Simple Product Information Management system for Magento
Product Information Management systems help you to manage product information centrally. In a sense Magento is a PIM.
Magento doesn’t allow you to have versioned product data. In most cases this is not a problem, because you want to sell based on the latest information and you have a reliable content management team. But what if this is not the case, you have computer illiterate shop assistants or old people trying to manage the site? Or you have a shop owner without Magento experience, or you want to give access to only one store view (or website) on a multi-store Magento installation?
In these cases, a customized product management system (PIM) might be the easiest solution. Most PIM systems are highly customizable, but not really easy to integrate. Having to deal with problems described above I couldn’t find off-the-shelf product that would solve my problems.
What I am working on is a small independent system:
- version controlled product data
- editing a filtered set of product attributes
- editing store specific data on the same form, for translation for example
- users are independent from Magento
- ability to do “dirty” things like setting attribute set or product type (simple,configurable) with the grim consequences, of course
Current status of the project:
- Authentication, simple access control
- synchronization with Magento upon product listing with value checking – slow but safer than relying on updated_at
- editing products, with hardcoded per store entries for main attributes (name,short_description,description)
- editing dynamic set of attributes, synchronised from product attribute set information
- setting attribute set any time – old attribute data gets dirty in this case
- saving will overwrite Magento product, editing product in Magento will create a new version in PIM
Plans before the first public release:
- discovery and configuration of stores, store specific data instead of hardcoded values, like in attributes
- handle product creation
- handle deletion in Magento, add way to delete products in Magento while keeping versions in PIM
- Replace hardcoded attribute ids with dynamic ones
- Figure out a project name