Inventory Management Using Omnichannel Inventory

Omnichannel Inventory Integration

When you manage inventory with Omnichannel Inventory, you don’t create or modify inventory records in B2C Commerce. The integration handles that for you by automatically updating availability in B2C Commerce based on data received from Omnichannel Inventory. Reserving inventory for a basket or order is the only way that B2C Commerce can affect inventory levels. Perform all other inventory updates in Omnichannel Inventory.

For information on configuring and customizing Omnichannel Inventory, see the Omnichannel Inventory topics in Salesforce Help.

Location Graph

The location graph is the collection of inventory locations and location groups in Omnichannel Inventory that fulfill orders from your B2C Commerce storefront. A location represents a specific inventory source, usually a physical location like a warehouse. A location group is a set of one or more locations. Inventory quantities for a location group are calculated as the sums of the corresponding quantities of the locations in that group. For example, the On Hand quantity for a location group is the sum of the On Hand quantities of all the locations in that group.

B2C Commerce exposes inventory data by associating inventory lists with the locations and location groups in your location graph. Create one inventory list in B2C Commerce for each location or location group in Omnichannel Inventory that you want to expose. The ID of the inventory list must match the External Reference value of the associated location or location group in Omnichannel Inventory.

For each B2C Commerce site, use a location or location group to represent the default inventory available to fulfill orders placed on that site. Assign the inventory list for that location or location group to the site. If you use other inventory lists, such as for a store, associate them with locations or location groups of their own.

Inventory Reservations

When B2C Commerce creates an order, it sends an inventory reservation request to Omnichannel Inventory. Omnichannel Inventory tries to assign the reservation to the location or location group associated with that site’s or store’s inventory list. If insufficient inventory is available, the reservation fails. After Omnichannel Inventory accepts a reservation, it handles any further processing together with your order management system.

If you implement a customization that requests temporary inventory reservations for baskets, the integration sends those requests to Omnichannel Inventory.

Considerations and Limitations When Using Omnichannel Inventory

• Visible inventory availability data is eventually consistent, meaning that an update can take time (usually a few seconds) to be reflected in the UI or API. Therefore, when B2C Commerce makes an inventory reservation in Omnichannel Inventory, you can’t assume that availability data immediately reflects the quantities assigned to that reservation. This delay affects all B2C Commerce functionality that relies on availability data, such as Script API customizations that use inventory availability queries. However, Omnichannel Inventory processes reservation requests sequentially, so a reservation request only succeeds if inventory is actually available to fulfill that order.
• If your custom code requests temporary reservations for baskets, those temporary reservations affect visible inventory availability. (When not using Omnichannel Inventory, the Commerce platform considers existing temporary reservations when creating reservations, but doesn’t include them in visible availability data.)
• You can’t enable the On Order Inventory feature.
• The IDs of inventory lists associated with locations and location groups have the following restrictions:
  • They must be 2–128 characters in length.
  • They can only include the following characters: A–Z, a–z, 0–9, _ (underscore), - (hyphen)
• You can’t create or update inventory records in B2C Commerce. You can import inventory lists into B2C Commerce, but must import product inventory data directly into Omnichannel Inventory.
  Note: Attempting to import an individual inventory record into B2C Commerce causes this warning: Omnichannel Inventory does not support the import of inventory records. Skipping element.
• You can’t use custom properties on inventory records.
• You can’t use B2C Commerce APIs to modify individual inventory records. Otherwise, inventory-related script API methods work the same as they do when not using Omnichannel Inventory.
• You can’t make OCAPI calls to the inventory_lists/{inventory_list_id}/product_inventory_records endpoint.
• Omnichannel Inventory doesn’t support explicit preorders. Instead, it represents expected inventory restocks with futures. Each future has a quantity and an expected date.
  • In B2C Commerce, a product’s PreorderBackorderAllocation quantity is the sum of all existing future quantities for that product, and its inStockDate is the expected date of its earliest future.
  • If a product has any futures in Omnichannel Inventory, then in B2C Commerce, its backorderable flag is true. Otherwise, that flag is false.
  • In B2C Commerce, product preorderable flags are always false.
• Perpetual availability isn’t supported for individual inventory records. However, you can enable Default In-Stock on an inventory list. In that case, B2C Commerce always considers products not on the list to be available, and doesn’t include them in reservation requests.
• B2C Commerce builds its Availability Search Index using the availability data received from Omnichannel Inventory. Remember that this data is considered eventually consistent.
• For best performance when implementing Omnichannel Inventory customizations, use the headless Commerce APIs. The corresponding Salesforce core Connect APIs and actions simply call the Commerce APIs under the hood. Updating the location graph is an exception, since the Commerce APIs don’t provide that functionality.
  CAUTION:
  Attempting to upload large inventory data files using the Salesforce core APIs can greatly affect your org’s performance.

Converting Existing Storefronts to Use Omnichannel Inventory

When integrating Omnichannel Inventory with an existing B2C Commerce storefront, include these steps in your planning process:

• Map your existing sites, stores, and inventory locations to locations and location groups in Omnichannel Inventory.
• Determine which locations and location groups to expose in B2C Commerce with inventory lists.
• Identify any inventory lists used for orders but not assigned to a site; for example, lists assigned to a store. Associate each one with a location or location group in Omnichannel Inventory.
• Create a plan to transfer existing inventory data import processes from B2C Commerce to Omnichannel Inventory.
• Identify any existing customizations that are incompatible with Omnichannel Inventory and decide whether to modify or replace them. That includes any customization that modifies product inventory records.

Terminology

The following terminology differs between B2C Commerce and Omnichannel Inventory.