Webshop, PIM and Uniconta integration in one solution

The core platform

The standard integration with Uniconta, the data mirror and user management with single sign-on and two-factor login.

Applications

Chainbox PIM (where you enrich your products with copy, images and data that don't belong in Uniconta) and Sales Insight. They're shared by all customers and updated continuously.

The webshop

Chainbox Webshop on Umbraco CMS. It runs as a separate, dedicated instance just for you, which is why it can be customised.

It's standard software. If you run the standard version, the webshop is updated automatically. If you have it customised, it's still the same standard software, and it comes with an update agreement that brings your solution up to the latest version 4 times a year.

Hosting and maintenance

You buy licences for one complete solution, which we host and run for you. We take care of hosting in the EU, monitoring and ongoing updates. The solution runs on our side, but the data is always yours.

B2B, B2C or both

The webshop is set up around who you sell to: an open catalogue with checkout, open without checkout, or login only. Product views, prices, variants and add to basket are controlled with settings, so you don't need to be technical.

Customer-specific pricing

Prices are calculated from the price structure in Uniconta. For a logged-in visitor linked to a customer account, the webshop calculates the price from the customer and the item, and every combination of price, price list and discount is covered by the standard integration. The price is checked again when the order is transferred.

If people can buy without logging in, you set up a default customer number from Uniconta in the webshop. That customer's setup controls the prices for everyone who isn't logged in.

Customer login and self-service

Create logins and link them to customer accounts, so customers buy at their own prices. In the customer area they have favourite lists, open and past orders and invoices, including those created in Uniconta through other channels. Orders from logged-in customers are created as sales orders on the right customer account, exactly as if they'd been keyed into Uniconta.

The customer's purchase history from Uniconta

If a customer has so far bought through a sales rep or over the phone, those items are already on the list of the customer's most-bought products and can be reordered the first time the customer logs in.

The list is based on invoices and credit notes from Uniconta for the current year and the previous 2 years.

The webshop as a sales rep tool

Your order desk staff and field sales reps can get a sales rep login with extended access. With it they switch between customers from Uniconta and place orders on the customer's behalf. It's also where they introduce new customers to the webshop.

Multiple languages, markets and sites

Several shops, languages or countries can run in the same solution, or you can have several installations sharing the same PIM. Product copy can be translated into as many languages as you like, and fields marked for translation can be machine-translated as a first draft.

Product lists right in your content

With a set of extensions to Umbraco, you set up product lists based on filters and place them wherever you like in your content. The lists update themselves as new items are added and old ones are discontinued.

Guides and brand pages linked to products

Build guides, brand pages, size guides or other content, and link it to products directly or via category, brand or tags. The content is then shown automatically on the product pages it belongs to.

Categories maintain themselves

Categories without active items aren't shown. When the last item in a category is discontinued, the category disappears on its own.

In PIM you can build one or more category hierarchies and choose which parts the webshop shows.

Large product ranges and variants

Our Uniconta integration currently handles master data sets with more than 100,000 products in both PIM and webshop. The solution is built for catalogues like that, whether there are few categories with many variants or thousands of items in a deep category hierarchy.

Product data in PIM

In PIM you can bulk-update precise selections of your product range and extend the product model with your own fields. Views, filters and forms adapt to the way you work with your products, and changes show up quickly on the webshop.

Customer-specific product ranges

Control which items each customer or customer type can see and buy, such as products that require a certification or may only be sold in certain markets. The rules are set up directly in the solution.

Search and filters

Free-text search finds products, categories and content, even when the customer misspells something. On the product lists you choose which filters customers can use, and filters without values are hidden automatically.

Synonyms and filters at every level

Set up synonyms and keywords, so search also finds products by the words your customers use.

Filters can also be controlled per level in the category hierarchy and for the product lists you've added to your content.

Related and popular products

Accessories, replacements and related items are set up in PIM. On top of that, we continuously work out from your Uniconta invoicing which items are popular and which are bought together. This is used to show popular and related items on category and product pages.

Feeds for ads

The webshop keeps your Google Merchant feed up to date for product ads, and you decide how often it's generated and where it's stored.

Punch-out for large customers

Many larger companies and public organisations buy through their own procurement system. With punch-out (OCI 3, 4 and 5 and cXML), the webshop connects directly to it, so the customer can find your products and send the basket back for approval in their own system.

Ongoing updates

New features are rolled out to everyone. Standard solutions are updated automatically, and solutions we've customised have an update agreement with 4 updates a year. See more in the questions at the bottom.

Price lists that inherit from each other

In Uniconta, one price list can build on another, with both prices and discounts. We transfer all price lists and price list lines and calculate the whole chain in the webshop.

When the order is transferred, we compare the webshop's price with Uniconta's. If they differ, the order is flagged for manual handling.

Why we mirror data

A Uniconta API user has 5,000 calls a day, or 75,000 with extended server calls. After that, the user is slowed down. If the webshop looked things up in Uniconta every time a customer clicked, a webshop with many products would hit the ceiling fast.

So the webshop works from the data mirror. Uniconta isn't put under load, and the webshop can keep selling if Uniconta is down.

If Uniconta's API is unavailable

Uniconta is very stable, but now and then, often around major version rollouts, the API can have outages.

In practice, a short or long outage on Uniconta's API makes no difference to our solution. Orders placed in the webshop wait in a queue and are transferred when Uniconta is back.

If the data transfer from Uniconta to our environment fails or times out, we have a battle-tested setup where transfer jobs are automatically retried in 2 rounds before they end up in an error queue and our operations team is notified. Since we've run the integration since 2017, we have set playbooks for the typical failures: the API is down, an order is stuck, or an API user has expired, has reached the limit for concurrent sessions or has been throttled.

Duplicates and invalid data

After an outage, duplicates can occur, such as two orders with the same number. Invisible characters in item numbers and customer numbers also happen. In those cases our jobs stop and send a notification, and you or your Uniconta partner fix it at the source in Uniconta.

Which items and customers are included

When we install the integration, and as part of the automatic standard setup, a set of webhooks is maintained automatically so master data is transferred to our platform as it's changed in Uniconta. Fields are also added in Uniconta so you can limit which items and customers go online (by default, everything is transferred).

Your own fields and tables in Uniconta can also be included in the mirror. We set those up through configuration.

Stock and delivery date

We transfer total stock and stock per location, and you choose in PIM which figure the webshop shows. For items on their way through a purchase order, the webshop can show the expected delivery date.

The webshop can also be customised to check stock directly in Uniconta when the customer adds an item to the basket.

You and your Uniconta partner

• Create an API user for us.
• Handle setup and order flow in Uniconta as usual.
• Manage user permissions for your own staff on the platform.

We don't make customisations in Uniconta (apart from the standard setup of webhooks and fields) and don't provide support for Uniconta. Your partner does that.

Us

• The integration, the data mirror and monitoring.
• Making sure prices in the webshop match Uniconta.
• Data mapping, so the webshop works. You can add extensions yourselves in PIM.
• Hosting and maintenance of PIM, webshop and platform.