Before you start automation, decide on your file naming convention for import files.
Salesforce recommends that you use a regular expression to name your import files and
include a date signifier. This approach makes it easier to identify if the correct files
were transferred to the instance and to archive files. You must also decide how you want to
archive your files and the naming convention for archived files.
To Create an Automatic Import Feed
- Configure your backend system to produce
XML files required by the feed schema.
- Create a cartridge for your import export code.
- Create a pipeline for the import job.
- Create a job and associate it with the pipeline. Jobs are
scheduled and managed through the Business Manager in the module.
- Create a user with the privileges to
execute the job.
- Use data replication if necessary to
transfer the information from the staging instance to the production
instance.
To Create an Export Feed
- Create a custom pipeline. The pipeline
can use the export pipelets to export files with the Salesforce B2C Commerce schema
file definitions or scripts to create custom export files.
- Create a job to run the pipeline.
- You can create a job on your backend system that
automatically produces the import file. Jobs are scheduled and managed through
the Business Manager in the module.
- Create your export file.
- Run the job.
Note: Every date export uses GMT-00 as the time
zone.
Export Customization
When the storefront is live, exporting data is as important as
importing, because you want to synchronize between the merchant's database and the
B2C Commerce system.
To export a file, you have
two options:
- Use an approach that is similar to
importing, where you export business objects in the B2C Commerce standard format using pipelets, then translate the data into your
format.
- Get the set of business objects through a
pipelet and write to your format directly.