerce, review this information for an overview of the migration process.
If you are using WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, consider using Management Center to manage your store.
Use the Management Center keyboard shortcuts to access user interface functions or complete tasks, using a single key or combination of keys.
If your company operates an extended site, you can perform certain tasks directly from your extended site store within Management Center.
If content management capabilities other than the functionality that is provided by default with WebSphere Commerce is required, WebSphere Commerce can be integrated with IBM Web Content Manager. If WebSphere Commerce is integrated with IBM Web Content Manager, you can use content from IBM Web Content Manager content libraries with Management Center objects.
If your site is integrated with IBM Marketing Center, Management Center users can open IBM Marketing Center from Management Center to upload promotion codes and to create and manage marketing campaigns.
The Management Center user interface provides a usable, intuitive, and efficient way to complete your business tasks.
The starting point for all Management Center tasks is to open the tooling. Afterward, you can use several methods to complete a task: by selecting menu options, by clicking toolbar buttons, by right-clicking and selecting menus, or by keyboard shortcuts.
Use the Catalogs tool in Management Center to manage catalogs, categories, catalog entries, merchandising associations, product attributes, and attachments in your store. The Catalogs tool lets business users create, and manage online catalogs. Catalogs provide a way of organizing the products that you want to sell. You define catalog data in groups of categories and products. Catalog data contains descriptions and pricing information for products and services.
Use the Marketing tool in Management Center to create and manage marketing campaigns and other store content (excluding catalog content). You can use the extensive precision marketing features in the tool to deliver targeted marketing messages to customers.
Use the Promotions tool in Management Center to create and manage promotions that support the marketing campaigns for your site.
Managed files are the images, documents, and multimedia files that you use on your storefront and include in marketing campaigns. You create managed files by uploading them from your local file system to the WebSphere Commerce server using the Assets tool.
Use the Assets tool to upload managed files for your store.
Use the Assets tool to create an attachment to act as a container for managed files and URLs. Attachments are typically used by multi-language stores to group files that exist in more than one language, such as the English and French versions of an ad or a warranty document.
You can edit the properties of an attachment, such as the code, name, description, and files or URLs of the attachment.
You can delete an attachment if you are no longer using it. You cannot delete an attachment if it is associated with a business object, such as a catalog entry, category, or marketing content.
You can see all of the attachments under the selected store by opening the Attachments list view. Use the Attachments list view to display a list of the attachments and view details for a specified attachment, such as generic information and the attachment assets that it contains.
You can list attachments and view details for a specified attachment, such as the files or URLs that it contains.
Use the Assets tool to add files to multilingual attachments, which make language-specific attachments available based on a customer's default browsing language.
You might want to delete a file from an attachment if you no longer have any use for that file. When you delete a file from an attachment, the file itself is not deleted. Only the association between the file and the attachment is deleted.
You can add URLs to a selected attachment. For example, if several PDF files that describe the characteristics of a product are stored on a remote content server and you want a specific attachment to contain these PDF files, you can add the URL of these PDF files to the attachment.
You might want to delete a URL from an attachment if you no longer have any use for that URL.
You can change the languages that are selected for a URL or file, or edit the URL path.
Find answers to some frequently asked questions about using certain features of the Assets tool and completing tasks.
If you encounter issues while you are using the Assets tool, review this troubleshooting topic to solve common problems.
Use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool in Management Center to create and manage catalog filters, price lists, and price rules. Sellers, Sales Managers, and Account Representatives can use the tool's flexible features to implement catalog filtering and pricing strategies that meet the site's business needs over time.
Use the Installments tool in Management Center to create and manage installment rules that support the payment methods for your site.
As a Marketing Manager, Product Manager, Category Manager, or Sales Manager you can use the Page Layout tool in Management Center to manage layouts for your store pages. By using the Page Layout tool, you can schedule different layouts to certain store pages, giving you greater control over your store design.
Create pages and build layouts for your store directly in Management Center without involving IT by using the Commerce Composer tool. Take advantage of the tool's page design and management functions to improve your productivity and give you more control over the customer experience.
As a Seller, Site Administrator, or Channel Manager, you can use the Store Management tool in Management Center to manage your stores. The Store Management tool in Management Center replaces all of the store management features in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, except store creation and the ability to suspend and resume stores. Continue to use the Store Creation wizard in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to create new stores; continue to use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to suspend and resume stores.
Use the Tasks tool to select tasks, manage content within a task, and add comments and approve or reject tasks.
As a workspace manager, you can use the Workspace Management tool in Management Center to manage and edit workspaces, its task groups, and tasks. It provides a single view across all workspaces and all tasks in the workspaces where managers can see how work is progressing.
Preview your store to ensure that changes made in Management Center show up in your store as expected. You can use store preview in production, authoring, and staging environments.
Find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the Management Center.
If you encounter issues with the Management Center that are not related to any specific tool, review this troubleshooting topic to solve common problems.
WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials.
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.