How You Use the Product Information Management Work Area

From the Product Information Management work area, you can scan the status of your product workflow using infolets, and also view event notifications. You can use the Tasks pane to manage items, new item requests, item batches, and import items from external data systems using import maps.

Note: If the Product Information Management work area is not available in the Navigator’s Product Management menu, then navigate to the Configuration menu, click Structure, and expand Product Management. For Product Information Management, the Navigator and Springboard columns must have a green check mark. If it doesn’t have the green check mark, see Configure the Navigator and Page Entries on the Home Page for Navigation for more information.

Product Information Management Landing Page

The Product Information Management landing page contains infolets to manage product information. For example, the Items for Definition infolet lets you view any new item requests. The Details tab in a new item request has detailed information for your analysis. After you have analyzed the request, you can decide to act on the request immediately or you can decide to come back to it later.

Apart from the infolets, you also receive notifications about events and workflow that need your attention. You can also search for items, catalogs, and so on from the Quick Search pane in Product Information Management work area. The Tasks pane has all the tasks that will help you manage your product data.

Manage Items

Use the Manage Items task to search for items. Open the desired item from the Search Results table and edit or view the attributes for item.

Manage New Item Request

Use the Manage New Item Request task to see what new items are there for you to introduce in the product workflow. Open a new item request to view the item details and its priority, and take appropriate actions.

Manage Item Batches

Use the Manage Item Batches task to view the batches of items imported from other data systems. The Search Results table gives you an overview of the status of the item batch. You can analyze a batch and look for any errors. For example, if the number of items available in the batch and the number of items imported don't match, it indicates that you have an error. Click the batch number to see the details of the import and analyze any error. You can also export the result of an item batch to a spreadsheet for offline analysis.

Manage Import Maps

Use the Manage Import Maps task to search for an import map and look at the mapping detail for the import map. Before creating a mapping of items, it's a good practice to view the source file details. To map your item entries, you can drag a column header from the source data to a corresponding attribute name in the master data. Refresh the preview table to see how the external data maps to the master data attributes.