Preview your store to ensure that changes made in Management Center show up in your
store as expected. You can use store preview in production, authoring, and
staging environments.You can use store preview
within the authoring instances for any of your environments. Do not use store preview within the
live instance of your HCL Commerce on Cloud environments.
Before you begin
- Certain store preview features, Show Page Information and
In-context preview function require special support in your store
pages. Talk to a store developer about whether your store pages support these features
- Click-to-edit functions are not available for React Store previews.
- Show Page Information and Show Layout
Information features are also not available for React Store
previews.
Procedure
-
Open the Management
Center.
-
From the Management Center menu, select a tool:
- Catalogs
- Marketing
- Promotions
- Attachments
- Workspace Management
- Commerce Composer (not supported for React Stores)
- Optional:
If you use workspaces, to preview approved content, click
. Approved content contains store changes from committed task groups outside of your
workspace.
-
Complete one of the following steps:
Option | Description |
---|
Preview the store as a guest user or a specific registered user |
Select , or click on the toolbar. |
Preview the store as a user who belongs to a specific customer segment |
- Ensure that the Marketing tool is open.
- Find the segment that the customer belongs to.
- In the Search Results list view, right-click the customer segment; then click Preview
Store as Segment to open the Store Preview Options window. The name
of the segment that the customer belongs to when you are previewing your store is displayed.
|
-
In the Store Preview Options window, select a URL from the
Store URL list, or type a store URL.
The default URL is the home page of the store that you are working with in
Management Center. The
Store URL list shows the first 10 store URLs. You can
search for more stores.
If you are working on certain business objects, such as products and page
layouts, the default URL is the associated store page, rather than the home page. For example, if
you are working on a bicycle product in the Catalogs tool, the associated store page is the product
details page for the bicycle. This in-context preview function is supported only for stores that use
the SEO-friendly URLs.
Note: When you open store preview while in an asset store, you must select the
URL for the extended site store. You cannot preview asset stores because they do not contain a web
storefront.
- Optional:
Expand Options and set any of the following options:
Option | Description |
---|
Current date and time |
Use the system date and time in the preview. |
Specify date and time |
Enter a specific date and time. For example, you can enter a date two months in the future
to test if a promotion displays on that date as expected. |
Time in preview does not change as real time elapses |
Maintains the same date and time in the preview. For example, if the preview starts on July
6, 2009 at 11:15 AM and 5 minutes elapse, the date and time in the preview remains July 6, 2009 at
11:15 AM |
Time in preview elapses as real time elapses |
Allows time to elapse in the preview. For example, if the preview starts on July 6, 2009 at
11:15 AM and 5 minutes elapse, the date and time in the preview is July 6, 2009 at 11:20
AM |
Product recommendations |
A store developer can enable an inventory filter for web activities. As a result, catalog entry
recommendations display in e-Marketing Spots only if the inventory level for the catalog entry is
above a configured amount. With this customization in place, you can set options to facilitate
testing the catalog entry recommendations. Choose one of the following options:
- Use inventory levels in the database
- If the database says that the inventory level is higher than the specified inventory threshold,
the catalog entry recommendation displays; otherwise it does not display.
- Set all inventory filter results to true
- The store preview behaves as if there is available inventory and the catalog entry
recommendation displays. The data in the database is not considered.
- Set all inventory filter results to false
- Preview behaves as if there is no available inventory and the catalog entry recommendation does
not display. The data in the database is not considered.
|
-
Click Launch Store Preview.
For JSP Stores: The preview store
opens in a separate window.
For React Stores: The preview store opens in a
separate tab.
When you are previewing a store from within a workspace, attempting to process an order in
the previewed store might cause errors that prevent you from completing the order.
- Optional:
To preview and understand the information that is displayed in an e-Marketing Spot:
-
Go to the store page that contains the e-Marketing Spot.
-
At the top of the store preview window, click Show Page Information.
-
In the upper left corner of the e-Marketing Spot, click Show
Information. Detailed information about which activities were evaluated, the results of
targets, and the paths that were taken through the activities is displayed. When unexpected results
are displayed in an e-Marketing Spot, you can use this information to help determine the
cause.
-
Click the Create or Edit links to open Management Center and make changes.
- Optional:
If you are viewing a page that is managed in the Commerce Composer tool, you can get more
details about the page, its layout, and the widgets in the layout.
For more information, see these topics: