Zedonk Liquor CMS Integration Manual

Octopus Bridge Intro

Octopus Bridge is an application that enables brick & mortar retailers to connect their ERP system with their e-commerce website and online marketplaces.

The flowchart below shows Octopus Bridge linking Zedonk data to online stores and marketplaces. It also shows the item information uploaded from ERP to E-commerce and order quantity pushed back to Zedonk from the e-commerce platform so that the stock can be in Sync.

After you sign-up with Octopus Bridge, you will be given the login details. Login details are your username and Password. You can login to your account at http://gui.octopusbridge.com/octopus

Once you login to Octopus Bridge using your login details, you are automatically redirected to the Product Management tab where you will be able to see all the items uploaded from the ERP.

My Products

When ERP items are uploaded into Octopus Bridge, they show up under ‘My Products’ tab in the Product Management module. This is where a user can further modify the products before they are pushed to an E-commerce platform.

The topmost item or the first item displayed on this page is the last item uploaded from the ERP. Example shown below: The item with Product SKU number ‘7909510673809’ is the last item uploaded from the ERP.

In the product management module, a user can perform the following actions:

1. Advance Search: To view advance search, click on the + button on top right corner of the screen.

2. Push Products to Shopping Cart: To push products to the shopping cart.

3. Select All Pages:This will Select all the products listed under the Product Management module

4. Items Per Page: This will allow selecting the no. of items you want to display per page.

5. Select All Items on the Current Page: Clicking on this checkbox will allow you to select all products on the current page.

6. Edit Product: Click on Product SKU or Product Title to edit product information.

7. Delete Product: To delete a product, click on the checkbox in front of that particular product and click on the “Delete” icon located on the right side of the screen.

8. Archive Product: To archive a product, click on the product(s), you want to archive and click on the delete button below.

9. Select Item(s): To select one or multiple items, click on the checkbox in front of it.

Advance Search

You can search for a specific item with the following search criteria:

• Source Category
• Item SKU
• Item Description
• Item Keyword
• Parent SKU
• Brand
• Marketplace
• Item Status
• Location
• Style
• In stock?
• Supplier
• Date Added
• Price Range
• Stock Level
• Image Status
• Custom Fields
• Store

If Product items are not shown after doing a search, it means that the product item is not yet synced from the ERP. Also, make sure that in searching items, you are using the correct Item SKU or Parent SKU. Example below shows that the item is not yet found in Octopus Bridge.

Edit Product

Clicking on Product SKU or Item Name will redirect you to the ‘Edit product’ page. This is where you can edit products’ information that are linked from the ERP to Octopus Bridge. You can perform the following actions in Edit Product page:

1. Edit Product Name: You can create new product name to be displayed in your E-commerce platform. Make sure to click on the box to prevent over-writing Product Name from the ERP.
2. Create Parent SKU: Make sure to create a Parent SKU for creating matrix items.
3. Create Product Description: If you want to create a new description to be displayed in your E-commerce platform, make sure to check this box to prevent ERP description from over-writing description in your E-commerce platform.
4. Matrix item attributes: If you are creating a matrix item, make sure to input Style Name and Style Value.
5. Upload Product Images: You can upload up to five images per item in Octopus. Make sure to reload page after uploading image/s.

Import Products

If you do have a point-of-sale system or want to quickly edit items by Exporting / Importing multiple items, Import Products is a great option.
1. Click Add New Template to start.
2. Click History to select a file previously uploaded on Octopus Bridge.
3. Click Import New to import a new template after it has been created.

4. Actions:

• Notify– you can type in your email to get notifications if modifications are being made in the file.
• Modify– click to update files.
• Delete– delete existing files from the list.

Add New Template

You can view the past import activities in the channel by clicking on Import History.

1. File Type: Select the File Type from the dropdown.
2. File Name: Type in the name of the file you wish to create.
3. Column Delimiter and Text Qualifier: Use only if file type is a text file.
4. Save file after choosing the file type and the file name.

POS Code Mapping

You can use POS code mapping if you want to map ERP values to octopus bridge values. ERP values are commonly in a coded format. For example,blk. You need to set blk into black which is more understandable for users viewing the website. You can also map multiple values at the same time using a spreadsheet format.

1. POS Code Upload Format: You can download the excel format by clicking on the “POS Code Upload Format” link.

2. Choose File: Once you have made changes in the excel format, select spreadsheet file to upload.

Click on upload after selecting file.

Select Field Name.

3. Replace All Value: Click to replace value after selecting Field Name.

4. Item per Page: Clicking this will create a drop-down box where you can select how many product items to be displayed per page.

5. Search: You can search specific value using the search bar.

6. Channel Value: Edit Channel value here.

Publish Items to Shopping Cart/Marketplace

After you update item information under ‘Edit Item’ page, you can go ahead and publish this item/s to a specific Shopping cart or Marketplace. Please follow the steps below to publish.

1. First you need to select which item/s you want to publish. In the example below shows we are selecting three items.

2. Next, select which Shopping cart or Marketplace you want to publish the item. In the example below we are selecting Shopify as our shopping cart.

3. Then click on the Add icon on the right to publish. Once you are done, items can now be viewed under the Shopify ‘bucket’

Note: Only Shopping carts and Marketplaces that you signed up for, will be shown in My Products page.

Shopping Cart Module

Once you have selected and added your product items to a specific Shopping cart module or Marketplace module ‘bucket’, they will start appearing under the respective bucket. Images are shown below.

Marketplace Tab:-

Shopping Carts tab:-

 

Logs

You will be able to view all the Octopus Bridge activities and errors in the ‘Logs’ tab.

1. You can search logs on a specific date period or search using a keyword in the search tab at the top.
2. You can export logs to a CSV in your local drive.
3. You can view Log details by clicking on the ‘view’ button on the right-hand side of the screen.

Log Details is where you can view the log activities or the error details in the channel.

Generating API Key

A Liquor CMS Key is necessary to connect your Liquor CMS store to Octopus. Please follow the steps below to create an API key.

To get your Liquor CMS API key, login to your liquor CMS admin portal. Go to settings and click on API clients. Copy the API Key from here and paste in Liquor CMS API Key field.

 

Connecting Octopus to Liquor CMS

1. Go to https://gui.octopusbridge.com/octopus
2. Login using user octopus account credentials.
3. Once you have logged in, go to shopping carts/Liquor CMS.

4. Click on settings and enter the following information:

1. Liquor CMS API Key: Enter your Liquor CMS API key here
2. Liquor CMS Base URL: Enter your Liquor CMS store URL

3. Enable Pass-through: When setting up the configuration for the first time, this option should be set to No.

1. Setting No, means that any items uploaded from the POS to Octopus will remain at Channel level. These items will not be pushed to your Liquor CMS platform unless it is done manually. This is the recommended setting while configuring the system for the first time.
2. You also may set this to No if you have set up your POS to upload All items into Octopus, but you do not want to send All items, automatically, to your eCommerce platform. Setting this to No gives you the opportunity to make items web ready before publishing them to your website.
3. Once you set it to Yes, any items uploaded from the POS will automatically be pushed to your Liquor CMS platform. This is recommended only when the settings have been fully configured and tested.

4. Sync Status: Select Enable

Liquor CMS Product Module

In Product Management, when an Item is selected to be published to an eCommerce platform, it is first sent to the specific Shopping Cart Module (SCM). SCM for each supported shopping cart, including marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, gives users the ability to define shopping cart specific rules.

These rules may vary based on the eCommerce platform that you are using. For example, Items being sent to Liquor CMS may have a different Product Name, Prices, and Quantity as compared to items being sent to eBay.

Whereas ‘Product Management’ module shows all the products uploaded from the POS, Liquor CMS Product module shows only those items that are actively synchronizing with Liquor CMS.

1. Hover your mouse to the Shopping Carts tab
2. Select Liquor CMS under the dropdown menu
3. Click on Liquor CMS products

 

All Liquor CMS Products

1. This screen shows items that have been enabled to sync with Liquor CMS and should already be in sync. To manually publish items to Liquor CMS, Select All Pages and Publish.
2. You can also use Check Boxes to select a specific item to publish.
3. Product SKU: The dot is an indicator if a product is successfully synchronizing with the website. Green means successfully added, while red means it is not successfully synced. If Red, you can use the Log files to troubleshoot.
4. Liquor CMS ID: When an item has been successfully set up to sync with Liquor CMS, it shows its Liquor CMS ID. If an ID is missing, it means the item is not yet synced with Liquor CMS.
5. Add Product to Liquor CMS: This button allows you to add products to an Liquor CMS website.
6. Search tab: This tab allows you to search for a specific item by entering the product SKU or keyword.
7. Item per Page: Clicking this will create a drop-down box where you can select how many product items to be displayed per page.

Download Brands

If you intend to use Brands on your website, you need to create them in Liquor CMS and download them into Octopus. Click on the Download Brands button to start downloading. Once Brands are downloaded in Octopus, they will show in the Map Brands section.

 

Map Brands

This option allows to ‘map’ POS Brand structure to Liquor CMS Brands so that POS brand labels are placed in the right item when loaded into Liquor CMS platform.

1. The left-hand side shows the POS Brand structure.
2. Downloaded website brands from Liquor CMS platform are shown on the right-hand side with a drop-down box.
3. The drop-down menu shows mapped and unmapped brands. To map additional brands, click unmapped Brands from the drop-down menu, then select which brand to map.

Download Categories

In order to make sure products are displayed in the correct product category in Liquor CMS, make sure to create your Department & Category structure in Liquor CMS first. Once created, you can Download Category structure into the Channel.

To download Liquor CMS Category:

1. First you need to click on the Download Category tab
2. Then click on the ‘Download’ button
3. Once you download categories it will show how many categories that are downloaded successfully.

Note: Always download categories to update Octopus every time you create/update a new category in Liquor CMS

 

Map Categories

When items are uploaded from a POS into Octopus, they are uploaded with POS Department & Category structure. At the Octopus level, it’s called Source Categories.

POS Category structure may or may not be the same as Liquor CMS Category structure. This option allows to ‘map’ POS category structure with Liquor CMS categories so that POS items are placed in the right category.

1. The left-hand side shows the POS category structure.
2. Department & Categories downloaded from Liquor CMS are shown on the right-hand side with a drop-down box.
3. The drop-down menu shows mapped and unmapped categories. To map additional categories, click unmapped categories from the drop-down menu, then select which category to map.

Map Product Attributes

Merchants using various POS systems may use any of the fields within a POS while creating items.

1. Map Fields option allows a merchant to map Liquor CMS product fields with their own POS product fields.
2. For example, Liquor CMS website Product Name (Title) can be mapped with any of the POS data fields provided in the pull-down menu.
3. This also provides an option DO NOT UPDATE to not send certain POS data to Liquor CMS website.
4. Some fields, such as, SKU and Quantity are mandatory and are automatically updated in the website.
5. The left-hand side shows the Liquor CMS fields. The right-hand side shows the POS fields

Note: 

1. Sync Brands should be set to No in case of Liquor CMS websites.
2. Sync Brands should be set to Yes in case of a CMS Max website.
3. Sync Category should be set to No in case of Liquor CMS websites.
4. Sync Category should be set to Draft in case of CMS Max websites.

Liquor CMS Custom Rules

Under Custom Rules, Merchant can set various rules before publishing the product data into online store.

1. Custom Title: The Product Name can be edited and made Search Engine friendly.
2. Stock Rule: The quantity inserted in the box will be reduced from the Product Management stock. For example: In Product Management, if total quantity of an item is 50 and you inserted 10 in the ‘Enter Value’ field; in Liquor CMS, the quantity of the item will be shown as 40.
3. Out of Stock Rule: Select the Checkbox if you want to delete products from Online Store when stock reaches at ‘Zero’.
4. Product Status: Select the Checkbox, if you want to post your product into Liquor CMS as ‘Draft’.
5. Order Inclusive Tax: Select if you are posting product prices with tax included.
6. Order Tax After Discount: select if you are including tax in your prices.

Note: Please note that the Rule(s) set here will be applied to all the products being uploaded from Channel to Liquor CMS.

7. Post all products as simple: If you want to post matrix items as standard items.
8. Least priced item as config: Select if you want to display item/s with the lowest price.
9. Special Price Rule: You can select either a specific sale date or set a sale price.

Liquor CMS Age Restriction Mapping

Age Restriction mapping is used to select product categories which should only be sold to customer Aged 21 or more. To select the categories, click on the category multi-select dropdown and check the categories to which you want to apply the age restriction.

Once selected, click on the Save button.