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HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
Administering
Topics in the Administering category highlight tasks that are typically performed by the Site Administrator, to support daily operations of the HCL Commerce site.
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.
Price rules and price lists
A Site Administrator must perform a series of tasks to enable and configure price rules and price lists in Management Center.
Task flow: Setting up an existing store to use Management Center price rules and price lists
To use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool to manage price rules and price lists, there are a number of setup tasks to perform. Refer to this task flow to understand the tasks and the order in which to perform them.
Creating and assigning your initial price rules
Now that your store is set up to use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool, you can begin creating and assigning price rules. How you approach this depends on the business model and your pricing strategy.

Documentation
HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
- Getting started
  HCL Commerce has different advantages for business users, administrators and developers. HCL Commerce targets each of these roles with a tailored set of offerings so that each of your users can get maximum benefit.
- Installing and deploying
  Learn how to install and deploy HCL Commerce development environments and HCL Commerce production environments.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to HCL Commerce Version 9, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Operating
  Topics in the Operating category highlight tasks that are typically performed by business users, customer support representatives, to complete their day-to-day tasks in the operation of the HCL Commerce site.
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using HCL Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
  Topics in the Administering category highlight tasks that are typically performed by the Site Administrator, to support daily operations of the HCL Commerce site.
  - The HCL Commerce application
    Every time you deploy the HCL Commerce application, you are deploying a set of Docker containers that communicate with each other to run your HCL Commerce site. Each HCL Commerce application deployment can contain one or more stores.
  - Overview of administering an HCL Commerce site
    In HCL Commerce the person who performs administrative tasks is called a Site Administrator. The Site Administrator installs, configures, and maintains HCL 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.
  - Staging environment
    an HCL Commerce staging environment is a runtime environment where business and technical users can update and manage store data and preview changes. The changes can then be propagated to the production environment.
  - Workspaces
    You can enable and manage workspace assets and determine policies such as locking rules and commit and publishing options.
  - HCL Commerce database
    As a site administrator, maintain the HCL Commerce database and ensure that any HCL 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 and loading data
    HCL Commerce provides utilities for preparing and loading data into a HCL Commerce database. The loading utilities are flexible and you can continue to use these utilities when you customize the HCL 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.
  - Search
    In keeping with HCL's commitment to current and open standards, HCL Commerce Search uses Apache Lucene as the basis of its Search framework. Lucene powers the Apache Solr search engine. This open-standards approach considerably eases the process of integrating Search with existing and third-party applications.
  - HCL Customer Service for HCL Commerce
    HCL Customer Service for HCL 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 HCL Customer Service for HCL 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.
  - HCL Commerce configuration file (wc-server.xml)
    Many aspects of the HCL Commerce runtime application are configured in an XML file. This XML file is located inside the HCL Commerce Java Platform, Enterprise Edition EAR.
  - Enabling the SSL Accelerator option
    An SSL Accelerator (or SSL Terminator) strips off HTTPS encryption at or before the Web server tier in a multitier setup. When you use an SSL Accelerator with HCL Commerce, you can use the SSL Accelerator option to configure HCL Commerce to correctly receive requests that require redirects.
  - 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.
    - Changing the ports used for HCL Commerce tools
      You can change the ports used by the HCL Commerce tools: HCL Commerce Accelerator, Management Center Administration Console, Organization Administration Console and the Store Preview port.
    - Catalogs
      You can administer catalog features such as the attribute dictionary and categories.
    - Marketing
      To support marketing features in Management Center, there are a number of administration tasks that you might need to perform.
    - Promotions
      You can administer promotion features such as creating or deleting promotion folders and configuring the promotions engine.
    - Price rules and price lists
      A Site Administrator must perform a series of tasks to enable and configure price rules and price lists in Management Center.
      - Task flow: Setting up an existing store to use Management Center price rules and price lists
        To use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool to manage price rules and price lists, there are a number of setup tasks to perform. Refer to this task flow to understand the tasks and the order in which to perform them.
        Registering new command implementations in the command registry
        Add a series of command registry entries to your existing store so that business users can create pricing terms for a given contract using either new or existing methods.
        Registering custom command implementations in the command registry
        If your store uses custom commands that handle pricing terms for contracts that do not use price rules, you must register the command implementations. This is required so that you can continue to use your custom command implementations for existing contracts, and also use price rules for new or updated contracts.
        Registering your existing offer and list price lists in the STORETPC table
        The Catalog Filter and Pricing tool retrieves the offer and list price lists of a store from a new STORETPC table, instead of the existing TRADEPOSCN table. By registering your existing price lists in the STORETPC table, business users can manage those price lists in the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool.
        Registering the relationship between the extended site stores and asset stores
        For extended sites, you must run a series of SQL statements to register store relationships in the STRELTYP table. This is required to support two new store relationship types, one for price rules and the other for catalog filters. As a result, your extended site stores can use price rules and catalog filters created in Management Center.
        Deciding whether to migrate list price data
        If your existing store maintains list prices, you should consider migration. By migrating your list price data, you move the data to different database tables. This allows you to use the Management Center Catalog Filter and Pricing tool to access and manage the data so that list prices are managed as a price list. You can then use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool to export, upload, and edit your list price list. You can also use the list price list in price rules.
        Running the list price migration utility
        By running the list price migration utility, you migrate your existing list price data from the LISTPRICE table to different database tables (OFFER, OFFERPRICE, and OFFERDESC). The migration utility uses the Data Load utility to perform the migration.
        Updating the List price rule of extended site stores
        If your extended site stores have their own list price data that has now been migrated, the migration utility automatically creates a simple List price rule for each extended site store. You must modify this List price rule so that each extended site store also uses the List Price list of the catalog asset store, in addition to its own List Price list. Otherwise, the storefront of the extended site store will display list prices only for catalog entries that the extended site store owns.
        Creating and assigning your initial price rules
        Now that your store is set up to use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool, you can begin creating and assigning price rules. How you approach this depends on the business model and your pricing strategy.
        B2B (single store): Creating and assigning initial price rules
        You must decide which of your existing contracts (store default contracts, base contracts, and customer contracts) to switch to price rules. Then you must create the price rules and assign them to the appropriate contracts.
        B2B extended site: Creating and assigning initial price rules
        You must decide which of your existing contracts (store default contracts, base contracts, and customer contracts) to switch to price rules. To make price rule maintenance easier, you might also want to create a new base contract, called a storefront asset store base for default contract. All price rules must be assigned to their appropriate contract.
        Consumer direct (single store): Creating and assigning initial price rules
        Using Management Center, you must create a price rule that sets prices for the catalog entries your store sells. Using HCL Commerce Accelerator, you must assign your price rule to the default contract for your consumer direct store. As a result, customers shopping on the store see prices set by the price rule you assign.
        Consumer direct extended site: Creating and assigning initial price rules
        You can switch your extended site stores to use price rules instead of their existing pricing terms. You can leave any extended site store to use its existing pricing term if you do not want to switch that store to use price rules. If you do switch your extended site stores to use price rules, the price rule overrides any existing pricing term that the store uses.
      - Task flow: Publishing a new store to use Management Center price rules and price lists
        To publish a new HCL Commerce starter store that uses the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool features, there are a number of setup tasks to perform. Refer to this task flow to understand the tasks and the order in which to perform them.
      - Example: Understanding how prices are displayed on extended sites stores
        Learn about the database relationships that are used to display prices on an extended sites store. These relationships are important because an extended sites store can use customer-specific prices, site-specific prices, or asset store-specific prices during runtime.
      - Limiting the size of a price list to be exported
        You can specify the maximum number of price entries a price list can contain if it is to be exported using the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool. By specifying this maximum number, you can avoid both out-of-memory exceptions and time-out errors caused by overly large price lists. A price entry is a row in a price list.
    - Catalog filters
      As Site Administrator, you might be required to assist business users with certain catalog filter tasks that relate to the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool in Management Center.
    - Negotiated pricing
      To use negotiated pricing, you must have a nominal cost price list that is defined for your store.
    - Store preview functions
      You can administer store preview functions such as enabling and disabling commands and views, and adding a customized business context.
    - Order management
      As a Site Administrator, you can manage various features of the order management subsystem.
    - Request For Quote (RFQ) trading
      As a Site Administrator, you can enable and disable the RFQ trading mechanism, and enable RFQ notification messaging.
    - User traffic
      Edit the HCL Commerce configuration file to set the level of caching performed on user traffic data. The default number of URLs in the cache is 20. If this number is too low for your site, for example, if your site is very busy and you are concerned about performance impacts, you can increase the cache size. User traffic data is used in some operational reports.
    - Inventory sharing in extended sites stores (non-ATP)
      The extended sites business model provides scalability and manageability improvements for HCL Commerce sites where there are multiple stores which can share assets including non-ATP inventory. The sharing of non-ATP inventory reduces the complexity of managing inventory assets for all the stores in the site. All stores in extended sites can share inventory from a single asset store with distributed fulfillment centers.
    - Tax sharing in extended sites stores
      In extended sites store model, tax assets can be shared between the extended site asset store and the extended site store. You can manage the tax assets in an extended site store in HCL Commerce Accelerator.
  - Logging services
    HCL 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 HCL 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.
  - Business Object thresholds
    Applying limits on business operations reduces the risk of system attacks where unbound conditions might result in system failures.
  - Stores in HCL Commerce
    HCL Commerce supports several different types of entities that are defined as stores. The assets of these store entities may be edited using the HCL Commerce Accelerator.
  - Enabling registered users to access all stores in the Extended Sites business model
    HCL 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.
  - Hystrix on the Store server
    The Hystrix framework is used as a proxy for back-end resources such as the Transaction server and Search server by default. This can be disabled, but does have performance implications that must be considered.
- Customizing
  The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
- Tutorials
  HCL Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your HCL Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
  Topics in the Samples category highlight the various samples that are provided with HCL Commerce.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage HCL Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of HCL Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
  Topics in the Performance section describe the means by which to plan, implement, test, and re-visit the optimization of HCL Commerce site performance.
- Troubleshooting
  Topics in the Troubleshooting section highlight common issues that are encountered with HCL Commerce, and how they can be addressed or mitigated.
- Reference
  Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.

Creating and assigning your initial price rules

Now that your store is set up to use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool, you can begin creating and assigning price rules. How you approach this depends on the business model and your pricing strategy.

Choose the procedure that applies to your business model: