This topic provides an overview of projects and workflows in ATG Merchandising. For more detailed information about projects and workflows, see the Creating and Managing Projects chapter of the ATG Content Administration Guide for Business Users.
ATG Merchandising Projects
ATG Merchandising projects are types of ATG Content Administration projects that allow you to access ATG Merchandising to create and edit versioned commerce assets and then track those assets through the review and approval process before deploying them to your live Web site.
Whenever you work on commerce assets in ATG Merchandising, you begin by creating a project based on one of the available ATG Merchandising project types in the ATG Business Control Center. The type of project determines the workflow you use to perform project tasks and the assets and views that are available to you in ATG Merchandising.
ATG Merchandising includes the following project types out-of-the-box:
Manage Commerce Assets
Provides access to all parts of ATG Merchandising used for creating, modifying, organizing, and deleting commerce assets, including Search Merchandising assets, if applicable.
Administer Commerce Search
Provides tools used by administrators to configure Search Merchandising, such as creating the search configuration tree and adding properties for property prioritization (requires ATG Search). See Administering Search Configurations.
Both project types use workflows with identical tasks, but differ in the types of assets you can edit and the views and actions you see in ATG Merchandising. Your application may include additional project types created by an administrator. For information about creating additional project types with custom workflows, see Configuring Workflows.
ATG Merchandising Workflows
A workflow is a template that determines the tasks available in a project, the order in which they are executed, and the actions used to advance from one task to the next. Workflows ensure that project tasks are performed in the appropriate order by the assigned user. The workflows available to you depend on how your application is configured.
When you work in an ATG Merchandising project, you assign a task to a user, who completes the task and then advances the project to the next task in the workflow until all tasks are complete and the project is deployed. For instructions, see Working on a Task and Advancing to the Next Task.
For technical information about ATG Merchandising workflows, see Configuring Workflows.
ATG Merchandising Browse Mode
If you want to view your commerce assets and their properties without creating a project, you can do so by browsing ATG Merchandising. When you browse, you cannot create, edit, delete, or reorganize versioned assets in your catalog. If you are using Search Merchandising, you can create and run search tests because they are not versioned in ATG Content Administration (see Testing Search Queries).
For instructions on how to access ATG Merchandising in browse mode, see Browsing ATG Merchandising Outside of a Project.
