WebSphere Commerce EnterpriseWebSphere Commerce Professional

Applying custom merchandising associations

You can create custom merchandising association types based on your requirements. For example, you may want to offer a down-sell merchandising association to suggest lower-priced catalog entries based on the selected catalog entry.

About this task

All custom merchandising associations defined in the WebSphere Commerce Server are listed in the Merchandising Associations view, but cannot be applied to an order or quote without customization. In the Sales Center, supported merchandising associations can be applied in two ways:
  • By selecting the association in the Merchandising Associations view; then right-clicking and choosing Apply in the context menu.
  • By selecting the association in the Merchandising Associations view; then dragging it to the Order Items table in the Order editor.

In order to allow custom association types, you must customize the Sales Center and drag sides of the application. To apply custom merchandising associations:

Procedure

  1. To customize the drag side of the application:
    1. Extend the ModelRoot class and override the getSupportedAssociationTypes method to return the custom list of supported association types.
      The list of supported association types are retrieved from ModelRoot class to check before allowing any associations to drag and apply.
    2. Extend the Association class and override the getAssociationTypeToDisplay and getAssociationImage methods to customize the display name and icon for the associations.
  2. To customize the drop side of the application:
    1. Extend the DropAssociationAction class and override the doAssociationDrop method to add your logic while applying the associations to the order.
      The DropAssociationAction class is responsible for performing the drop activity for any supported association types to the Order Items table in the Order editor.