What is SAP Commerce Cloud v2?
SAP Commerce Cloud v2 is a robust cloud-based eCommerce platform that is well established with over 3000 customers. SAP Commerce Cloud v2 is a highly customizable solution where a customer can create a storefront, or several storefronts, aligned to their branding standards. For the purchaser, a curated storefront is presented based on that purchaser’s unique interests and buying history.
A few key features included out of the box:
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The ability to apply global and multiple pricing options per course.
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Several payment providers beyond just PayPal and Stripe
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Integrations with Avalara and Vertex for tax calculations
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Robust categorization of courses and products
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Personalization by presenting recommended courses and creating on-the-fly bundles based on the purchaser’s interests and buying history.
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Advance marketing features like promotions and coupons, SEO, Google Analytics
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Bulk Course purchase for a group of learners
SAP Commerce Cloud v2 is for that Litmos Training customer that wants a feature rich eCommerce platform that is highly customizable to the customer’s unique brand to sell their courses to customers and partners.
Do you have an SAP Commerce Cloud v2 Account?
Before you can setup the integration in your Litmos Training instance, you need the following:
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You need an active SAP Commerce Cloud v2 account, version 2005 or higher instance.
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The account does not need to be live; you just need an active account.
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NOTE: The integration does not work with the on-premise version of the eCommerce solution.
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Within your SAP Commerce Cloud v2 account:
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You will need to ensure that the Integration API is enabled as this will be used to sync data between Litmos Training and SAP Commerce Cloud v2.
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You will need to create a catalog that you will use for your storefront where you will sell the Litmos Training courses.
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The catalog should have the following versions created:
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Staged version
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This is where Litmos Training courses will be pushed for review and then promotion to the “Online” version of the catalog.
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Online version
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This is the live version of the catalog that is presented in the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 storefront where learners can go to purchase courses.
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Once these items are confirmed to be in place, then you can navigate to your Litmos Training instance to complete the setup.
Enable the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 Integration
To enable the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 integration, an Account Owner can navigate to Account Settings -> Integrations and click on the “Commerce Cloud v2” integration icon.
When this is clicked, a new window will pop-up which contains 2 tabs:
Tab 1: Settings
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To enable the integration, the Account Owner will need to check the “Enabled Commerce Cloud v2”.
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Once this is enabled, the Account Owner will input:
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The subdomain for the API to their SAP Commerce Cloud v2 instance – example: litmos.usdemo
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As of 2102 release, BASIC is used for login credentials to the customer’s SAP Commerce Cloud v2 Integration API so you will need an SAP Commerce Cloud v2 user account (Login / Password) with Integration API permissions.
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This SAP Commerce Cloud v2 HELP ARTICLE will walk you through how to setup a user with the appropriate permissions to the Integration API.
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Name of the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 catalog that Litmos Training courses will be pushed to – example: electronicsProductCatalog .
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As mentioned above, a “Staged” version of this catalog must exist as Litmos Training courses will be pushed to the “Staged” version for review before promotion to the “Online” version of the catalog.
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Once these details have been added, the “Test connection” button can be clicked to confirm the Litmos Training instance can connect to the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 instance.
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To enable the push of course data to the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 instance, the Account Owner will need to check the “Sync Courses…” checkbox.
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Courses are pushed on an hourly schedule.
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The “Last Sync” field displays the last time the automated push started.
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For pulling order data from the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 instance, the Account Owner will need to check the “Pull CCv2 Orders…” checkbox.
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All SAP Commerce Cloud v2 orders are pulled by Litmos Training for analysis and processing.
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Order data is pulled every 15 minutes.
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The “Last Pull” field displays the last time the automated pull order data process started.
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Tab 2: History
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The History tab contains a running log of actions, Course Push or Order Pull
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Every time a push or pull occurs, a log record is created and displayed within the History grid.
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The History grid displays the data showing most recent push/pull to oldest push/pull records.
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The History grid displays the last 30-days of history.
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The History grid contains basic details of each push/pull process.
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If a push or pull is successful, only the summary data will appear in the History grid.
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If an error occurs on an individual record, data regarding the error, including the course code, is returned and added to the History grid for troubleshooting by the Account Owner.
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Push of Litmos Training Courses to SAP Commerce Cloud v2
The following highlights the specifics of the push of Litmos Training courses to the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 instance outlined on the integration setup page.
Course Requirements to be eligible for inclusion in the hourly push to SAP Commerce Cloud v2:
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No session modules
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No prerequisites
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No approval flow
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“I want to sell this course” checked
If an Litmos Training course is deleted, deactivated, or the “I want to sell this course” field is set to false after being true, an immediate course push is triggered for the specific course so that this course is no longer available for purchase in the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 storefront (more details on this process below).
Below outlines the Litmos Training course fields that are aligned to the fields of an SAP Commerce Cloud v2 product:
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On Litmos Training side, found within the Course → Settings tab, the following course fields are used when adding or updating a product within the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 instance.
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I WANT TO SELL THIS COURSE = TRUE
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This is the trigger to determine if a course should be included in the push process.
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If this field is FALSE, it will NOT be included.
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Course Title
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Course Code
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This field is used to link the course with the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 product.
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Ecommerce Brief Description
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Ecommerce Full Description
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On SAP Commerce Cloud v2 side, found within the “Product Cockpit”, the Litmos Training course data is used to update the following fields found on the Product → Properties tab.
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Article Number
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This field is used to link the product with the Litmos Training course.
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Identifier
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Catalog Version
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Defaulted to “Staged”
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The course push will always add or update the product in the “Staged” version of SAP Commerce Cloud v2 catalog.
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An SAP Commerce Cloud v2 administrator will promote the product to the “Online” catalog within their SAP Commerce Cloud v2 instance.
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Approval
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Defaulted to “Check”
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The course push will always add or update the product with an approval status of “Check”.
An SAP Commerce Cloud v2 administrator will promote the product to an approval status of “Approved” when the product is ready to appear in the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 storefront.
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If an Litmos Training course is deleted, deactivated, or the “I want to sell this course” field is set to false after being true, the approval status field is updated to “Unapproved” so that the product no longer appears in the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 storefront.
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Validity Period -> Online To
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If an Litmos Training course is deleted, deactivated, or the “I want to sell this course” field is set to false after being true, this field is set to the current date so that the product no longer appears in the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 storefront.
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Description
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Summary
Further to the above, the below table will highlight the Litmos Training course fields, and the aligning SAP Commerce Cloud v2 product fields that are included in the course push process.
The following highlights the Litmos Training course push process that runs on an hourly basis:
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The “Last Sync” field found on the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 integration setup page is used to find courses that have been updated since that last sync date.
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During the course push process:
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If the course does NOT exist in the specific SAP Commerce Cloud v2 catalog, then the course will be created as a new product.
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If the course does exist in the specific SAP Commerce Cloud v2 catalog, then the fields highlighted above will update the matching fields on the product.
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Once the process has completed or ended in error, a record is added to the History grid found on the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 Integration History tab.
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The “Last Sync” field found on the Commerce Cloud v2 Integration Settings tab is then updated with the date / time of when the course push process started.
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Each course is created as a product in the “Staged” version of the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 catalog, in “check” approval status so that an SAP Commerce Cloud v2 product manager can apply remaining marketing, media, categorization, pricing, localization details to each product before marking the product as “approved” and promoting the product to the “Online” catalog which will make the course visible in an SAP Commerce Cloud v2 storefront for sale.
User Experience – Pulling Orders from SAP Commerce Cloud v2
Once the course has been marked “Approved” and promoted to the “Online” version of the catalog in the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 Product Cockpit, the course is then available in the customer’s storefront for purchase. The following highlights the specifics of the 2 unique purchaser experiences that includes the details of the order pull from SAP Commerce Cloud v2 and processing by Litmos Training.
Requirements to be eligible for inclusion in the 15-minute order pull from SAP Commerce Cloud v2:
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The order needs to be marked “Ready”.
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There must be a matching code between the products in the order and the course in SAP Training Litmos.
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Need to have self-sign-up code enabled
User Experience #1: Single Seat Purchase
The following highlights the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 checkout process, where a single seat (quantity = 1) is purchased, and the purchaser is the external learner that is assigned to the course in Litmos Training.
Step 1: Purchaser adds courses to their shopping cart and moves through the checkout process.
Step 2: Purchaser clicks the “Place Order” button as part of the checkout, which will perform transactional tasks. Upon completion of these tasks, the purchaser is directed to a confirmation page, which is at the point that this order is marked “Ready” to be picked up by the Litmos Training order pull process.
Step 3: Once the order has been picked up by the Litmos Training data pull, a process will run where the Litmos Training API is utilized to assign the purchaser to the courses that were included in the order.
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First step of the process is to pull order details since the last time the order pull process ran.
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Using the purchasers email address, the Litmos Training “User” API is called to see if the purchaser already exists in the Litmos Training instance.
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If no, then the purchaser info (first name, last name, email address) will be used to create a new user, storing the newly created UserId for the next steps.
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If yes, then the UserId will be returned and stored for the next steps.
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The following is the process for course assignment:
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Using the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 product “Article Number” for products included in the order, the Litmos Training “Course Assign” API is used to find the matching Litmos Training course “Course Code”.
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If a match is found, using the stored UserId, the purchaser is assigned to the course in the Litmos Training instance.
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If a match is not found, then the product in the order is considered to not be a course and is skipped.
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Upon course assignment, the purchaser will receive a course assignment email with information on how to access the course included in the order (this is standard Litmos Training course assignment functionality).
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This process will loop for all products included in this order.
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Once the Litmos Training order processing has completed or ended in error, a record is added to the History grid for Account Owner review on the Commerce Cloud v2 Integration History tab.
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For each error that occurs during the processing, an individual record is added with details of the error for troubleshooting.
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User Experience #2: Bulk Seat Purchase
The following highlights the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 checkout process, where multiple seats (quantity > 1) are purchased in bulk, and that the purchaser is a manager or procurement person purchasing a course or set of courses on the behalf of a group.
Step 1: Purchaser adds courses to their shopping cart with a quantity > 1 and moves through the checkout process.
Step 2: Purchaser clicks the “Place Order” button as part of the checkout, which will perform transactional tasks. Upon completion of these tasks, the purchaser is directed to a confirmation page, which is at the point that this order is marked “Ready” to be picked up by the Litmos Training order pull process.
Step 3: Once the order has been picked up by the Litmos Training data pull, a process will run where the Litmos Training API is utilized to create a self-sign-up code in the Litmos Training instance to which the courses that were purchased will be assigned to.
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The following is the process for self-sign-up token creation and course assignment:
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First step of the process is to pull order details since the last time the order pull process ran.
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Using the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 product “Article Number” for products included in the order, the Litmos Training “Self-Sign-Up Code Create” API is used to find the matching Litmos Training course “Course Code”.
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If a match is found, a new self-sign-up code is created, and the course is assigned to this code.
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2 new fields have been added to the self-sign-up code page:
“Contact Name” and “Contact Email” which will align to the course bulk purchaser.
All fields on the self-sign-up code page are locked and cannot be updated.
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If a match is not found, then the product in the order is considered to not be a course and is skipped.
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The following highlights the SAP Commerce Cloud v2 order fields and how they are used when creating a self-sign-up code in the Litmos Training instance.
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After the code has been created, the “New Token Created” email is triggered and sent to the self-sign-up code contact.
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This is a new email template that has been added as part of this integration and available to be customized.
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This process will loop for all products included in this order.
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Self-sign-up codes are a one-to-one association so if 5 courses are included in a single SAP Commerce Cloud v2 order, then a self-sign-up code is created for each course, which means 5 self-sign-up code emails are sent to the purchaser.
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Once the Litmos Training order processing has completed or ended in error, a record is added to the History grid for Account Owner review on the Commerce Cloud v2 Integration History tab.
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For each error that occurs during the processing, an individual record is added with details of the error for troubleshooting.
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Step 4: The purchaser receives the new self-sign-up code emails and distributes the code and redemption URL information to the appropriate group(s) for self-sign up to the courses purchased.