Channel structure
This page is for administrators: the operations described require access to the administration area.
A channel is a destination for your catalogue, such as an e-commerce website, a B2B portal or a marketplace. Each product has a status for each channel: whether it is in production or staging, whether it is published, and which validation errors it has. The channel settings determine what openlane checks and displays for that channel.
Type and family
The channel type, selected in Type, groups similar channels, such as all websites for a brand or all marketplaces run by a particular operator. Attribute validation rules are configured by channel type: all channels of the same type follow the same rules, with exceptions for individual channels. The rules are described in How validation works. The available types are the values in the ChannelType reference data list.
The channel family, in Channel Family, classifies the channel as B2C Websites, B2B Websites, Marketplaces or Others.
Languages and countries
Locales and Countries specify the languages and countries for which the channel receives data. These affect validation: a translated attribute is checked in every channel language, and a country-specific attribute in every channel country. In the channel selector at the top, a channel with multiple languages has one entry per language.
The fallback language, in Fallback Locale, is used when a translated attribute has no value in the requested language. For validation purposes, a value in the fallback language satisfies the requirement to fill in the attribute.
Categories, company and product groups
- Category Family specifies the channel's category family. Only product categories belonging to that family are considered for the channel, both in validation and in the breadcrumb.
- Company specifies the channel's company. For status attributes, such as those of type StatusValue, openlane uses the value set for that company.
- Product groups entity types lists the entity types of product groups, such as kits, managed on the channel. A group's detail page only shows channels that list its entity type.
Staging and production
With Staging Area Available, the channel has a staging environment as well as production. The Staging checkbox appears for that channel on the product detail page, and the Published checkbox depends on completion of the product workflow. Without staging, you can select Published immediately.
Enable Output indicates that the channel is enabled for sending data: how it is used depends on the channel's integrations. When it is switched off, the channel is marked as disabled on the product detail page.
Product status on channels, including production, staging and the publication date, is described in the Products space, in the Channels section.
Prices and availability
A channel can also have:
- price codes to use for its products, described in Channel prices;
- availability and price match settings for each product, described in How to configure availability, stock and price match.
Who can see a channel
You can see the channels assigned to you, or all channels if you have All Channels. User permissions are described in the Users and permissions section.