Partner Commerce is the activity of electronically buying or selling products on online services or over the Internet. Partner Commerce can be used as a standalone web app or a mobile application. It can also be used to conduct social commerce. It enables consumers to shop from their homes and offices, and even on the move.

As an administrator, you can use CPQ to perform configuration and pricing tasks to build the catalog page for your e-commerce website. Configuration involves creating products, options, attributes, categories and associating them appropriately with each other for visibility on the Catalog page. A product can be created as a standalone product or as a bundle product with options and attributes. You can control the selection of a product on the catalog page by configuring constraint rules. You can also control the selection of attributes on the configuration page of a product by setting up an attribute-based configuration for that product. Pricing enables you to set up pricing structures for the products so that the price for all products is calculated accurately. Pricing has two components: Price Lists and Price List Items. A price list controls the visibility of products to the user. A price list contains several price list items, each linked to a product. CPQ calculates the price for each product based on the applied price list, price list items, and various pricing and discounting rules. 

After you have used CPQ to configure products and pricing, you can associate the price list to the storefront object within the Digital Commerce package. After your catalog has been set up, the next step is to create a Storefront record. The storefront object is very basic and contains only two fields to map a storefront to a price list and logo for the guest user. The price list refers to the price list you want the guest user to access and the logo must be an ID or a URL of the logo attachment for the store. The storefront record also has a banner related list that can be used to set up banners for the jumbotron component in the reference template.

You can define the asset management functions with different data objects to track quote details until an order is fulfilled. You can set up multi-language websites. You can apply promotions, make secure payments, and calculate tax on your cart page. 

Partner Commerce allows an administrator to perform the following administrative tasks:

  • Set up and activate communities
  • Install Partner Commerce Package and dependent packages 
  • Post deployment community setup
  • Assign Partner Commerce permission set
  • Create a custom field on account for the price list
  • Set up single and multiple stores
  • Payment integration using Cybersource Payment
  • Tax integration with Avalara tax engine
  • Set up a multi-language storefront using translations
  • Set email notification template for the checkout
  • Enable state and country picklists
  • Add a storefront record
  • Add storefront promotional banners and associate them with the storefront record
  • Clone and install the reference template
  • Configure templates
  • Set up the local development environment
  • Server Deployment
  • Customize your application
    • Customize HTML content and standard components
    • Add custom fields on object models
    • Add custom attributes to a product
    • Customize logic in the services
    • Customize the template page with a custom field
    • Optimize Search Engine

Partner Commerce allows a partner-user to perform the following tasks:

  • General Administration
    • Assign permission sets for user access
    • Set up Master Data
  • Browse the product catalog
  • Search products and view product details
  • Add products to the cart
  • Manage assets
  • Manage orders
  • Configure products with options and attributes
  • Apply promotions on the products in the shopping cart
  • Manage cart
    • Request a quote
    • Manage payments
    • View tax details
    • Working with multi-languages storefront
    • Checkout of the cart
  • Manage product configuration rules - Constraint Rules and Attribute-based configuration rules. 

    The product configuration rules are not in complete parity with CPQ at present. Refer to Product Configuration for supported capabilities in Partner Commerce.

The differences in feature and capability support in Partner Commerce in comparison with CPQ are listed below:

  • For Product Attribute Rules, the scope must be Product and Product Family. The permitted values for Partner Commerce are:
    • Allow
    • Default
    • Hidden
    • Disabled
    • Required
    • Reset
  • For the Attribute Value Matrix, the scope must be Product and Product Family. The permitted values for Partner Commerce are: 
    • Default
    • Constraint
    • Force Set
  • Options Configuration - The minimum and maximum options configuration works at all levels of option groups. In Partner Commerce, only three levels are supported. Also, the minimum and maximum product quantity and total quantity validation work for all levels of option groups.
  • Constraint Rules - Constraint Rules are supported for standalone, bundle, and option products for basic inclusion, exclusion, and recommendation type rules.
    • On the Product Level, all the rules are applied only when you have selected the Match in Primary checkbox.
    • On the Product Option Level, all the rules are applied only when you have selected the Match in Options checkbox and a combination of the Match in Primary and Match in Options checkboxes.
  • Creating the draft order
  • Generating the draft order document and presenting the same to the end customer
  • Confirming the order

Key Terminology

It is important to understand how terms are used when working with Partner Commerce.

Term

Description

Configure Price Quote (CPQ)Conga solution for configuring products, setting up pricing, and generating quotes. 
Partner CommercePartner Commerce enables your partner company to create quotes, configure products, and manage orders for the end customer to ensure faster selling and up-time without your support.
Product CatalogA view that allows hierarchical categorization of products for users to search through and add to their configuration.

Products

Products or services that can be sold on its own as a standalone item, an option of other products, or as part of a bundled product.

Assets

Assets define a purchased product or service. An asset is associated with an account. After being processed and fulfilled, new quotes and orders result in new assets, which are listed on a customer's account and a line item from an asset becomes an Installed Product.

Constraint Rules

Rules that drive automatic inclusion, exclusion, recommendation, or replacement of products selected in the catalog page. Each Constraint Rule is composed of three parts: the Rule Detail, the Rule Condition, and the Rule Actions.

PromotionsA promotion is a marketing technique that you apply to reduce the list price of a product or a service. You can create such a promotion and restrict the scope, limit, and benefits so your sales representatives apply this promotion to specific products, for specific customers, and for a limited period.
OptionsA product that can be sold along with another product.
AttributesFeatures of a product, such as color, size, weight, and more.
Communities

Conga leverages Salesforce Communities to host your Partner Commerce site providing authentication and hosting features for your storefront. You can create multiple communities within your organization for multiple storefronts.

StorefrontA custom object that is part of the E-Commerce package. The storefront object maps a storefront to a price list and other basic information such as logos, banners, and more.
Reference template/applicationBase template provided by Conga for further development and customization as per your requirement.
Payment integration

Digital Commerce payment integration using Cybersource.

Tax integrationTax integration using Avalara tax engine with the help of a Tax Callback class.
TranslationsIf your org has multiple languages enabled, use Translation Workbench to maintain your translated labels in your org. You can manage translated values for any Salesforce supported language.

Quote

A structured definition of a prospective sale that contains product configurations, pricing, and customer opportunity information.

For more information about terms used with Conga products, see Conga Product Glossary.