WebSphere Commerce product overview

The IBM Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce manages stores, customers, organizations, orders, quotes, and payment information. The IBM Sales Center is a rich client interface which is installed on CSRs' systems.

Administration Console allows a Site Administrator to control a site or store by completing administrative operations and configuration tasks. Upon opening the Administration Console, you select the language in which you want to work. The tasks that you are authorized to perform display on the Administration Console home page through various menus. These tasks are based on the user group names (roles) and authority levels.

Organization Administration Console allows you, and the buyer's administrators to control the organizations that access your site or store. Tasks that you are authorized to perform in your role are displayed on the Organization Administration Console home page menus. These tasks are based on user roles and authority levels, which are defined in XML files on your WebSphere Commerce system and are assigned by the Site Administrator by using the Administration Console.

Tools

Business tools

WebSphere Commerce Accelerator

A browser-based component that use to operate and to maintain online stores after you have created them. The set of menu items and tasks adapt to the role of the user.

IBM Sales Center

The IBM Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce manages stores, customers, organizations, orders, quotes, and payment information. The IBM Sales Center is a rich client interface which is installed on (CSR) Customer Service Representatives' systems.

Development tools

Rational Application Developer

The WebSphere Commerce development environment builds on top of Rational Application Developer, which is the core development environment from IBM. It helps you optimize and simplify Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Web services development by offering best practices, templates, code generation, and the most comprehensive development environment in its class. This integrated development environment (IDE) includes integrated support for...

• Java components
• enterprise beans
• servlets
• JSP files
• HTML
• XML
• Web services

...all in one development environment.

WebSphere Commerce Developer

A complete Web development environment based on Rational Application Developer, for developing storefronts and customizing the domain model (business processes and business objects) within the WebSphere Commerce Server.

Administrator tools

Administration Console

A browser-based component that allows complete administrative operations at the site level or the store level.

Organization Administration Console

A browser-based component that allows you to administer people, groups, organizations and associated security elements.

Configuration Manager

Configuration Manager lets you enable and configure various components of WebSphere Commerce and WebSphere Commerce Payments.

Loading utilities

WebSphere Commerce provides utilities for preparing and loading data into a WebSphere Commerce database. These utilities provide various functions that can be strung together in the required sequence to solve your particular commerce data management problems. The loading utilities are flexible enough to handle customizations that are made to the WebSphere Commerce schema.

Workspace Administration tool

The Workspace Administration Tool is a graphical user interface tool used to manage workspaces and workspace-related activities. It provides a single view across all workspaces and all tasks in the workspaces where managers can see how work is progressing.

Features

Catalog

See Catalog assets

Selling

See Marketing and Merchandising features in the sample catalogs

Marketing

See Marketing and Merchandising features in the sample catalogs

Trading

See Trading Subsystem

Order Management

See Order Management Subsystem

Business context engine

Entitlement

Entitlement governs customers access to various aspects of a store, such as what products they can purchase from a store, the price they pay for a product, and what payment methods a store will accept from them. Configurable business processes, contract based commerce, granular terms and conditions, member management, configurable workflow, and role-based entitlements.

Globalization

The globalization context governs how the site behaves according to the locale of the person interacting with the store. The context includes both language and currency information as matched to the language and currency supported by the store.

Marketing

The Marketing business processes describe the creation and management of targeted marketing campaigns, such as advertising, promoting products, informing customers or partners, or promoting merchandising initiatives.

Preview

Preview allows you to ensure content changes made in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator display in your store as expected. Use preview in production , authoring, and staging environments.

Stores

WebSphere Commerce supports several different types of entities that are defined as stores. The assets of these store entities may be edited using the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator.

Workspaces

A workspace is an isolated access-controlled work area in which you can make and preview changes to managed assets without affecting managed assets and users outside the area. Working in the context of a workspace is similar to having your own private copy of the managed assets. You can make changes and preview changes without affecting managed assets outside the workspace. Content changed in a workspace can be seen and previewed only by those authorized to access the workspace.

Commerce Enablement

WebSphere Commerce facilitates commerce by incorporating the following components:

Integration

The WebSphere Commerce Server can be integrated with other applications by way of its messaging facilities and programming model. In conjunction with WebSphere Business Integrator (acting as the broker, or hub, for messages), one can integrate the business processes within the server with internal systems, or external partners and suppliers. The server also provides a framework for integrating with various Web-oriented marketplace and procurement protocols.

Analytics

The Coremetrics enhanced Web analytics for WebSphere Commerce provides tools which simplify the process of setting up your site to take advantage of the industry leading hosted Web analytics solution. This includes a framework that simplifies site configuration, including tagging your JSP files so that they provide appropriate analytics information to Coremetrics. The framework is implemented as a tag library, specifically designed to act as an intermediary layer between WebSphere Commerce and Coremetrics.

Collaboration

Traditionally, exchange of information has been achieved through phone or fax. WebSphere Commerce supports e-commerce collaboration functionality by offering Web-based features within the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator. Whether it is a Buyer and Seller discussing details of a purchasing agreement, or a Customer Service Representative assisting a customer in placing an order, e-commerce collaboration is necessary to maintain the communication flow between parties.

WebSphere Platform

Underpinning all of WebSphere Commerce is the WebSphere software platform: the industry leading infrastructure software for on demand e-business. The fundamental aspects of the WebSphere platform include the following:

Foundation and Tools

The WAS is an industry-leading Java-based application environment for building, deploying, and managing Internet and intranet Web applications. WAS also provides the runtime support for JSP files.

Business Integration

WebSphere Business Integration delivers five key capabilities to accelerate the transformation into an on demand business:

• Model and simulate business processes that can be instantly updated

• Integrate people, processes, information, and systems throughout your enterprise

• Connect with your customers and partners for an efficient business-to-business enterprise

• Monitor business processes from start to finish, using real-time performance data

• Manage your business more efficiently with the capability to review, analyze and improve processes and performance

Related Concepts