Building the Inventory Catalog
Creating the Inventory Catalog
The process of creating the inventory catalog is straightforward and relies on the same tools used to create product catalogs. Before you create the inventory catalog, however, take the time to determine if your inventory needs require any changes to the inventory schema. Is there additional information that you’d like to store along with your inventory data that the default schema doesn’t support? For instance, would you like to store information about the inventory’s location in the warehouse? Maybe, in addition to naming your inventory catalogs, you want to store the unique identifiers used by your partners to help identify the catalogs. There are many difference scenarios that may justify changing the inventory and adding additional metadata to the inventory schema. Make sure to take the time to think these scenarios through before you begin to extend the inventory schema, although it is possible to add additional metadata to the schema at a later time.
Extending the Inventory Metadata
Extending the inventory schema is no different from extending the catalog or property schemas. The first step is to define a property definition to define the data you want to store along with your inventory data. Once the property definition has been defined, you can then add the new definition to either the inventory catalog metadata, thereby extending the descriptive data related to the inventory catalog, or to the inventory SKU metadata, thereby extending the descriptive data related to inventory SKUs.
The golf pro shop requires that our inventory catalog has an inventory unique identifier associated with the inventory catalog. This unique identifier is passed along with exports to trading partners, so that the trading partners know which inventory catalog they received. Additionally, all SKUs must have a warehouse location number that relates to the SKUs location in the warehouse. To accomplish this, you must first create two new property definitions: Inventory Catalog Id, and Warehouse Location. These two property definitions should have the following characteristics:
Property
|
Inventory Catalog Id
|
Warehouse Location
|
Property Name
|
InventoryCatalogId
|
WarehouseLocation
|
Display Name
|
Inventory Catalog Id
|
Warehouse Location
|
Data Type
|
Text
|
Text
|
Multilingual
|
False
|
False
|
Display On Site
|
False
|
False
|
Specification Searchable
|
False
|
False
|
Free Text Searchable
|
False
|
False
|
Minimum Length
|
0
|
0
|
Maximum Length
|
128
|
128
|
Assign To All Product Types
|
False
|
False
|
Store For Data Analysis
|
False
|
False
|
Display In Products List
|
False
|
False
|
Is Required
|
True
|
True
|
Default Value
| ||
Display as Base Property
|
True
|
True
|
2. Under the Task pane, click Edit Inventory Catalog Metadata. This will open the Edit Inventory Catalog Metadata screen.
3. Select “Inventory Catalog Id” from the Available Properties list, and click the Add button. This will assign the property to the assigned properties list (see Figure 4-5).
Figure 4-5
The process for extending the inventory SKU metadata to include the Warehouse Location is similar to extending the inventory catalog metadata, except that you click the Edit Inventory SKU Metadata from the task pane and then add the Warehouse Location to the Assigned Properties list box (see Figure 4-6).
Figure 4-6
Now that the inventory catalog schema has been extended, you can create your inventory catalog. Since the two property definitions were created with the Display as Base Property set to True, these property definitions will display as base properties for the inventory catalog and the inventory SKU screens rather than custom properties. Creating the inventory catalog will be in our next blog post in this series.
