Gather Data and Integrate Your Catalog

In this section we explore how to integrate your products and catalogs into Coveo’s infrastructure. This integration recreates the relationships between your items, their variants, and their locations. Coveo only replicates your catalogs. They’re managed in your content management system (CMS) of choice.

Before you create your catalog source, ensure that your data contains SKUs that are unique. For example, if your catalog contains products that have French and English names or descriptions that use the same SKUs, you would need to create a catalog source for each language in order to avoid the duplication of SKUs in the same commerce catalog.

Conversely, if your commerce catalog applies to multiple countries or regions, sells the same products under a single language, and is managed by a single merchandising team, you would only need to create a single catalog source.

There’s a 1:1 relationship between your commerce catalog and the product source, meaning your product source can only be used in one commerce catalog.

Some things to consider about your data before getting started:

It must not contain duplicate SKUs.
It targets a specific audience, such as a country, a region, or a specific website.
It contains unique products, and in some cases, variants of those products.
It may contain availability items, such as stores or buyer groups.

Index Content

Coveo supports the indexing of commerce catalogs, as well as a wide array of website content, all stored in a secured unified index.

In this section, you’ll find information related to the initial stream of your catalog data to your source, full and partial document updates, and creating additional commerce fields.

For an SAP Commerce API Integration, see Index SAP Commerce Using the SAP OData2 GET API.

Indexing Alternatives

Coveo provides many out-of-the-box connectors designed to access and index commerce catalog content. Connectors may be system specific or generic.

The following table summarizes other connection options for commerce content. Click a given connector name for more details regarding features, content security type support, and instructions on how to create a source.

Indexing Alternatives
	The Push API is another solution for Commerce indexing, since it gives you full flexibility on what content to index and when. A new or updated product is searchable in a few minutes, without having to wait for a refresh schedule. You can push content from any system, including, but not limited to, a commerce platform, a product information management (PIM) system, a static database, etc.
	Use the Database Connector if you prefer to index the underlying database of your commerce system or PIM system directly. The database connector allows for incremental refreshes, which can run every few minutes. The Database connector also uses the Coveo On-Premises Crawling Module, which can be installed behind your firewall to avoid having to create firewall rules for Coveo.
	Use the Generic REST API to get content from a remote repository exposing its data through a REST API. The Generic REST API source runs on a schedule, so expect some delays between new content added/updated and the availability in the search.
	Use the Sitemap Connector for simple catalogs where all product data is available online and properly discoverable through a Sitemap file or index file. The Sitemap source runs on a schedule, so expect some delays between new content added/updated and the availability in the search.
	Use the Website Connector for simple catalogs where all product data is available online. The Web source runs on a schedule, so expect some delays between new content added/updated and the availability in the search.

Indexing Alternatives

The Push API is another solution for Commerce indexing, since it gives you full flexibility on what content to index and when. A new or updated product is searchable in a few minutes, without having to wait for a refresh schedule. You can push content from any system, including, but not limited to, a commerce platform, a product information management (PIM) system, a static database, etc.

Use the Database Connector if you prefer to index the underlying database of your commerce system or PIM system directly. The database connector allows for incremental refreshes, which can run every few minutes. The Database connector also uses the Coveo On-Premises Crawling Module, which can be installed behind your firewall to avoid having to create firewall rules for Coveo.

Use the Generic REST API to get content from a remote repository exposing its data through a REST API. The Generic REST API source runs on a schedule, so expect some delays between new content added/updated and the availability in the search.

Use the Sitemap Connector for simple catalogs where all product data is available online and properly discoverable through a Sitemap file or index file. The Sitemap source runs on a schedule, so expect some delays between new content added/updated and the availability in the search.

Use the Website Connector for simple catalogs where all product data is available online. The Web source runs on a schedule, so expect some delays between new content added/updated and the availability in the search.

Create a Catalog

Once you have the data in the index, a Coveo commerce catalog will define the structure of your commerce-related items. In other words, it establishes the relationship between the items you’ve indexed in the previous step by identifying which items are products, variants, and availability channels (see Create a Coveo Commerce Catalog). Creating a commerce catalog is a requirement for Product Embeddings and Vectors, as well as analyzing usage data through advanced commerce reporting.

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