There is almost no maintenance or management you have to do if you use our data services and have a digital connection to our platform, so the only thing you’d need to manage or update might be documentation that does not come from 3rd party certifiers, such as technical data sheets, affidavits, etc.
(1.) PRODUCTS: When you click here, there are a lot of different options. First, notice that you get a catalog view of your own products on the left. You can change the view up top next to the pencil icon from a Split Screen that lets you update information on the right or a Preview that only shows you the list of products. Coming this summer: new tabs will include some other firm standards (for automatic ‘Pre-Check” evaluation) and building rating systems like LEED, WELL, LBC, where you can easily see how your products contribute.
IMPORTANT: if you are using our Data Exchange services – with a direct digital connection from your IT systems to ours, you never ever have to update your products here! They will automatically update whenever your internal IT systems are updated! That includes technical documents, images, details etc. Even better, we have a two-way data flow that shares “live” certification data back to your IT systems so you never have to update your certification data manually ever again. If you do not have internal PIM/PMDS or other IT systems and have provided your product data only in a spreadsheet – then you can quickly and easily update your products here! Either way you win! Now that we can port your data out to anyone else you want – this is especially helpful if you don’t have internal IT systems yet.
(2.) MANAGE DETAILS: Different tabs let you manage different kinds of information. All of the tabs outlined below are automatically filled and updated if you are using our Data Exchange – with the exception of Analytics. That dashboard is your view into designer activity related to your products. NOTE: we are updating this section, so what you see may differ slightly from the image below.
- Details: this is the basic information related to the product. Model, the URL of the product on your website, CSI #, product category and description.
- Specifications: technical information and documentation.
- Images: these can be ‘hero’ images, colors, patterns etc.
- Sustainability: this area shows which certifications we have associated with your products. You can report errors to us here (errors would be coming from the certification sources and do happen from time to time). We can reach out to the certification body to fix whatever the issue is. NOTE: we get certification data directly from the source – you do NOT need to add certifications here yourself.
- Documents: These are additional documents that are not technical – case studies, declarations or 3rd party documents that are not certifications, etc.
- Analytics: This is your window into user activity. This will continue to expand over time. NOTE: our Marketplace & Global Buyer’s Club analytics do not yet show up here and are sent to you from our Marketplace beta site. Later this year, the Marketplace will be integrated into one seamless platform and all the analytics will be in one place.
(3.) ALL PRODUCTS: Click here for view-only access to see our entire catalog with all of the filters that designers see. You’ll notice the big difference between “certifications” and real products. Certification bodies send us all of their data, which is listed for free in the catalog but certifications are NOT products! Some certifications cover a component (carpet backing) while others cover lines or actual, complete products. By using our Data Services, we turn this chaos into great product displays! Shaw Contract, our first Data Services customer, is a good example of what ‘managed’ data looks like, so you can look around and compare to see why data management is so important!
You see the various sidebar filters that you can use to further filter what you see. Wherever the certification body has provided digitized data (and not flat PDFs) you’ll see detailed filters (like C2C in the image below).
For Storefront – please see the next section!
