Magento 2.1 - Configuring the SkyLink API settings
Version note: Magento 2.1 | Find related articles at the bottom of this page
In order to synchronise Magento 2.1 with Retail Express, you will need to configure the settings for the SkyLink connection tool. The settings can be found at Stores > SkyLink > Configuration.
Click on the section heading below to expand the content.
Your Skylink connection to Retail Express is global, meaning that all web sites will need to connect to the one Retail Express database. By default they will all be configured to the same sales channel, however if you're running multiple web sites, there are instructions further down on how to select individual sales channels for each site.
| Field | Description |
| URL |
This is the URL to connect to the eCommerce API; the link is https://api.retailexpress.com.au/ecommerce?singleWsdl (note this must start with https://). Note: Do not change this value unless advised. |
| Client ID | This is the unique identifier for your database. This can be found within your Retail Express system by navigating to Help & Support > What's my Client ID? |
| Username |
The code for a valid admin user in Retail Express. Open your Retail Express database, and navigate to Staff > Users to view details. Note: We recommend setting up a web-specific user account, which must be an Admin account in Retail Express. This account will be displayed on sales reports as the Sales Person associated with the sale. |
| Password | The password for the user account |
Enter the information as required, and press Save Config to save the changes.
Earlier you would have configured a Sales Channel in Retail Express for your web store. You will just need to enter the corresponding ID into this field, so the web store communicates with the appropriate channel in Retail Express.
Single website:
If you have only one web site within Magento, you will just need to do the following:
- Enter a Sales Channel ID for the default configuration
- Press Save Config to save the changes
Multiple websites:
To configure multiple web sites, refer to the "Website Specific" section below.
The Customer settings can be configured as per below.
| Field | Description |
| Tax Class for New Customer Groups |
If you have different tax classes for your customer, you can specify the default setting to be used as new customer groups are created. By default this is configured to "Retail Customer". Untick the "Use System Value" button to select a new option from the drop-down box. New Customer Tax Classes can be created by setting up a new Tax Rule (Stores > Taxes > Tax Rules). |
| Price Group Type |
In Retail Express there are two types of price groups:
You can select which one of these price groups are calculated for your customers online. While both will synchronise to the web store and appear alongside your pricing, your customers can only belong to one price group type - standard or fixed. If the customer doesn't belong to one of the types selected from here, they will be represented online as belonging to the "General" group. Once customers log into the site, they will see their discounted prices on the various pages accordingly. Note - if the Price Group calculation is modified within Retail Express it will prompt a synchronisation of all products. This is only recommended to be performed at an off-peak time of the web store synchronisation to ensure there is no delay of other relevant information e.g. stock levels. |
| Use Fake Data |
When creating customers through the API of Magento 2, there is a requirement that all address fields are populated before the customer can be created. Depending on your preference, your customers will be controlled in the following manner:
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To control the settings for your products, update them as per the below:
| Field | Description |
| Name Attribute | This method allows you to select which field from Retail Express is used to create the product names online.The available options are Description (the Short Description in Retail Express), or the Custom fields. |
| Name sync strategy | This option allows you to control whether the name is updated every time a product is updated, or if it should only synchronise the first time the product is created. This allows for greater flexibility on the web store front. |
| Regular Price Attribute: |
Magento has two price fields - a regular price and a special price. This allows you to control when discounts are applied and visible on the front-end of the site. You can use this field to select which pricing field from Retail Express should be used for the regular price. Note that there is a pricing hierarchy; for more information on how prices are calculated see the article "Magento - Calculating Product Prices".
|
| Special Price Attribute |
Similar to the Regular Price attribute, this field allows you to select what field is displayed for the special price. If the special price has expired based on the end date in Retail Express this field will still be synchronised across, but only the regular price will be displayed on the front-end. |
| Qty Calculation |
This setting configures whether products that are on a Purchase Order in Retail Express should be included in the quantity calculation or not i.e. you can sell straight from an Order. Setting "Available" will exclude orders, where "Available Plus On Order" will include stock on order. If you choose to enable the "Available Plus On Order" option, we recommend also enabling the ETA date to show the date the order is expected to arrive, so that customers are aware of delivery time frames. See the article on Displaying ETA dates for products for further information. |
| URL Key Attribute fields |
The URL key attributes are used to determine what makes up the URL for the product e.g. www.yourwebsitehere.com/productname. This allows for greater configuration of options for SEO values, and ensuring unique codes for each of your products. Please note that after a product has been created, URL keys will not be adjusted. This means that users can amend these as required if a different format altogether is required. |
| Composite Product Sync Rerun Threshold |
There are various different kinds of products in Magento used by Retail Express: the simple, individual products, and other products made up of these simple products e.g. Configurable Products. We have called these "other" products under a group name of Composite products, meaning that they are one "product" made up of a series of products. When the synchronisation is underway, you can either elect for your composite products to be re-synchronised each time, or if it should be skipped for a certain time period. This allows you to customise your requirements and increase/decrease the speed and efficiency of the synchronisation. During your initial setup and configuration of your site you may wish to leave this as "Never Skip", until you are satisfied you have configured the products appropriately. Once you go live with your web store, you should look at putting in an appropriate time frame so that your synchronisations are much faster, with less data to process. |
Item Fulfilment Method: In Retail Express there are four different methods of Fulfilment:
- Cash and Carry (used at the POS only)
- Home Delivery
- Warehouse Pickup
- Store Pickup
This option allows you to configure what all incoming sales from the web store should be set to by default. Note that with Click & Collect you will be able to override that to represent either Warehouse or Store Pickup appropriately.
The Logging window is used to view the information transferred to the web store from Retail Express as it is synchronising across e.g. Products, Customers etc. The logging window is accessed via Stores > SkyLink > Logging.
Should capture logs: Set this to Yes so that you are able to see the logs in the Logging window
Captured Logs to keep: Depending on how much data you need to review, you can amend this amount here. Note that having too-large a number can affect the speed in loading the logging page.
Should Log Raw API calls to/from Retail Express: this allows you to view details of requests/responses sent to/from Retail Express during a synchronisation. For example, enabling this you would be able to see what product information is synchronised from Retail Express during a product sync.
Note: this will increase the size of your logs significantly, however can be useful when troubleshooting synchronisation issues.
Purging Chance: The rate at which SkyLink will clear old log files.
There are various settings that can be configured independently on each site built into Magento. To access these settings, you will need to do the following:
- From the "Store View" drop-down option in the top-left select your web site (note, if you select the "Store View" these settings won't be visible)
- For the sales channel, if you want it to be specific untick the "Use Default" option to enable the field
- Select your options as required
- Press "Save Config" to save the changes"
Sales Channel: Enter the corresponding ID into this field, so the web store communicates with the appropriate channel in Retail Express.
Once you have updated your settings as required, press Save Config to save the changes.
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