Operate > IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce > Marketing tool > Work with Web and Dialog activities > Activity building blocks: triggers, targets, and actions > Actions in marketing activities
Action: Display Recommendation From External System
If the store uses a system external to WebSphere Commerce to determine relevant catalog entry recommendations for customers, you can use this action to display those recommendations in an e-Marketing Spot.
Prerequisites for using this action
By default, the Display Recommendation From External System action does not display in the palette in the Activity Builder. A store developer must customize the Marketing tool for this to happen. When the customization is in place, you can add the Display Recommendation From External System action to Web activities to display the recommendations from the external recommendation system in an e-Marketing Spot.Make sure a site administrator has the site configured to support Management Center marketing features. See Configure marketing for Management Center.
Guidelines for using this action
Each site can implement the Display Recommendation From External System action in a different way, depending on what makes sense for the external recommendation system. Typically, when you add the action to a Web activity, you can specify what to base the recommendation on, for example:
- Display a recommendation based on the catalog entries on the current page
- Display a recommendation based on catalog entries in the customer's shopping cart
- Display a recommendation based on catalog entries in the customer's purchase history
- Display a recommendation based on specific catalog entries
Related tasks
Customize the Marketing tool to display catalog entry recommendations from an external system
Related reference
Sample e-Marketing Spot JSP snippets and the Web activities they support