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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.
Customizing
The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
Creating your custom store
After you install and set up your programming environment, you can create your custom store and customize your storefront. You must ensure that the store server is properly configured, and that your store assets are moved to the Store server.
Creating a custom store using JSP
This HCL Commerce store uses Java Server Pages (JSP) to implement the view layer of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern.
Customizing your store
After you review the HCL Commerce store architecture and create your custom store, you can use the programming environment to customize your store.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
You can use one of the following solutions to optimize your store for search engine results.
SEO
The SEO functionality improves online search page ranking for your store. The search page ranking is improved by allowing users to create shorter SEO-friendly URLs with meaningful keywords. This version includes enhanced Management Center tools that business users can use to influence page ranking. Users can influence page ranking by changing the URL and metadata information, using an improved Sitemap generator that indexes all the SEO-friendly URLs, and 301 URL redirect rules.
SEO-friendly URL construction overview
To avoid hardcoded SEO-friendly URLs in the storefront pages, the HCL Commerce Search Engine Optimization (SEO) feature provides a wcf:url tag that constructs SEO-friendly URLs by using the SEO pattern files and tables.
SEO-friendly URL construction with a default catalog
SEO-friendly URLs are constructed by using a pattern to determine how to build the URL. A part of the pattern requires the tokens StoreToken:CatalogToken to be defined in the database/database/seourl.html table and an associated URLKEYWORD in the database/database/seourlkeyword.html table. With the introduction of a default catalog, a StoreToken: token entry is preconfigured in the database/database/seourl.html table.

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.
- Customizing
  The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
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  - Managed asset deployment
    Managed assets are files that are uploaded by business users to be used for store marketing, or to supplement products. They are added to HCL Commerce through the Assets tool or the Marketing tool in Management Center. By default, managed assets are extracted and deployed through the HCL Commerce EAR. To maintain performance in a large-scale production environment, site administrators must switch to alternative extraction and deployment methods for managed assets.
  - What's new for developers
    Learn about the new features and functions HCL Commerce offers developers.
  - HCL Commerce development environment
    HCL Commerce Developer is the development toolkit for customizing a HCL Commerce application.
  - 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
    HCL 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.
  - Creating your custom store
    After you install and set up your programming environment, you can create your custom store and customize your storefront. You must ensure that the store server is properly configured, and that your store assets are moved to the Store server.
    - Creating a custom store using JSP
      This HCL Commerce store uses Java Server Pages (JSP) to implement the view layer of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern.
      - Store architecture
        HCL Commerce separates individual front-end storefronts from the servers on which they rely. This architecture increases security, scalability, flexibility in server topology, and improves the ease of development and deployment of stores and store customizations.
      - Creating and configuring your custom store
        You can create and configure your custom store in your Externalized Customization workspace through the configuration and execution of a Gradle script. You can then configure your store assets, sample data, and use your Externalized Customization workspace to customize that store.
      - Customizing your store
        After you review the HCL Commerce store architecture and create your custom store, you can use the programming environment to customize your store.
        Store configuration
        Customize your storefront assets or store functionality by changing the Store server configuration, or by modifying or extending your store JavaServer Pages (JSP files) or Spring-based model-view-controller (MVC).
        Changing static HTML sample store files
        You can use the static HTML store to accelerate your web design cycle. When web designers use the static HTML store as a starting point, the cost of building user interface within the JSP files is reduced. You can modify the HTML and CSS files using your favorite web design tools and without a development environment. The changes can be incorporated into the corresponding JSP files by a store developer at a more convenient time.
        Aurora as a B2B starter store
        You can publish the Aurora starter store as a B2B store and take advantage of features that are offered by the Aurora starter store plus extra B2B capabilities. Get your B2B e-commerce site up and running faster at a lower cost by using the Aurora starter store as your starting point. With B2B-optimized features built right into the storefront, you can minimize the amount of customization that is required to provide an optimal shopping experience to your business customers.
        Store pages and features
        Customize your store's pages by completing the following tasks.
        Email messages
        You can use the provided email template JSP files as a starting point to customize your email content. The templates are provided in the crs-web > WebContent > YourStoreFrontAssetStoreDir > EmailTemplates directory.
        Search engine optimization (SEO)
        You can use one of the following solutions to optimize your store for search engine results.
        SEO
        The SEO functionality improves online search page ranking for your store. The search page ranking is improved by allowing users to create shorter SEO-friendly URLs with meaningful keywords. This version includes enhanced Management Center tools that business users can use to influence page ranking. Users can influence page ranking by changing the URL and metadata information, using an improved Sitemap generator that indexes all the SEO-friendly URLs, and 301 URL redirect rules.
        Constructing SEO-friendly URLs by using pattern files
        Pattern files are used in the construction and deconstruction of SEO-friendly URLs. Because each page type requires the construction of different data, a pattern file contains a URL template. For example, there are pattern files for the Category page, Contact Us page, and Product page.
        Using new languages with SEO-friendly URLs
        The default token for the language usage is LanguageToken. Because the keywords for the language token are taken from the language registry, you do not have to define them.
        Deconstructing an SEO-friendly URL
        When a shopper clicks on a link for a page in the store, they see an SEO-friendly URL. HCL Commerce can process the embedded category, store name, language, and product information only if this SEO-friendly URL is translated to the standard URL format. To translate the SEO-friendly URL to the standard URL, use database/database/seourl.html, database/database/seourlkeyword.html, and database/database/seotokenusgtype.html, and a URL pattern definition file.
        SEO-friendly URL construction overview
        To avoid hardcoded SEO-friendly URLs in the storefront pages, the HCL Commerce Search Engine Optimization (SEO) feature provides a wcf:url tag that constructs SEO-friendly URLs by using the SEO pattern files and tables.
        SEO-friendly URL construction with a default catalog
        SEO-friendly URLs are constructed by using a pattern to determine how to build the URL. A part of the pattern requires the tokens StoreToken:CatalogToken to be defined in the database/database/seourl.html table and an associated URLKEYWORD in the database/database/seourlkeyword.html table. With the introduction of a default catalog, a StoreToken: token entry is preconfigured in the database/database/seourl.html table.
        Creating descriptive storefront URLs when duplicate keywords exist
        You can use the Data Load utility, seourlkeywordgen utility, or canonical URLs to create descriptive URLs that avoid unwanted characters in your URLs when duplicate keywords exist.
        Search engine optimization (SEO) title and meta description (TMD) data for store web pages
        Title and metadata information is valuable for allowing your store's pages to stand out on the internet. With the search engine optimization (SEO) feature each web page in your store is provided with unique content to improve its ranking in search results.
        URL redirects for SEO Overview
        Part of the search engine optimization (SEO) solution includes 301 redirection. If a URL is changed either by HCL Commerce or a business user, a redirect is automatically generated between the original URL and the new URL.
        Retrieving SEO substitution parameters for populating the Management Center UI
        A substitution parameter is SEO-generated content consisting of the desktop URL keyword, page title, meta description and image alt text. After a product is created, saved and Management Center is refreshed, the substitution parameters for the product will appear in the Search Engine Optimization tab on the product page.
        Customizing the SEO component configuration properties
        Some search engine optimization (SEO) components have customizable configuration properties. These configurable properties control certain component features.
        SEO with Rich Snippets
        Search engines help users find relevant results by showing a summary of content from web pages that match the search query. The summary of content is called search result snippets. To help users understand the content your web page provides and to improve SEO, you can implement rich snippets to highlight important content from your web page to display in the search result snippet.
        Tips for improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with HCL Commerce
        This guide summarizes the tips for improving SEO with HCL Commerce. It helps you better understand the features available to improve SEO.
        Shortening the context root of a migrated local store URL
        When you migrate your store from a previous version of HCL Commerce to version 9.0, your store runs on the transaction server (trs-app) and is often referred to as a local store. In addition to running on the transaction server, your local store also uses the transaction web server (trs-web). If you are using a local store, you can shorten the context root of your store's URL to make it easier for shoppers to remember a link. Shorting the context root also improves visibility in search engine results.
        Shortening the context root of a remote store URL
        Stores that are running on the dedicated store container (crs-app) are often referred to as remote stores. You can shorten the context root of your store's URL to make it easier for shoppers to remember a link. Shorting the context root also improves visibility in search engine results.
        HCL Commerce integration with sitemaps
        In the past, to index your store pages, a search engine spider crawled through the website and indexed every page that it found. With the HCL Commerce integration with site maps, you can create a sitemap XML file, sitemap_ storeID.xml that contains a list of URLs for your site. This way, customers are able to easily find your site when they run a search, increasing the probability of sales.
    - Email templates and sitemap generator
      An email template is a pre-designed format for creating consistent emails. Notifications are messages that inform users about events or updates related to a service or application.
  - Presentation layer
    HCL 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.
  - 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. HCL 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 HCL Commerce, you need to determine the business model supported by HCL Commerce that best represents the purpose of your site. Usually sites created with HCL 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 Transaction 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 HCL Commerce
    You can extend the HCL 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 HCL Commerce Developer to take tutorials that guide you step-by-step through various customization scenarios.
  - Run Engine command framework
    The Run Engine command framework provides predefined commands, that you can use to change environment parameters or container configurations. This framework is built into the HCL provided Docker images.
  - Representational State Transfer (REST) services
    HCL Commerce uses Representational State Transfer (REST) services to provide a framework that can be used to develop RESTful applications on several platforms. These platforms can include web, mobile, kiosks, and social applications.
  - Web services
  - Search
    HCL Commerce comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in HCL Commerce provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on industry standards, HCL Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization.
- 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.

SEO-friendly URL construction with a default catalog

SEO-friendly URLs are constructed by using a pattern to determine how to build the URL. A part of the pattern requires the tokens StoreToken:CatalogToken to be defined in the SEOURL table and an associated URLKEYWORD in the SEOURLKEYWORD table. With the introduction of a default catalog, a StoreToken: token entry is preconfigured in the SEOURL table.

For example, in the SEOURL table, there exists a row that resembles the following tokens for the Aurora starter store:


SEOURL_ID	TokenName	TokenValue
13227	`StoreToken:CatalogToken`	`'10001:'`

The token is associated with a URLKEYWORD in the SEOURLKEYWORD table, in this example, 'aurora'. Notice that there is no CatalogToken value in the TokenValue column. By default, if you do not specify a default catalog in the Catalogs tool, the master catalog is the default catalog.

If your store contains sales catalogs and the catalogs do not have token entries in the SEOURL and SEOURLKEYWORD tables, then an SEO URL cannot be constructed for your sales categories. But, if you set the sales catalog as your default catalog, then the preconfigured StoreToken: token entry is used and an SEO URL is constructed with the associated URLKEYWORD, in this case 'aurora'.

For example:

In the Catalogs tool, you create a sales category in a sales catalog.
In the Search Engine Optimization tab of the sales category, you specify a URL keyword sales-apparel.
Set the sales catalog as your default catalog.

The resulting SEO URL that is constructed would be http://www.myhost.com/shop/en/aurora/sales-apparel

However, if you set up tokens in the SEOURL and SEOURLKEYWORD tables for the sales catalog, then the new URLKEYWORD entry is used instead.

For example, if you enable SEO with a sales catalog and set the URLKEYWORD to 'teststore', then the constructed SEO URL would be http://www.myhost.com/shop/en/teststore/sales-apparel.

Important: If you plan to set a sales catalog as the default catalog, ensure that your SEOURL table also has a StoreToken:CatalogToken entry for the master catalog. If not, then SEO URLs cannot be constructed for categories in your master catalog.

Note: SEO URLs for products are always constructed with the URLKEYWORD associated with the default catalog, regardless of the catalog that the product belongs to.