Item Service: Catalog and Product Information

Before you can begin implementing a shopping cart workflow with Radial Order Management’s APIs, you must create a catalog of items that customer can buy in your store. The item catalog and other product information are managed by the Item Service, which is a set of feeds and API endpoints, including:

The Item Service handles the creation, deletion, and updating of the items in your inventory at the SKU level. There are two ways to get your items into the Radial system:

• Item Master feed: This XML file provides Radial with product information about every SKU in your inventory. It can handle large numbers of SKUs. Most clients use only the Item Master feed.

• Item Service endpoints: This set of REST APIs enables you to manipulate one item at a time or to upload a .csv file of your items. Note: The maximum number of SKUs that you can upload is 1,000.

Item Master Feed

To create a catalog containing large numbers of SKUs, use the Item Master feed. After you upload an XML file to an SFTP directory, Radial middleware reads the file and transforms its data for consumption by Radial Order Management’s subsystems. After the initial load, you can send new items and changes to existing items by updating the Item Master and resending it. You can do this on a set schedule or as needed.

The Item Master file is used in the following types of Radial implementations:

• ROM, including Order Management and Omnichannel
• Store Fulfillment
• ROM Connect, ROM Connect + Inventory, and ROM Connect + Order Brokering
• Dropship Manager

The process of building an item catalog typically includes the following stages:

1. During a discovery session, Radial personnel provide a detailed walkthrough of the Item Master data elements. The meeting should help you understand how to map your store’s data to the elements in the Item Master schema.
2. Radial personnel set up your feed mailbox and give you its location and password.
3. With the guidance of the Item Master feed documentation and schema, you prepare an Item Master test file.
4. You use any SFTP tool to upload the test file to the mailbox.
5. Radial processes the file and contacts you with results – whether it processed successfully, and if any errors occurred.
6. If necessary, you create and upload further iterations of your Item Master test file, until the results are fully successful.

While building your item catalog, be sure to include the specific information needed for tax calculation. For details, see Obtain HTS Tax Codes for Each Product.

Note: You might find it easier to use a subset of your store’s catalog in initial testing. In the test environment, your Item Master file should include a representative sample of data with enough variety to support a range of test cases, but it does not have to include your store’s entire catalog.

For details on and examples of the Item Master feed, refer to Item Master Feed.

Item Service API Endpoints

The following Item Service endpoints enable you to add, delete, or modify a single item in real time. You can use them in conjunction with the Item Master feed or, if you have 1,000 items or fewer in your inventory, you can use them to upload, update, retrieve, and delete your items instead of the Item Master feed.

For details on each endpoint, refer to the following topics:

• Get Item

• Create or Update an Item

• Upload Items in Bulk

• Delete Item