Store preview

Store preview allows you to ensure that content changes made in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator show up in your store as expected. Use preview in production, authoring, and staging environments. For example, your marketing team decides to promote a line of leather coats. You create an e-Marketing Spot for the new coats in the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator. Using preview, you can ensure that the e-Marketing Spot is displayed the promotion in your store as you expect, with the correct fonts, images and text. The following options are available when previewing your site:

 

 

Choose the first page displayed in the preview

You can choose which store page loads first when you launch preview. By default, the home page URL of the store that you are working with in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator is entered in the store preview options page:

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You can change this by specifying the URL of the first page that you want to see. For example, if your changed content is the image that appears on a product display page, you can enter the URL for the store's product display page as a preview option. The page that is displayed when you launch the preview is this URL.

 

View your store at a virtual date and time

You can set the date and time to a point in the future for your store preview. This option helps you ensure that time-sensitive content, such as a promotion, contract, or a price change, is displayed only when expected. For example, a one-day promotion should be displayed only between the hours of midnight and 11:59 pm. Use preview to ensure that the promotion is displayed only between these times. The current system time is the default setting.

 

Choose whether or not time elapses in the preview

Time in the preview does not change as real time elapses

The preview begins at the date and time you specify and does not elapse. For example, if your preview begins on July 3, 2006 at 1:30 p.m., and five minutes elapses, the time reflected in the preview remains at 1:30 p.m.

Time in the preview elapses as real time elapses

The preview begins at the date and time you specify, and elapses. For example, if your preview begins on July 3, 2006 at 1:30 p.m., and five minutes elapses, the time reflected in the preview is 1:35 p.m.

 

Set Product Recommendation inventory results

Web activities can recommend products based on the number of units in the database. For example, you want to promote a product because there are too many units in inventory and they are taking up too much space in your warehouse. You can create a Web activity that is displayed only if you have over a certain number of units in your inventory.

To help with testing your product recommendations within preview, you can set options to dictate how preview treats these inventory rules. The following product recommendation inventory rules settings are available:

Use inventory levels in the database

This option uses the data stored in your server's database. For example, a promotion is displayed only when the number of items in inventory is greater than 1000. This constraint evaluates to true if the number of items in your database is greater than 1000 and to false if the number is less than 1000.

Set all inventory filter results to true

All inventory constraints are set to true. For example, if a product recommendation Web activity should display only when the number of items in inventory is greater than 1000, this constraint evaluates to true, even if the number of items in your actual inventory is less than 1000.

Set all inventory filter results to false

All inventory constraints are set to false. For example, if a product recommendation Web activity should display only when the number of items in inventory is greater than 1000, this constraint evaluates to false, even if the number of items in your actual inventory is greater than 1000.

 

View your store as a specific user

After you specify the preview options above, you can preview your store. When previewing your store, initially you are a guest user. You can log onto your store as a specific user and view what the store looks like to that user. This can be useful, for example, to test marketing campaigns targeted at specific customers, such as females over 40 years of age. You can ensure that the campaign is displayed to these customers only. You can also test prices under different contracts by logging in as two customers that belong to different contracts or accounts.

Within preview, you can create a new registered user by following your store's registration process. This user will exists in your database after you close the preview. For more information see Operational and transactional data.

 

Handle operational and transactional data

While previewing your site, you can perform actions that modify operational and transactional data, for example, registering new users, placing orders, and using coupons. When operational and transactional data is modified, the information is recorded in the database, just as when a real user performs these actions.

For example, new users will still exist in the database after you exit from preview, and you can log in as these users in the store inside or outside of a preview session. Another example is if you redeem coupons within preview, the redemption counts towards any defined redemption limit.

If you collect analytical information from this data, your actions during preview might affect your analytics. To prevent operational and transactional data from being changed, you can restrict certain commands from running within a store preview.

Handle operational and transactional data on an authoring server

When you preview your site on an authoring server, operational and transactional data on the authoring server is treated differently, depending on the context of the preview. When you previewing your site from the production-ready data, operational and transactional data is treated the same as described earlier. The store preview reflects the state of the store in the production-ready data. You cannot see changes made to managed assets in workspaces. When you preview your site from a workspace, the store preview reflects changes made to managed assets in workspaces. For order activities, the store preview reflects only order activities in the workspace. Any order activities in the production-ready data will not be seen in the previewed store. Activities in the store preview that are related to member data related activities, such as the creation of new user and organization, occur directly in the production-ready data because member data is not a managed asset.

 

Restrict commands in preview

You can prevent commands from running within preview. For more information see Commands and view restrictions in preview.

Restrict commands in preview to prevent them from affecting your production server data. An order that is completed in preview affects the production data and it might also affect inventory levels and cause fulfillment centers to be notified of a transaction. Coupons might be redeemed and even payment authentication might be invoked on a production server.

 

Preview restrictions when previewing from a workspace

When previewing a store from within a workspace, attempting to process an order in the previewed store might cause errors that prevent you from completing the order.

Related tasks

Related reference