Digital Commerce

Digital Commerce is a cloud-based solution that enables high-volume browsing and configuration of product offers on digital self-service channels. Digital Commerce is industry-specific and works with Salesforce Industries Communications, Media, and Energy verticals to provide a catalog-driven, unified commerce solution.

The Digital Commerce solution provides for both anonymous and known user scenarios and is applicable (but not limited to) self-service channel scenarios. Digital Commerce is fully integrated with ancillary Salesforce products such as CLM, Order Management, and CPQ for call-center agents.

Digital Commerce implements both a Digital Commerce tier and on-platform caching, which provide advanced order-capture and guided-selling capabilities. These capabilities offer best-fit products and services to customers with the ability to scale with demand together with speed and reliability.

Digital Commerce offers the following:

  • A reduced time-to-market through catalog-driven Digital Commerce

  • A compelling UI engagement

  • Improved response times using intelligent caching

  • The ability to manage peak traffic using elastic scaling

  • A reduced load on the Salesforce platform by offloading static calls

Standard Digital Commerce is the next-generation version of the Digital Commerce APIs available in Winter '23. Standard Digital Commerce, like Digital Commerce, is a cloud-based solution that enables high-volume browsing and configuration of product offers on digital self-service channels. Standard Digital Commerce delivers the industries-specific CPQ engine on Salesforce core to improve the performance of Digital Commerce Configure and Basket operations.

Benefits:

  • Improves the performance of the Configure and Basket APIs.

  • Eliminates Basket Cache maintenance overhead.

  • Addresses the need for larger basket combinations.

See Standard Digital Commerce.

The Digital Commerce APIs extend catalog-driven product selection and configuration. These APIs reduce time-to-market, improve response times, and support anonymous browsing and configuration.

Using the Digital Commerce APIs, you can retrieve a list of Products and Promotions along with their details and configuration without the need for a Salesforce Opportunity, Quote, or Order record.

Digital Commerce API Caching allows you to offload static calls from constrained services, accelerate website responsiveness during peak events, and extend the dynamic range of the omnichannel solution.

Digital Commerce APIs also include a Cache Generator that generates the cache to accommodate anticipated high-volume API call activity. The API Response Cache allows you to cache high volume API calls on the Salesforce Platform for on-platform solutions. For additional scalability, Salesforce recommends taking advantage of an off-platform configuration, which allows you to cache high volume API calls on the elastic Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

See Digital Commerce (Cacheable) APIs.

The SDK provides a layer of abstraction between the user interface and the Digital Commerce APIs and was developed using Pure JS UI libraries framework and a platform-agnostic approach. The SDK is extensible and versioned with Node JS Module Delivery.

You use the Digital Commerce Software Development Toolkit (SDK) to improve usability and reduce the effort to deliver a compelling UI. The SDK consolidates common application and business front-end logic to reduce errors by validated API parameters.

Salesforce recommends using the SDK to communicate with the Digital Commerce APIs.

See Digital Commerce SDK Architecture.

Salesforce provides two sets of web components; one set, the Digital Commerce Lightning Web Components, are for use on the Salesforce platform, while the other, the Digital Commerce Web Components, can be leveraged for off-platform use.

  • Digital Commerce Lightning Web Components: Lightning Web Components are fast, lightweight, and reusable. They support every major browser and use the same standards as Salesforce Lightning Web Components. The Digital Commerce Lightning Web Components are for use on the Salesforce platform.

    Digital Commerce Lightning Web Components use JavaScript to extend the HTML element using templates and custom logic. They provide the ability to segment CSS and JavaScript from the main document. Salesforce provides reusable HTML templates and support for Lightning Web Components. See Digital Commerce Lightning Web Components.

  • Digital Commerce Web Components: The Digital Commerce Web Components are fast and lightweight, reusable, and support every major browser. Digital Commerce Web Components can be used either on the Salesforce platform or off-platform.

    Web Components are JavaScript methods that extend HTML elements using templates and custom logic. Web Components provide the ability to segment CSS and JS from the main document. Salesforce provides reusable HTML templates and support for Digital Commerce Web Components. See Digital Commerce Web Components.

The Cache Management system reduces the time it takes to generate the cache in the event of Product Model changes. The Cache Management system supports updates to the on-platform cache and the Digital Commerce Tier cache.

The Cache Manager offers the ability to generate the cache for one or more specific catalogs. Cache Management also provides support for REST API and JavaScript Remote actions for Cache Regeneration.

See Digital Commerce API Caching, Populate Cache Batch Process, and Preparing Digital Commerce API Caching.