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Naming conventions

When working with product data in Bizzkit PIM, it's a good idea to agree on a naming convention for the entities that form the data model. This will help you and your organization to keep the data model consistent. In addition to that, a good naming convention makes it easier to work with the data in PIM as well.

Unique Name on products

All products in Bizzkit PIM have a Unique Name, which is the identifier for the product. As the name suggests, the Unique Name is unique for a single product in the entire product catalog.

Format

Important

Bizzkit PIM currently doesn't restrict the format of Unique Name. In order to avoid having to migrate all products at a later stage, it is strongly recommended to follow the format outlined below for the Unique Name of all products.

The recommended format to use for a product's Unique Name is as follows:

  • Use the following characters: A-Z and 0-9
  • Use _ as a separator
  • Make the first character either A-Z or _
  • Limit the length to a maximum of 200 characters

Recommendations

Important

Using an identifier from a third party system (for example an ERP system) as the product Unique Name in PIM is considered bad practice and should be avoided. PIM provides the External ID field for storing this type of information, see External ID for more information.

Depending on how your organization works with product data, there are several considerations to be made when defining what the Unique Name for products should consist of. From the perspective of handling PIM data, the following recommendations should be considered:

  • Use a Unique Name which exists and is unique for the product's entire lifecycle, to make sure the Unique Name in PIM doesn't change at any time.
  • Prefix the Unique Name with a short text that indicates the main product type. For example:
    • P_346823 for a regular product with number 346823
    • _4000001234567 for a product with EAN 4000001234567
  • Make the product's Unique Name easy to identify and search on, for example by including an EAN or other product number.

Tip

Please note that using full numeric values as Unique Name (for example just an EAN code without prefix), could lead to unexpected behaviour when opening an export file in Excel or other external tools.

System Name

All other entities than products in Bizzkit PIM have a System Name. This is a unique identifier within the entity group it exists in. For example: an attribute and a global list both can be called COLORS at the same time, but only one attribute or global list with name COLORS can be present in the system.

Format

The System Name for an entity must follow these rules:

  • Consists of the following characters: A-Z, 0-9 and _
  • Has a maximum length of 200 characters
  • Starts with a character which is either A-Z or _
  • Is unique within the entity group (for example attributes/global lists)

Recommendations

General

  • Use the same language for all System Name values in the entire PIM data model.

Used on attributes

  • Use singular or plural form depending on whether an attribute is single-valued or multi-valued. For example:
    • COLORS for an attribute that represents multiple colors on a product
    • MATERIAL for an attribute that represents a single material on a product
  • Use a descriptive name for attributes containing multiple fields. For example:
    • IMAGE_WITH_CAPTION for an attribute with a field called IMAGE and another field called CAPTION
  • Prefix attributes specific for a certain product type or category with the name of that product type or category so they're easily grouped in the attribute list.

Used on global lists

  • Use the plural form for naming global lists, as these contain multiple values.
  • Use a generic name so that the global list can easily be reused across different attributes. For example:
    • A global list named MATERIALS can be used by an attribute that expresses the material of a product, as well as an attribute that explains on what type of material the product should be applied (such as screws, paint, etc.).