MuleSoft Accelerator for Retail

The Product sync use case enables retail developers to update product details across relevant applications.

Overview

• Description
• Glossary
• Solution overview
• Assumptions and constraints
• Workflow
• High-level architecture
• Sequence diagram
• Processing logic
• Successful outcome

See also

• Downloadable assets

Description

The product sync use case enables the creation and updates of products across relevant applications, with one application serving as the primary definition of the product.

The product sync achieves the following goals:

• Support the creation of products across relevant applications, inclusive of Salesforce core, SAP S/4HANA, OFBiz (OMS), B2C Commerce Cloud, and a generic DB as the reference PIM.
  • Support the creation of Global ID and ID attribution.
• Orchestrate controlled updates across designated applications.
• Link products with sales orders using global identifiers as part of the Sales order sync.

Glossary

Solution overview

1. Capture new or updated products published from PIM Database.
2. Product updates will be captured in MDM:
   • All updates will be reflected in MDM first to establish the ID graph
   • Products will be associated with the global sales order ID in MDM
3. New or updated products will be synchronized with downstream systems:
   • Global identifier from MDM will be recorded in the other systems
4. The global identifier will be recorded back to the system that published the update if it was not provided.
5. CIM entities supported (system agnostic):
   • Product
6. Primary criteria used to match an existing product in other systems, in order of priority:
   • Global identifier - high confidence
   • External identifier specific to target system - moderately-high confidence
7. In target systems, a new product will be created if not matched to an existing one
8. Update errors will be reported in the logs and sent to the appropriate dead-letter queue only; no conflict resolution support will be implemented.

Assumptions and constraints

The following will be used to guide or constrain the solution design at a high level:

• The current implementation only supports products without variations. Support for product variants will be added in a subsequent release.
• The Cloud Information Model (CIM) will be used as the canonical model for all business types; see the CIM usage guidelines in the Appendix.
• Global identifiers will be maintained in MDM. Wherever possible, these will be assigned as external identifiers in target systems.
• References to the global IDs will be reflected in downstream systems using custom properties to avoid conflicts with the usage of other external identifiers.
• MDM will record only minimal information about the product in addition to establishing the sales order relationships and maintaining the identifier graph.

Use case considerations

• Must support a product identifier graph to link products across applications.
• Primary identifiers will be linked with the orders in MDM.

Technical considerations

• Enable the creation of a global ID that allows you to retrieve/create IDs regardless of where the product is created or updated.
• Use CIM as the canonical model.
• Build using top applications, inclusive of Salesforce products, but should be built to work with other endpoints as well. For this solution, leverage the following applications:
  • Salesforce B2C Commerce (CC), Salesforce Core (Sales, Service, B2B CC), SAP S/4HANA , PIM Database (generic), MDM (generic)

End-to-end scenarios

• Product updates made in PIM are reflected in B2C Commerce, Salesforce core, SAP S/4HANA, and OFBiz.
• Products associated with an order can be seen in OMS, SAP S/4 HANA, Salesforce Sales, and Salesforce Service Clouds.

Workflow

Before you begin

The Accelerators setup guide provides general information on getting started with the accelerator components. This includes instructions on setting up your local workstation for configuring and deploying the applications.

The primary set of use cases covered in the current solution involve the synchronization of product data between multiple systems. The following describes the Product synchronization to MDM workflow.

Goals

Synchronize new and updated product entries from PIM Database to a global copy maintained by a lightweight MDM solution and downstream applications

Steps

1. Receive a new or updated product from PIM Database.
2. Attempt to match the input to an existing product in MDM.
3. If a match is found, update the existing entry in MDM.
4. Publish the update to downstream applications registered for updates.

Use case extension: If no match is found, create a new entry in MDM.

Systems involved

• Salesforce B2C Commerce (CC)
• Salesforce Core (Sales, Service, B2B Commerce)
• SAP S/4HANA
• PIM Database (generic)
• MDM (generic)

High-level architecture

Sequence diagram

Processing logic

The primary handling and orchestration of products will be implemented in the Products Process API. This process can be described as follows:

1. Find a matching product entry in MDM. The lookup will be done by attempting to match the following criteria, in sequential order, returning once a match has been found:
   • Global Identifier (if provided)
   • External Identifier (of source system)
2. If a single match is found:
   • Retrieve the existing product
   • Apply the incoming updates and save them back to MDM
   • If not matched on an external identifier, associate it with the product
   • Invoke APIs to update the downstream systems (see below)
   • Associate missing external identifiers back to MDM
3. If no match was found:
   • Create a new product in MDM
   • Associate external identifier of source system with the product
   • Invoke System APIs to update the downstream systems (see below)
   • Associate new external identifiers back to MDM

The replication of product updates to downstream systems follows a similar process to MDM. The following steps apply to all downstream systems:

1. Find a matching product in the target. The lookup will be similar to MDM but uses the following criteria, also in order of priority:
   • Primary identifier in target system (if one has been associated)
   • Global identifier from MDM
2. If a single match is found:
   • Retrieve the existing product and apply the incoming updates
   • If not matched on global identifier, associate it with the entity
   • Save the updates back to the target system
3. If no match was found:
   • Create a new entity in the target system
   • Associate the global identifier with the new entity
   • Report the system identifier of the new entity to the parent process

Successful outcome

After successfully completing the update processing for all target systems, the following conditions will be met:

• MDM holds a record of the product.
• All target systems will hold at least some minimal representation of the same.
• The entity created/updated in each system will reference the gloabl identifier from MDM.
• MDM holds a list of all external identifiers associated with the product.
• A 360-degree view of the product can be constructed by first retrieving the global copy from MDM, and then from all associated downstream systems.

Downloadable assets

Accelerator System APIs

• B2B Commerce System API | API Specification | Implementation Template
• B2C Commerce System API | API Specification | Implementation Template
• MDM System API | API Specification | Implementation Template
• SAP S/4HANA Products System API | API Specification | Implementation Template
• OFBiz Products System API | API Specification | Implementation Template
• PIM System API | API Specification | Implementation Template

Accelerator Process APIs

• Products Process API | API Specification | Implementation Template
• PIM Sync Process API | API Specification | Implementation Template

Custom components

• ID Graph Lightning Web Component | Source