Setup of New Suppliers

Before a supplier can submit product data from PDX, the supplier has to be created in Accelerator for Retail. Objects and configuration options must be defined per supplier.

To setup a new supplier the following steps are needed:

  1. Create a new supplier user group below the user group labeled 'suppliers'.

As part of this process, the supplier classification is created by selecting the parent for the supplier classification below the 'suppliers' classification node.

  1. Create a user below the new supplier user group.

This user is utilized by PDX to authenticate against Accelerator for Retail.

  1. Set the value of the 'PDX: Is Service Account?' attribute to 'Yes' on the new user.

This will start a process which will link the user to the 'PDX: Service Accounts' user group and add the user ID to the 'PDX: Service Account' attribute on the supplier classification.

  1. On the supplier classification the following attributes should be maintained:
  • Supplier ID and supplier name - Used to identify the supplier and to ensure uniqueness.
  • Type of supplier - Used for information purposes when comparing sources for a golden record.
  • General handling of new source records - Controls if new external source records from this supplier should be automatically approved in Accelerator for Retail, or if the buyer needs to manually approve the product data before onboarding the product.
  • General handling of updated source records - Controls if a change to an existing external source record from this supplier should be automatically approved in Accelerator for Retail, or if the buyer needs to manually approve a change before it is considered for promotion by the Matching and Linking process.
  • General rank for supplier and general rank type of supplier- Used by the matching and linking survivorship rules to control the preferred order of sources when promoting product data to the golden record.

Rank type of supplier has the following options: 'Approved Content Source' (AC) and 'Non-Approved Content Source' (NA).

Rank for supplier has the following options: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

The values of the two attributes are linked together into a single 'source rank for promotion' value which is used by the survivorship rules when promoting product data to the golden record.

The preferred order of sources configured in the survivorship rules in Accelerator for Retail is:

MDM, AC1, AC2, AC3, AC4, AC5, NA1, NA2, NA3, NA4, NA5, NA99

where:

MDM: internal source record

AC1-5: approved content source

NA1-5: non-approved content source

NA99: used if no rank type or rank is defined for the supplier.

Example

Attribute A has the value 'Yes' on a source having AC2 as Source Rank for Promotion.

The survivorship rules check the sources in the defined preferred order. First it checks the internal source record which doesn’t have a value for Attribute A. It continues to look for a source with AC1, but that external source record does not have a value for Attribute A either. So it continues by looking for a source with AC2. Finally, a value for Attribute A is found, so this value will be promoted to the golden record, and it will skip looking for values on lower ranked sources.

For some suppliers it might be necessary to overwrite the general source record handling and product data ranking on all products below specific product hierarchy nodes. This can be done by linking a node from the external product hierarchy to the supplier classification using the category ranking for supplier link type. The link will have the following metadata attributes: category handling of new source records, category handling of updated source records, category rank for supplier, and category rank type of supplier.

  • Recipient Email for PDX Invitation (ID = PDXInvitationEmail) – The email address where the invitation email should be sent

  • Recipient Name for PDX Invitation (ID = PDXInvitationName) – The name of the person who should be mentioned in the salutation or greeting in the body of the invitation email

  1. The supplier classification must be approved.

This will start a process which will generate a unique supplier identifier in the 'PDX: Supplier Identifier' attribute on the supplier classification.

  1. The 'PDX: Supplier Identifier' value generated within a minute of the initial approval of the supplier classification is what the supplier needs for authentication when adding the channel in PDX.