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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.
Developing
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
Presentation layer
WebSphere Commerce uses Java Server Pages (JSP) to implement the view layer of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The view layer is in charge of retrieving data from the database through the use of data beans and formatting it to meet the display requirements. The view layers determines whether the request is sent to a browser or streamed out as XML. JSP files present a clean separation between data content and presentation.
Customizing marketing
You can customize marketing features and objects to better meet the business needs of your site. For example, you can customize e-Marketing Spots, customer segments, activities, activity components, such as triggers, targets and actions, and more. Customization is supported for the Marketing tool in Management Center and for the storefront to display e-Marketing Spots.
Marketing customization: Management Center
There are many aspects of the Marketing tool that you can customize to suit the business needs of your site. For example, you can customize web and dialog activities, the Activity Builder user interface, e-Marketing Spots, and customer segments. Customization is supported for both the Marketing tool user interface and the marketing services.
Customizing triggers, targets, and actions
To provide business users with more options for web and dialog activities, you can create new triggers, targets, and actions to use in the Activity Builder for the Marketing tool. You can also change the behavior of existing triggers, targets, and actions.

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
- 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.
  - Functional architecture
    Functional architecture provides both the set of patterns used to implement the business functionality and the frameworks in which these business functions execute.
  - Persistent object model
    WebSphere Commerce deals with a large amount of persistent data. There are numerous tables defined in the current database schema. Even with this extensive schema, however, you might need to extend or customize the database schema for your particular business needs.
  - Presentation layer
    WebSphere Commerce uses Java Server Pages (JSP) to implement the view layer of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The view layer is in charge of retrieving data from the database through the use of data beans and formatting it to meet the display requirements. The view layers determines whether the request is sent to a browser or streamed out as XML. JSP files present a clean separation between data content and presentation.
    - WebSphere Commerce Struts framework
      Struts is a well documented, mature and popular framework for building front ends to Java applications. To address concerns in software applications, it uses a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture: The Model represents the business or database code, the View represents the page design code, and the Controller represents the navigational code.
    - Spring framework
      The Spring Framework is a lightweight, open source programming and configuration model for developing Java based enterprise applications. This framework is used in WebSphere Commerce for building and configuring Management Center, including the managing of URL requests from Management Center to retrieve and process object data.
    - Management Center
      The IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce framework is the foundation for WebSphere Commerce business user tooling. The business objects that are managed with Management Center are defined by the individual components that make up Management Center. The Management Center framework uses these definitions to provide the features that you can use to find, create, modify, and delete the defined business objects. If you plan to customize the Management Center, ensure that you understand the framework and all of the components that make up Management Center.
    - Developing Commerce Composer assets
      Enrich the capabilities of the Commerce Composer tool by developing your own widgets and templates, and extending other features and functions to suit your business needs.
    - Customizing promotions
      Customizing promotions can involve the customization of the promotion business user tools and the underlying promotion engine, which features a clean architecture supporting rich functionality, as well as a wide array of customization possibilities.
    - Working with the promotions component configuration file
      Some Management Center components, like the promotions component, have customizable configuration files. These files contain properties that control certain component features.
    - Customizing marketing
      You can customize marketing features and objects to better meet the business needs of your site. For example, you can customize e-Marketing Spots, customer segments, activities, activity components, such as triggers, targets and actions, and more. Customization is supported for the Marketing tool in Management Center and for the storefront to display e-Marketing Spots.
      - Marketing customization: Management Center
        There are many aspects of the Marketing tool that you can customize to suit the business needs of your site. For example, you can customize web and dialog activities, the Activity Builder user interface, e-Marketing Spots, and customer segments. Customization is supported for both the Marketing tool user interface and the marketing services.
        Customizing triggers, targets, and actions
        To provide business users with more options for web and dialog activities, you can create new triggers, targets, and actions to use in the Activity Builder for the Marketing tool. You can also change the behavior of existing triggers, targets, and actions.
        Marketing activity data storage and process flow
        If you are customizing triggers, targets, and actions, you must know which database tables store data about marketing activities. In addition, ensure that you understand what is happening behind the scenes when customers are experiencing your marketing activities. This knowledge can help you understand what you need to create or change to support a customized trigger, target, or action.
        Campaign element template definitions
        The triggers, targets, and actions that are used in marketing activities are based on templates. The templates are called campaign element template definitions. If you are customizing a trigger, target or action, ensure that you understand the purpose and structure of these template definitions before you modify an existing template or create a custom template.
        Campaign element task commands
        Each trigger, target, and action has an associated task command called a campaign element task command. The task command performs the work associated with the campaign element. The campaign element template definition must specify which task command to use.
        List of shipped campaign element templates and task commands
        Campaign elements have different requirements that depend on the element function. Reviewing details about the triggers, targets, and actions that are shipped with the Management Center can help you understand the requirements for a new campaign element. You can also view the API documentation for any of the task commands.
        Campaign element template parameters
        Campaign element template parameters specify the pieces of data that a campaign element task command needs to perform its function. The marketing services pass the data to the task command when a customer reaches the trigger, target or action in a marketing activity.
        Trigger parameters
        When a customer triggers a web or dialog activity, the marketing services pass trigger parameters to the task commands of all campaign elements within the activity flow. Trigger parameters are name-value pairs that contain the current context information for the activity. Campaign element task commands can then extract the relevant trigger parameters to perform their work.
        Types of dialog activity triggers and when they are processed
        Dialog activity triggers can be categorized into three types: customer event triggers, daily check triggers, and elapsed time triggers. If you are customizing a dialog activity trigger, it is important to understand when each type is processed, and the role of the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job. The trigger type also affects the task command function.
        How the marketing services record behavior for triggers and targets
        Certain triggers and targets in marketing activities record specific customer behavior. For example, the Catalog Browsing Behavior target records when customers browse specific parts of the store catalog so that Marketing Managers can target those customers in web and dialog activities. It is important to understand when the recording starts and stops, and what gets recorded.
        Ways to inform the marketing services of external or custom events for triggers and targets
        Certain triggers and targets in marketing activities must detect events. You might want to create a custom trigger or target that detects a custom event, or an event that occurs on a system that is external to WebSphere Commerce. If so, you can call the Process MarketingTrigger service to inform the marketing services that the event occurred. You can call this service a number of ways, by using a URL or by using Java code.
        Ranking list framework for marketing actions
        The ranking list framework for marketing actions enables the tracking of customer storefront actions. For example, by default, WebSphere Commerce tracks the number of times products are purchased and categories are viewed.
        Adding a trigger, target or action
        You can add a campaign element, such as a custom trigger, action, or target, to the Activity Builder if the default campaign elements do not meet your business needs. You can then use your new campaign element in marketing activities.
        Ignoring shopper-selected facets for a 'Recommend Catalog Entry' action
        Within the Search conditions of a Recommend Catalog Entry web activity, you can configure the web activity to ignore customer selected facets as part of the criteria for recommended catalog entries.
        Changing the name of commands used in behavior rule matching
        Certain triggers, targets and actions have behavior rules defined in their campaign element templates that detect events. The marketing services detect that the event has occurred by matching a page URL command or a controller command. If your site uses command names that are different from the default WebSphere Commerce command names, then you must specify your site's command names in a custom configuration file so that the triggers, targets and actions work properly.
        Changing the behavior of an existing campaign element by customizing its template
        Certain details about how a trigger, target, or action works are defined in the campaign element template definition for the trigger, target, or action. To change any details in the existing campaign element template definition, create a customized campaign element template definition with the same name and any changed parameters. Then register your customized campaign element template in the DMELETEMPLATE table. As a result, the marketing services will use your customized template instead of the default template.
        About changing targets that detect or record user behavior
        If you are changing the default behavior of targets that detect or record user behavior, you should approach the customization in specific ways, depending on your customization goal.
        Changing the daily scheduled time for marketing triggers and lists
        You can change the time of day that the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job processes daily check Dialog activity triggers, and generates best-seller and top-browsed lists. By default, this happens at 2:00 a.m. each day. If this time is not appropriate, you can create a customized version of the wc-admin-component.xml file to specify a different time of day.
        Changing the default boost factor for the Specify Top Search Result action
        You can change the default boost factor for the Specify Top Search Results action in search rules. In doing so, you can change the strength in which your specified catalog entries are elevated in the search results.
        WebSphere Commerce search keyword matching behavior
        The Customer submits search trigger matches only on separate words in the customer's search.
        Adding support for dynamic catalog entry recommendations in an e-Marketing Spot
        Before a Marketing Manager or business user can take advantage of the dynamic recommend catalog entry action in a web activity, customization to store JSP pages can be required. As a store page developer, you can add support for using the dynamic recommend catalog entry action in an e-Marketing Spot. Support for this action must be added to the JSP file where the activity is to run.
        Adding support for the e-Marketing Spot properties action to an e-Marketing Spot
        As a store page developer, you can add support for using the e-Marketing Spot properties action in an e-Marketing Spot. Before this action can be used in a web activity, support for the type of property information that returns to the e-Marketing Spot must be added to the store page that the activity runs on.
        Adding e-Marketing Spot title support to existing e-Marketing Spot JSPs
        Before you can display marketing content as title or default title content in an e-Marketing Spot, you must add support for displaying title content in the e-Marketing Spot JSP file.
        Adding image map support to existing Aurora starter store e-Marketing Spot JSP files
        Before you can display marketing content with multiple click actions in an e-Marketing Spot, you must add support for multiple click actions in the e-Marketing Spot JSP file.
        Defining the event and parameters for the Wait for Event trigger
        Marketing managers require technical information from store developers to set up the Wait for Event trigger in a Dialog activity. This information includes the event name and the parameters that the marketing services use to detect that the event occurred. To gather this information, you must determine the type of event to match and then complete some steps to define the event and its parameters. Depending on the type of event, you might need to implement a service call with a custom URL or by using Java code.
        Customizing the palette and template picker contents
        You might want business users to see a customized view of the element palette in the Activity Builder, or the New Activity From Template window (called the marketing activity template picker). If so, you can add or remove items from these views, or rearrange their contents.
        Customizing customer segments
        Business users create customer segments using the Customer Segments properties view in the Management Center Marketing tool. The properties view contains all the attributes for defining a customer segment, arranged in a series of tabs. To customize customer segment support for your site, you can add new attributes or remove those that your site does not use.
        Customizing e-Marketing Spot behavior
        There are a number of customization scenarios supported for e-Marketing Spots on your store pages.
        Customizing the Marketing tool to display catalog entry recommendations from an external system
        Marketing managers can boost sales by displaying relevant catalog entry recommendations to customers in e-Marketing Spots on store pages. To determine which catalog entries to recommend, your site might choose to use a system external to WebSphere Commerce, such as a product recommendation engine or a data warehouse. If so, WebSphere Commerce provides an infrastructure you can customize to retrieve the recommendations from the external system and display them to customers on your storefront.
        Customizing ribbon ads
        Ribbon ads draw attention to products on the storefront by overlaying the product image with informative text, such as New or Clearance. You can customize ribbon ads to suit your storefront design and marketing strategy.
      - Migrating from the V7 Accelerator based marketing e-spot code snippet to the Management Center based marketing e-spot code snippet
      - Adding an e-Marketing Spot to a store page
        You can create a custom JSP file to add add a custom e-Marketing Spot to a store page.
      - Email activities and custom activity template JSP files
        Email activities allow business users to deliver news and promotions to customers through email. These activities enable business users to reach customers who might not have visited your site in some time. These activites can also be used to keep regular customers up to date regarding up coming events or products.
    - Customizing price rules
      You can customize price rules to suit the business needs of your site. For example, you can create a new condition or action for business users to add to price rules. Customization is supported for both the Price Rule Builder tool user interface in the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool, and for the pricing services.
    - Customizing store preview
      You can customize store preview to add enhancements that help business users work more efficiently. These enhancements include the click-to-edit function and in-context preview function.
    - Customizing content versioning
      The content versioning feature is enabled for some objects in the Catalogs tool in Management Center. You can add or remove content versioning support for existing objects and custom objects by customizing both Management Center and WebSphere Commerce server.
    - Customizing the infrastructure component
      Customizing the infrastructure component provides you the ability to change configurable properties for Management Center and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) functionality.
    - Developing JSP pages
      To create JSP pages for WebSphere Commerce, you should have Rational Application Developer skills and JSP skills. You should also be familiar with JSTL.
    - WebSphere Commerce JSP programming best practices
      This section offers the following selection of JSP programming best practices, which promote development of reusable and easily maintainable JSP pages within the WebSphere Commerce store development framework:
    - JSP pages and data beans
      A data bean is a Java bean that is used within a JSP page to provide dynamic content. A data bean normally provides a simple representation of a WebSphere Commerce entity bean. The data bean encapsulates properties that can be retrieved from or set within the entity bean. As such, the data bean simplifies the task of incorporating dynamic data into JSP pages.
    - WebSphere Commerce useBean tag
      The useBean tag instantiates a WebSphere Commerce data bean and automatically populates it for you. A new programming direction has also been undertaken with our starter stores that now use the JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) to perform view logic, instead of Java code. At the same time, business logic has been moving into data beans. The combination of these steps allows for less Java code in a JSP page.
    - Search engine optimization (SEO)
      You can use one of the following solutions to optimize your store for search engine results.
    - Double-click handling in WebSphere Commerce
      The purpose of double-click handling in WebSphere Commerce is to prevent processing the same request twice to ensure data integrity within the system. When processing certain URL requests, such as OrderItemAdd, the double-click feature of WebSphere Commerce will identify whether the request from the online shopper is currently being processed and blocks the current request if that is the case.
  - Controller layer
    The Controller layer is the conductor of operations for a request. It controls the transaction scope and manages the session related information for the request. The controller first dispatches to a command and then calls the appropriate view processing logic to render the response.
  - Business logic layer
    The business logic layer is the business components that provide OAGIS services to return data or start business processes. The presentation layer uses these OAGIS services to display data, or to invoke a business process. The business logic provides data required by the presentation layer. The business logic layer exists because more than just fetching and updating data is required by an application; there is also additional business logic independent of the presentation layer.
  - Persistence layer
    The interaction between the business objects and persistence layer is isolated in an object called the Business Object Mediator. Business object document (BOD) commands interact with the Business Object Mediator to handle the interaction with the logical objects and how they are persisted.
  - Business model information model
    A business model, a representation of the business processes used throughout the site, provides a sample commerce solution which includes an organization structure, default user roles and access control policies, one or more starter stores, administration tools, and business processes that demonstrate best practices. A business model can be customized to support business requirements and scenarios. WebSphere Commerce provides sample business models that show some common commerce solutions. These business models are created by setting up an organization hierarchy structure, access control policies, stores, and contracts that help satisfy the necessary business requirements.
  - Business models
    Before starting to develop your site with WebSphere Commerce, you need to determine the business model supported by WebSphere Commerce that best represents the purpose of your site. Usually sites created with WebSphere Commerce will be implemented based on of one of these business models.
  - Store data information model
    Store data is the information that is loaded into the WebSphere Commerce Server database, which allows your store to function. The URL Registry Entries and View Registry Entries packages are included in the diagram, but they are not database assets. These entries are presentation configuration (that is, struts actions and forwards) that must be deployed. URL registry entries are shown in the diagram to illustrate the entire store data information model. To operate properly, a store must have the data in place to support all customer activities. For example, in order for a customer to make a purchase, your store must contain a catalog of goods for sale (catalog data), the data associated with processing orders (tax and shipping data), and the inventory to fulfill the request (inventory and fulfillment data).
  - Customizing WebSphere Commerce
    You can extend the WebSphere Commerce product to fit your business needs. This topic describes the prerequisite skills and required knowledge that you need to customize business logic. After you have the required knowledge, use WebSphere Commerce Developer to take tutorials that guide you step-by-step through various customization scenarios.
  - WebSphere Commerce development environment
    WebSphere Commerce Developer is the development toolkit for customizing a WebSphere Commerce application.
  - Web services and WebSphere Commerce
    A web service is an interface that describes a collection of operations that are accessible through the network by using standardized XML messaging.
  - WebSphere Commerce Search
    WebSphere Commerce comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in WebSphere Commerce provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on open standards, WebSphere Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization. A key feature of Search is that sales personnel can create and manage search term associations, and search-based merchandising rules, from within the Management Center and Store view.
- 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

Customizing triggers, targets, and actions

To provide business users with more options for web and dialog activities, you can create new triggers, targets, and actions to use in the Activity Builder for the Marketing tool. You can also change the behavior of existing triggers, targets, and actions.