Distributing Product Information to Customers and Partners with Customer Portal

A step-by-step guide to setting up a Customer Portal connection in Pimberly and releasing product data to it

Customer Portal gives each of your customers and partners a controlled space to take the product data they need directly from Pimberly, rather than waiting on spreadsheets, emails or ad hoc exports.

Access is set per connection, so you decide which products, which attributes, which scopes and which locales each recipient can see. This guide covers the full lifecycle: configuring a customer connection, then releasing a product to it.

Part 1: Set up the customer connection

Step 1. Open the customer connection

1. In the top navigation bar, click Admin.
2. In the left-hand panel, expand Connect and click Customers.
3. Open the connection you want to configure, or create a new one. The Customer Connection page opens.
4. In Organisation Name, enter the name of the account you are connecting to.
5. In Contact Email, enter the contact for that account owner.

Note: Each customer or partner has its own connection. What one recipient can see has no bearing on what any other recipient can see.

Step 2. Choose which scopes the customer can see

1. Scroll to Scope Selection.
2. Tick each scope you want visible to this connection, for example Master, Gold Customer, Silver Customer, Bronze Customer, Discounted or B2B.
3. Leave a scope unticked to keep that version of the data out of this connection.

Note: If you select no scopes, only data in the master scope is available to the connection. Scopes let one customer receive a different version of the same product record, whether that is a different tone of voice, a different level of detail or different commercial terms.

Step 3. Choose which locales the customer can see

1. Scroll to Locale Selection.
2. Tick each locale this connection should be able to see. In this example Spain is ticked alongside Default, so a business in Spain receives the Spanish translation of the product data.
3. Leave a locale unticked to keep that language or market variant out of this connection.

Note: If you select no locales, only data in the default locale is available to the connection.

Step 4. Open the attribute mapping

1. Scroll to Attribute Mapping.
2. Review the attribute sets in the left-hand column, such as Basic Attributes, Codes, Product Details, Product Specs, Digital Assets and Pricing Information. The figure beside each set shows how many of its attributes are currently mapped, for example 0/9.
3. Click the arrow beside a set to expand it, or tick Expand All Attribute Sets at the top right of the section to open every set at once.

Note: Standalone attributes such as Primary ID, Product Type, Lifecycle Stage and Date Updated sit above the attribute sets and are mapped the same way.

Step 5. Map the attributes you want to share, then save

1. Drag an attribute from the left-hand column across to the right-hand column. In this example Primary ID and Description have been mapped.
2. Edit the name in the right-hand column if the customer needs the field to arrive under a different label.
3. Repeat for every attribute this customer should receive. To map everything in every section in one action, click click here in the right-hand drop area.
4. Click Save at the top right of the page.

Note: Scope and locale changes take effect in the Customer Connection as soon as you click Save. You do not need to re-release products for those selections to become visible.

Part 2: Send product data to the connection

Step 6. Select the product to distribute

1. In the top navigation bar, click Products. This is the Products item in the blue bar at the top of the screen, not the Products item in the left-hand Admin panel.
2. Find the product you want to send. In this example it is SAM-CEB09, a Samsung Cebu High Wall Air Conditioning System.
3. Tick the checkbox at the far left of the product row.
4. Check the Selected count at the bottom right of the grid to confirm how many products you have picked.

Note: You can tick several products at once, or apply the release to everything matching your current filter at the next step.

Step 7. Start the release

1. In the toolbar above the grid, click Release.

Note: Release is the action that pushes product data out to your channels and connections. It sits between Group and Delete on the right-hand side of the toolbar.

Step 8. Choose which products the release applies to

1. In the Batch Release: Select desired scope dialog, select Selected Products to release only the rows you ticked, or Filtered Products to release everything matching your current filter.
2. Check the count shown beneath your choice, for example There is 1 product selected or Filter matches 19 products.
3. Click Next.

Note: Filtered Products is the quicker route when you are releasing a whole category or a whole supplier's range rather than individual items.

Step 9. Open the Connections tab

1. The Release/Unrelease from Channels and Connections dialog opens on the Channels tab.
2. Click the Connections tab.
3. Read the summary on each connection line, which shows how many products are available, how many are ready for release and how many have already been released.

Note: Channels are your own destinations, such as a website, a marketplace or an ERP feed. Connections are the Customer Portal spaces you have set up for individual customers and partners.

Step 10. Set the connection to Release and confirm

1. Open the dropdown beside the connection you want to send to, for example [Connect] Customer - Electrical Components.
2. Select Release to send the product to that connection, or Un-release to withdraw it.
3. Repeat for any other connection in the list.
4. Click Release at the bottom right of the dialog to confirm.

Note: The same release can be run automatically with a workflow, triggered by an event, an attribute update or any other change in the platform. Manual release is useful for one-off sends and for checking a new connection before you automate it.

What this gives you

• Product data is distributed from one place, so the same record serves every downstream customer without a separate export process for each one.
• Access is governed per connection, so commercially sensitive attributes, pricing scopes and unfinished content stay out of view.
• Customers pull the data themselves in the scope and locale that applies to them, which removes the manual request and re-send cycle.