Validations

Validations will allow you to set standards for your product data that should be met in order to be exported to your channels.

Validations can be configured at both a channel and a brand level. This will allow you to build in any requirements that are set externally by your channels and also allow you to build in any product standards that the brand or your business views as important.

To access this, navigate to Unified Commerce > Channel Manager > Validations. Here you will be presented with a list of existing validations built out within PIM for your channels and brands.

To view/edit validations, click on validation name then click Edit. You will be presented with the following screen:

Validations can be categorized by whether they are mandatory (required) or desirable (warning) for export.

Required – This means that if the product does not pass the validation configured, it will not be exported to your channels.
Warning – This means that if the product does not pass the validation configured, PIM will allow the product to exported to your channels but a warning will be displayed within the Product Readiness report to notify you that the data does not meet the rule set.
1. Selecting Warning will also display a tick box next to the drop down (shown above). Placing a tick here will exclude the validation from the readiness calculation/progress bar that you can see when navigating through products. If you have a high number of validations configured as ‘Warning’, you may want to consider excluding them from the calculation so that the progress bar shows you how far the product is from meeting the most important requirements, as opposed to the desirables. Regardless of whether this box is ticked, warnings will still display against the Product Readiness report of each product.

The following validation types can be configured:

1. String – This allows you to set a minimum and/or maximum character length check.

2. Boolean – This allows you specify whether an attribute should be set to either true or false. This option is only applicable to boolean-type attributes.

3. Custom Source – This allows you to specify a list of possible values that an attribute should be set to for export (i.e. if a channel has specific requirements compared to the list set at attribute level). You can add values by typing in your value and clicking Add New Item.

4. Range – This allows you to set a minimum and/or maximum check for any number to two decimal places.
5. Regular Expression – This option allows you to input your own regex to facilitate more complex validations (e.g. date formatting, decimal place validation).
6. Required – This option simply checks whether the field/attribute is populated against the product.

Add a New Validation

Find the appropriate field/attribute from the left hand navigation. Expand Attributes to view the list of all custom attributes.
Drag the field/attribute name over to the grey box on the right. You can drag the same field in multiple times to create additional validations.
Configure the required validation.
Repeat this process for all validations.
Click Save in the top right-hand corner.
Alternatively, to remove a validation click the cross icon. Save your changes.

See some examples below for how the most common validations have been configured:

Attributes with blank as a valid value
The above configuration will firstly check if the Country of Origin attribute is populated against the product. If populated, the validation will pass if the attribute is set to any other option other than ‘Blank’. If the attribute is set to ‘Blank’ the product will fail this validation.
Number range validation
Number range validation with a set number of decimal places
Character length validation

Product Readiness

Product Readiness reporting provides a way to easily identify which products have met the list of validations and which are lacking in some way.

When products are first imported/created the readiness bar won’t appear.

You can manually initiate product readiness calculation by selecting a product or multiple products on the Products page and clicking Calculate Readiness in the blue bar. Before enrichment, the bar will be typically be red.

After some enrichment has taken place and some validations – but not all – have been met, the bar will be partially filled in yellow.

After all validations have been met, the bar will be filled in green. This means the product is ready to be exported.

Calculate Readiness

There is a background job that automatically recalculates readiness every night. However, you might find that you want to manually recalculate after updates.

Whenever you see a Calculate Readiness or Recheck link you can use it to manually calculate. You’ll see a message telling you to refresh the page. Use the Refresh icon at the top of the page to regenerate the readiness bars.

View Readiness Details

There are a couple of ways to view Readiness details, for example, if you want to see what validations a product has not yet met.

At the Product level:

Navigate to Unified Commerce > Product Manager > Products.
Select a product and click View in the light blue bar or double click the product to open it in View mode.
Click the Readiness tab. If Readiness has also been calculated at the Channel level, you’ll see results for both Brand and Channel. You can expand and collapse the validation per brand/channel for ease. Only validations that have not been met are listed.

At the Channel level:

Navigate to Unified Commerce > Channel Manager > Channel.
Select a channel and click View in the light blue bar. Do not double click in this case.
The display will default to the Products view listing all products and their Readiness status and the Validation statistics. However, Channel Readiness will show only after a product has been added to a catalogue. To view individual product results, click on the Product Name to go to the product page described above.
Select Validations just above the light blue bar to see a list of the validations and the statistics across all products assigned to the channel’s catalogue. From here you can select a specific validation and click View to isolate the statistics for that validation alone.

rev: 9/2/21