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Troubleshoot: Product Advisor

If you encounter errors when using Product Advisor refer to the following information.

To determine and correct any problems, manually verify the Product Advisor implementation by doing the following:

  1. Ensure that DB2 or Oracle is running, by looking at the active services.

  2. Verify the search space is valid by checking the following

    1. Verify the search space was created. Do this by looking at the ICROOTCAT table. If there is a row for the category that you think you created a search space for, then a search space exists. If the TABLENAME column contains "WCS" it is a base search space, and if it contains "ICV categoryId_" then it is a separate search space, in which case also check that ICV categoryId_null is not empty.

    2. If you are using a separate search space for the metaphor, ensure that there are prices in the ICTPRICES table.

    3. Verify the data is in the language the customer is in.

    4. If you are using a separate search space for the metaphor, ensure that there are prices in the ICTPRICES table for the store default currency.

  3. Ensure that all of the metaphors were created either through the user interface from WebSphere Commerce Accelerator or using the PACreateMetaphorBatchCmd scheduler command. Each time you recreate a search space, the metaphors must be recreated too. That is, always run PACreateMetaphorBatchCmd after running PACreateSearchSpaceBatchCmd or use the corresponding user interface from WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to do the same. The ICMETAPHOR table will have a row for each metaphor for the category you're working with.

  4. Verify the following IDs have valid values in the database:

    • store ID

    • category ID

    • product ID

  5. Ensure that all Product Exploration and Product Comparison metaphors have at least one feature set to display.

    Columns in the ICTDESC tables should match the datatype specified in the ICEXPLFEAT table. For instance, if an ICTDESC table has an Integer column, there should be a matching "com.ibm.commerce.pa.datatype.DsInteger" in the DATATYPE column. Also, the XML files used to create the search space and the metaphor must refer to this name.

  6. If you reach an answer in the Guided Sell metaphor which does not link to anything, that is, it's plain text, this indicates that the constraints applied to that answer result in 0 catalog entries being found. You should modify the constraints to find at least one catalog entry.

  7. If you receive an error when using the Preview functionality of Product Advisor in a B2B direct store, then ensure that the logon ID that you are using is assigned the role of a Registered Customer.


Related concepts

Product Advisor


Related tasks

Create search space for Product Advisor

Create a Product Comparison metaphor

Create a Product Exploration metaphor

Create a Guided Sell for a category


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