Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Commerce Server Inventory System Part 5

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

Table 5-2


When defining property definitions for the inventory catalog and inventory SKU metadata, make sure you do not select the Multilingual property. If the Multilingual property is set to True then the property definition will not be available for selection within the inventory catalog and inventory SKU metadata. This is because the inventory catalog and SKUs have no concept of multilingual values, and are specifically excluded.

Now that the two property definitions have been defined, you must associate each of them as metadata to the appropriate entity. To assign the Inventory Catalog Id to the Inventory Catalog Metadata, you can use the Catalog and Inventory Schema Manager.

1. Click Start > All Programs > Microsoft Commerce Server > Catalog and Inventory Schema Manager.
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

4. Click the Save and Close button to finish.
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.

Based on my book on Commerce Server.  Part 6 is here Part 1.