This article describes how products created in Narva Erply are sent to and processed in Magento. Another article describes requirements and prerequisites for creating products in Narva Erply.
Magento reads products from Erply completely automatically according to schedule defined in Erply Module configuration in Magento Admin. Functionality works like this:
- Magento initiates connection to Narva Erply and asks for all products that were modified (including created) from the time of last connection
- Erply returns a set of products with all required information including:
- product basic data
- images
- matrix dimensions and variations
- product parameters
- Magento parses data received from Erply and compiles it into format digestible by it’s importing functionality
- Magento tries to import formatted data
Product data processing
Most of the product data coming from Erply is mapped directly to certain product fields in Magento, like “name”, “price” and “description”. However there are certain more complex parts of products data that require special conversion, which is described below.
Matrix Dimensions in Erply => Magento Attributes
In Magento configurable products are “configured” using Product Attributes, in Erply those are called Matrix Dimensions. For example, to be able to select “handle type” on Blade product page in Magento this product needs to be “configured” using attribute “handle type” and all of it’s sub-products (variations) need to have this attribute and for it to have a certain value (ST, FL, CONC….). Because of the difference in approach and naming conventions in Magento and Erply a values mapping system is used to identify which Matrix Variation in Erply corresponds to which Attribute in Magento, so incoming data from Erply can be converted into something Magento understands.
For Matrix Dimension to be successfully converted into Magento Attribute a link needs to exist in values mapping system. Such links are created manually, so if new Matrix Dimension is created in Erply it needs to be manually mapped to an Attribute in Magento otherwise configurable products will not be “configured” correctly and when opened on front-end there will be no variation selection option.
Product Parameters in Erply => Magento Attributes
Product Parameters in Erply are used to store additional technical information about products, like “Blade Speed”, “Blade Control”, “Number of Layers”. In Magento this information is stored in the form of Product Attributes. A values mapping system is used to identify which Product Parameter in Erply corresponds to which Attribute in Magento, so incoming data from Erply can be converted into something Magento understands.
For Product Parameter to be successfully mapped to Magento Attribute a link needs to exist in values mapping system. Such links are created manually, so if new Product Parameter is created in Erply it needs to be manually mapped to an Attribute in Magento otherwise parameter values will not be imported.
Product Images in Erply =>Product Images in Magento
Product images are processed only if there were changes: images added, images removed, new main image assigned.