Use of External ID Product Property

[JasonF]

Hi All,

Thinking of using the External ID product property in uStore to capture a value for internal purposes, but wanted to confirm it's actual purpose.

From what I have read, it's meant to be used for custom integration with external/secondary database to link the product.

Is that a fair summary??

Thanks in advance for your comments.

[west-digital.fr]

I think that the ExternalID was more designed by XMPie, to make data exchange easier, between uStore and a 3rd party application.

Indeed, most entities in uStore may have their counterpart in 3rd party applications (a store, a user, a product, a product property, etc.) but the ID of these entities may differ, between uStore and the 3rd party application.

Per instance: the ID of the uStore product "Letterhead" is 123 (you cannot chose this, as it's automatically calculated by the SQL database), which does not mean nothing in your MIS, where the very same product is identified by "LH999". Assigning "LH999" to the ExternalID field of uStore product 123 will let XMPie export this information in any XML document, that the MIS can process.

That being said, if no 3rd party application does exist in your context, you are certainly free to use the uStore ExternalID field for any other purpose.

west-digital.fr

[markb]

We use both the store level and product level external ids for integration to our MIS system via uStore XML output trigger. We put the MIS system's customer id in the store level ustore external id and the MIS product SKU code in the product level ustore external id. The integration uses the external id values to route to the right customer and product templates in MIS...