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    • Versions
    • master
    • v3.0
    • v2.3
    • v2.2
    • v2.1
    • v2.0
    • v1.7
    • v1.6
    • v1.5
    • v1.4
    • v1.3
    • v1.2
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    • v1.0
Caution! You are browsing the documentation for Akeneo in version master, which is a development version. Consider using the latest stable version.

 

  • Install Akeneo PIM
    • Install Akeneo PIM with Docker
    • Install Akeneo PIM manually
      • System Requirements
      • System installation on Debian 9 (Stretch)
      • System installation on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)
      • Installing Akeneo PIM Community Edition (CE) with the Archive
      • Installing Akeneo PIM Enterprise Edition (EE) with the Archive
      • Setting up the job queue daemon
    • How to customize the Dataset
    • How to Add Translation Packs
  • Migrate Akeneo PIM projects
  • Import and Export data
    • How import works
    • Understanding the Product Import
    • Understanding the Product Export
    • Formats
      • Localized labels
      • Scopable labels
      • Association types data structure
      • Attribute data structure
      • Category data structure
      • Family data structure
      • Family variant data structure
      • Group data structure
      • Options data structure
      • Product data structure
      • Product model data structure
    • Akeneo Connectors
    • How to Customize Import / Export
      • How to create a new Connector
      • How to import Products from a XML file
      • How to clean a CSV file during a Product import
      • How to automate imports/exports
  • Manipulate the Akeneo PIM data
    • How to Customize Mass Edit Operations
      • How to register a new bulk action
      • How to Register a New Mass Edit Action on Products
      • How to Avoid Rules Execution on Mass Edit Actions
    • How to Manipulate Products
      • How to Query Products
      • How to Create Products
      • How to Update Products
      • How to Validate Products
      • How to Save Products
      • How to Remove Products
    • How to Manipulate Non-Product Objects
      • How to Query Non-Product Objects
      • How to Create Non-Product Objects
      • How to Update Non-Product Objects
      • How to Validate Non-Product Objects
      • How to Save Non-Product Objects
      • How to Remove Non-Product Objects
    • How to add a custom action rule
      • General information about rule format
      • How to add a custom action in the rule engine
    • How to Define Access Control List
    • How to Customize the Catalog Structure
      • How to Create a Reference Data
      • How to add a custom unit of measure
      • How to Add New Properties to a Category
    • How to Customize Product Assets
      • How to Add a New Transformation
      • How to Add a Default Thumbnail For Unknown File Types
      • How to connect to an external server for storage
      • How to change the validation rule to match a reference file to an asset
      • How to Mass Import Assets
    • How To Customize Teamwork Assistant (Enterprise Edition)
      • Customize notifications
      • Add a calculation step
      • How to log calculation step
      • Remove projects impacted by a custom catalog update
  • Design the user interfaces
    • How to customize any frontend part of the application
    • How to add an action button or meta data to the product edit form
    • How to add a tab to a form
    • How to add a new tab in System / Configuration
    • How to add custom information to a field
    • How to add a new field type
    • Create a custom product export builder filter
    • How to create the UI to manage a Reference Data
    • How to add a new page
    • How to customize the main menu
    • Styleguide
  • Maintain Akeneo PIM projects
    • First aid kit
    • Bug qualification
    • Common issues
    • Scalability Guide
      • Audit with 3 Representative Catalogs
      • More than 10k attributes?
      • More than 10k families?
      • More than 10k categories?
      • More than 500 attributes usable in the product grids?
      • More than 100k products to export?
      • More than 1GB of product media to export?
    • How to purge history
      • How to Purge jobs executions
      • How to adapt the version purger to your needs
  • Contribute to Akeneo PIM
    • How to report an issue?
    • How to translate the user interface?
    • How to enhance the documentation?
    • How to contribute to a Connector?
    • How to submit a patch to the PIM?
    • How to contribute to the frontend part of the application
    • How behavior tests are architectured in the PIM?
      • Establishing Decorator Pattern
      • Using Spin In Behat
  • Use SSO authentication locally
  • Technical overview
    • Product Information
    • Teamwork Assistant (Enterprise Edition)
      • Project creation
      • Project completeness
      • Project Completeness widget
      • Catalog update impact
      • Scalability guide
      • Users permission summary for Behat tests
    • Collaborative workflow
      • Simple workflow
      • Partial workflow
  • Technical architecture
    • Best Practices
      • Create a project
      • Create a reusable bundle
      • Setup Behat
      • Code Conventions
      • Coding Standards
    • How to implement your business logic using the event system
    • Events
      • Storage events
      • Workflow events (Enterprise Edition only)
    • How to Localize your data
      • How to change the PIM locale
      • How to Use Localizers
      • How to use Presenters
    • How to Add a Notification
    • Performances Guide
      • Memory usage of rules execution (Enterprise Edition)
      • Memory leak fix in Rules Engine (ORM)
      • More than 100 WYSIWYG editors in a page
      • PHP7 and HHVM Compatibility?
      • Job product batch size
    • How to Use the Web REST API
    • Standard format
      • Products
      • Other entities
      • Usage
    • Application Technical Information
      • Application Technical Dependencies
      • Server side set up for hosting
      • System Requirements
      • Recommended configuration
      • Client side configuration and compatibilities
      • Operation processes
      • Flow Matrix
  • Akeneo Cloud Edition
    • Flexibility Mode
      • Overview
      • Partners Starterkit
      • Environments Access
      • Composer settings
      • Periodic tasks / Crontab settings
      • PIM Application
      • PIM Updates and Migrations
      • Data File Transfer
      • Backups management
      • Partners
      • System Components
    • Serenity Mode
      • Overview
      • PIM Updates and Migrations
  • Akeneo Onboarder
    • Prerequisites
    • Installation
    • Synchronization
    • Environment variables
      • Using the DotEnv file
      • Using environment variables

Akeneo PIM in a nutshell¶

What is a PIM?¶

A Product Information Management (PIM) solution is aimed to centralize all the marketing data, to enrich, translate and prepare it for exports to multiple channels. It is a productivity tool helping the contributors to serve the product information in different languages and for different purposes.

Akeneo is the first open source PIM made for non-technical users. Easy to use and very flexible, the solution can adapt to your product organization and processes, not the other way around. Available in two editions, Community, and Enterprise, you can choose the one that fits your needs.

What is a product?¶

Akeneo provides a powerful and very flexible way to structure your products using an Entity Attribute Value (i.e. Product - Attribute - ProductValue) model.

For instance, let’s say we want to store cars in Akeneo.

A Car has multiple properties (or attributes):

  • A color
  • A manufacturer
  • A price (a value and a currency)
  • …

We build the Car Family (or “product type”) using Attributes. Akeneo is shipped with common attribute types:

  • text;
  • price;
  • picture;
  • date…

Once a Family is created, you can create products organized in one or multiples Categories, for example “Tesla Model X” in “electrical motorization” category.

Most of the time, we export data to various destinations: an eCommerce website, a mobile application, or a paper catalog. You can use Channels to provide a different data for each product according to the selected destination.

When you start a PIM project, the first task to do is to build the structure of the data from a “functional” point of view.

Note

Want to know more? Take a look at the Product Information reference.

How does it work?¶

_images/akeneo_overview.png

As a developer, you will mainly interact with Akeneo to import and export data. We create Import and Export tasks using Jobs put in Connectors.

A job?¶

A Job defines a series of steps to execute to do a task.

To import data in Akeneo, we need:

  • to read data and convert it into an understandable format;
  • to map and validate this data into products;
  • to save them into database.

To export data from Akeneo, we need:

  • to read data from database;
  • to process it into an understandable format (XML, JSON, CSV…);
  • to export data into plain files or through a web service.

Because Akeneo PIM is open source, multiple connectors - or modules - already exist both for importing or exporting data.

Note

Want to know more? Take a look at the Import and Export data reference.

That’s it! You now have the basic knowledge to start an Akeneo project.


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