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User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
Administering
Overview of administering a WebSphere Commerce site
In WebSphere Commerce the person who performs administrative tasks is called a Site Administrator. The Site Administrator installs, configures, and maintains WebSphere Commerce and the associated software and hardware. The administrator responds to system warnings, alerts, and errors, and diagnoses and resolves system problems. Typically, this person controls access and authorization (creating and assigning members to the appropriate role), manages the Web site, monitors performance, and manages load balancing tasks. The Site Administrator might be responsible for establishing and maintaining several server configurations for different stages of development such as testing, staging, and production. The Site Administrator also handles critical system backups and resolves performance problems.
Administration Console
Site Administrators use the Administration Console to control a site or store by completing administrative operations and configuration tasks such as publishing stores, refreshing the registry, and scheduling jobs. You can access the Administration Console at a site-level, or for a particular store.
Jobs
A job is a WebSphere Commerce command that is scheduled to run on behalf of a site or store at a specified time or interval. The three types of jobs are: regular jobs, store level jobs, and broadcast jobs.
Marketing jobs
If your store uses the services-based marketing system, the following scheduled jobs are added. You can adjust the schedule on which these jobs run if necessary.

User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
- Planning
  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.
- Installing
  Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Deploying
  The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
- Operating
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
  - Overview of administering a WebSphere Commerce site
    In WebSphere Commerce the person who performs administrative tasks is called a Site Administrator. The Site Administrator installs, configures, and maintains WebSphere Commerce and the associated software and hardware. The administrator responds to system warnings, alerts, and errors, and diagnoses and resolves system problems. Typically, this person controls access and authorization (creating and assigning members to the appropriate role), manages the Web site, monitors performance, and manages load balancing tasks. The Site Administrator might be responsible for establishing and maintaining several server configurations for different stages of development such as testing, staging, and production. The Site Administrator also handles critical system backups and resolves performance problems.
    - Stores in WebSphere Commerce
      WebSphere Commerce supports several different types of entities that are defined as stores. The assets of these store entities may be edited using the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.
    - Enabling registered users to access all stores in the Extended Sites business model
      WebSphere Commerce users can access storefronts by virtue of having the role of Registered Customer in the organization that owns the store, or in any organization above it. The roles a user has access to during registration are defined within the MemberRegistrationAttributes.xml file.
    - Configuration Manager
      To configure a WebSphere Commerce instance, use the Configuration Manager. The Configuration Manager interface shows mandatory fields and provides help.
    - Administration Console
      Site Administrators use the Administration Console to control a site or store by completing administrative operations and configuration tasks such as publishing stores, refreshing the registry, and scheduling jobs. You can access the Administration Console at a site-level, or for a particular store.
      - Business auditing
        Business auditing is the capturing of the business logic and objects during a WebSphere Commerce operation. You may want to audit your business for various reasons: generic, such as to review various tasks performed weekly; or specific, such as to track the steps involved in a particular Customer Service Representative's order. A report on business auditing is available in the Administration Console.
      - Opening the Administration Console
        Users with Site Administrator access can open the Administration Console.
      - Enabling WebSphere Commerce components
        Enabling a component with the Administration Console enables the component until the WebSphere Commerce Server is restarted. To permanently enable a component use Configuration Manager.
      - Disabling WebSphere Commerce components
        Disabling a component using the Administration Console disables the component until the WebSphere Commerce Server is restarted. To permanently disable a component use Configuration Manager.
      - Registry Manager
        The Registry Manager maintains a set of registries for caching WebSphere Commerce runtime data. Each registry provides methods to enable adding, deleting, and refreshing of the registry content. These methods are available to the URL interface by using the ListRegistry and the RefreshRegistry commands.
      - Jobs
        A job is a WebSphere Commerce command that is scheduled to run on behalf of a site or store at a specified time or interval. The three types of jobs are: regular jobs, store level jobs, and broadcast jobs.
        Scheduling a site-level job
        Use the Administration Console to schedule a job on the site level.
        Maintaining the scheduler
        The SCHSTATUS table contains one entry for every execution of a job in the SCHCONFIG table. Because of the large number of jobs that are run by the scheduler, there are many job status records in the SCHSTATUS table. This size can have an adverse affect on the performance of the WebSphere Commerce Server. Periodically clean up the SCHSTATUS table.
        Configuration parameters
        You can change scheduler parameters to control behavior. You can control behaviors such as expiry time, waiting time between checks for jobs, and the number of threads to allocate to an application type.
        Marketing jobs
        If your store uses the services-based marketing system, the following scheduled jobs are added. You can adjust the schedule on which these jobs run if necessary.
        Scheduling the SendMarketingTriggers job
        This job schedules the sending of marketing email activities. This job also processes triggers in Dialog activities and generates top-browsed and best-seller lists in Web activities. By default, this job runs every 30 minutes, but you can change the schedule interval to something more appropriate for your site.
        Scheduling the SaveMarketingStatistics job
        This command saves the accumulated statistics to the database. The SaveMarketingStatistics job calls the Process MarketingTrigger Web service with the SaveStatistics action. The default value is 15 minutes, which means that every 15 minutes, the most up-to-date statistics are available. If this is not frequent enough, the interval can be reduced.
        Scheduling the DownloadStatistics job to copy marketing and search statistics
        Marketing and search statistics must be available on the staging server so that business users can view up-to-date data in statistics reports and search rule experiments in Management Center. You can create and schedule a DownloadStatistics job on the staging or authoring server to connect to and automatically copy search and marketing event statistics from the production server at a scheduled interval, for example, every ten minutes.
        Scheduling the ProcessExpiredPromotions job
        You can use the ProcessExpiredPromotions job to report, delete, archive, or deactivate expired promotions automatically. This job can potentially improve performance of the promotion engine since deleted or archived promotions do not display in the main list of promotions on Management Center.
        WebSphere Commerce Search jobs
        If your store uses WebSphere Commerce Search, the following scheduled jobs are available. You can create and adjust the schedule on which these jobs run if necessary.
        Search engine optimization jobs
        If your store uses the search engine optimization feature, the following scheduled jobs are available. You can create and adjust the schedule on which these jobs run if necessary.
        ATP-inventory jobs
        If your store uses ATP-inventory, there are some jobs that must be scheduled for the store before the order flow process can be completed.
        Using an external system of record
        WebSphere Commerce manages ATP inventory as it is received at a fulfillment center, when adjustments are performed, and when orders are processed and released to fulfillment. An external system of record generally manages the flow of materials into and out of a fulfillment center. If you want to use an external system of record to maintain the current inventory levels for a store, the store must be configured properly, and inventory levels must be periodically updated using an external feed.
      - Message resend
        Site Administrators can use the resend function in WebSphere Commerce to resend messages that are stored in the WebSphere Commerce system.
      - Transport methods
        WebSphere Commerce provides several transport methods. By default, the e-mail transport method is configured and active. You can also use these transport methods: File, IBM MQ, or a sample adapter. You can configure transport methods for the site, or for particular stores.
      - Message types
        WebSphere Commerce predefines several message types and sets them as active. You can change the parameters for message types.
    - Organization Administration Console
      The Organization Administration Console enables administrators to manage organizations, business users and member groups. Access Control policies can also be managed and approval requests can be processed.
    - Common installation and administration tasks
      The following tasks are common tasks that you need to perform, often repeatedly, as part of WebSphere Commerce installation and administration duties.
  - WebSphere Commerce instance
    Every WebSphere Commerce installation requires at least one instance to function, and each WebSphere Commerce instance can contain one or more stores.
  - Managing features
    You can administer the features for your store and site, such as attribute, catalog, promotion, marketing, order management features, and more. The administration tasks that you can complete differ depending on the type of feature and the tool that you use to administer your store and site.
  - Logging services
    WebSphere Commerce provides facilities for logging. For existing customers, ECTrace and ECMessage are still supported. For new implementations, use the WebSphere Application Server recommendation for logging and tracing.
  - Business auditing
    Business auditing is the capturing of the business logic and objects during a WebSphere Commerce operation. You may want to audit your business for various reasons: generic, such as to review various tasks performed weekly; or specific, such as to track the steps involved in a particular Customer Service Representative's order. A report on business auditing is available in the Administration Console.
  - Business events
    Each time that a command triggers a business event, a record is added to the BUSEVENT database table to persist data from the event. Event listeners and external systems (such as the Marketing component, a back end order management system, or an external analytics system) can use this data to perform further processing.
  - Staging server
    The WebSphere Commerce staging server is a part of the production environment where business and technical users can update and manage store data and preview changes. The changes can then be propagated to the production server.
  - WebSphere Commerce database
    As a site administrator, maintain the WebSphere Commerce database and ensure that any WebSphere Commerce utilities and processes that load and retrieve data from the database is configured to connect to the database properly.
  - Dynamic caching
    In general, caching improves response time and reduces system load. Caching techniques are used to improve the performance of World Wide Web Internet applications. Most techniques cache static content (content that rarely changes) such as graphic and text files. However, many websites serve dynamic content, containing personalized information or data that changes more frequently. Caching dynamic content requires more sophisticated caching techniques, such as those provided by the WebSphere Application Server dynamic cache, a built-in service for caching and serving dynamic content.
  - Extracting, transforming, and loading data
    WebSphere Commerce provides multiple utilities for preparing and loading data into a WebSphere Commerce database. The loading utilities are flexible and you can continue to use these utilities when you customize the WebSphere Commerce schema.
  - Payment plug-ins
    To configure a payment plug-in define payment and refund methods; payment and refund rules; and the payment protocols that you intend to use.
  - WebSphere Commerce Search
    For a fully functioning WebSphere Commerce Search implementation, you must understand and complete the search administration tasks, which include search index management and ongoing maintenance.
  - Deploying a WebSphere Commerce dual cell environment
    Consider deploying a dual cell environment to achieve continuous availability and ensure that shoppers are minimally affected by planned or unplanned outages.
  - IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce
    IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce is a separately purchased product that provides a light-weight customer service solution that is embedded in the Aurora B2C and Aurora B2B storefronts. Even though this solution is a separately purchased product, it is not a separate application. Stores that are enabled with IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce allow a customer service representative (CSR) to act on behalf of guest customers and registered customers. A CSR can manage customer accounts, cancel and reorder orders, and shop as customer. A CSR can also act on behalf of Buyer Administrators to help complete Aurora B2B tasks from the storefront, without having to access the Organization Administration Console.
- Tutorials
  WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
- Developing
  The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
- Compliance
  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.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
- Troubleshooting

Scheduling marketing jobs

If your store uses the services-based marketing system, the following scheduled jobs are added. You can adjust the schedule on which these jobs run if necessary.