Data Mapping + Mapping Changes
The CrescoData Platform uses two mapping languages:
- CML or Cresco Mapping language, for incoming traffic and
- Mako for outgoing traffic
Every update (product, order, stock) will be mapped via CML when being injected into the platform and mapped via Mako once for each channel the update is being published to.
Every update going through The CrescoData Platform will go via the master format - there is no direct channel to channel mappings. New channels added to The CrescoData Platform can therefore utilise any already connected channels.
For any integrations being done, it is possible to provide data in the CrescoData master format or any of the support formats.
Mappings, both incoming and outgoing, can be overwritten on a per account basis and only for the relevant attributes thereby re-using as much of the core, default behaviour as is possible whilst allowing customisation to the lowest level.
APIs and pages in The CrescoData Management Portal are offered to maintain and test mappings based on sample products or orders.
Account changes
Once an integration is live, changes to the account can be applied in a variety of ways:
- Setting changes
Each channel, as well as The CrescoData Platform, supports a range of settings to determine the behaviour of an integration such as the auto-approval of products or whether products should be published with a unique set of images.
These settings are a combination of channel and The CrescoData Platform supported settings.
Custom settings can also be added to an account to support multiple integration methods for the same channel such as always listing variants as outright products or as variants part of a parent product.
As these changes are pre-agreed and understood, they can be applied via The CrescoData API when activating an account or via The CrescoData management portal where the different settings are available as meta information to allow external UIs to render and customise this behaviour - Mapping changes
For complex changes, or where the change in behaviour has not been translated into a setting, it is possible to customise the mappings themselves.
Mappings can be customised for incoming data (CML) or outgoing data (Mako) overwriting the default mappings for the channel. For CML, it is also possible to only overwrite some of the attributes using the default mappings for all others.
Mappings can be changed, tested and applied via The CrescoData API as well as the CrescoData Management Portal.
For all of the above changes, a history is kept and a comparison tool is made available to allow tracking and reverting changes if these have an undesired outcoming. Historic updates can be republished and rerun to ensure the latest setup is used and applied.
In addition, changes are applied immediately to the real-time feeds being processed allowing immediate modifications to the data and workflows.
Any changes can be applied for all accounts as a default, to a subset of accounts specifically and even for particular records and items such as a single product.
Mappings are done using the CrescoData unified mapping language (CML) which translates data into a Centralised Data Model.
Any rules and features are based on the Centralised Data Model.
With CML, data can be transformed on the fly to split and merge variants into groups, to isolate attributes, and transform their values based on an unlimited number of rules. These rules are based on features made available in CML. Features can easily be added through a standardised interface.