Migration to Magento 2 & ERP Integration for Blaha Gartenmöbel

Import Module Development

Blaha sent us an example of an export file from their ERP system. The data included the product name, price, quantity in stock and product attributes. In Blaha’s online shop, all products have 1 attribute called “Variant”. The properties of this attribute are different for each product: some products have a color, others have a material, etc.

Based on the file’s structure and the properties of the attributes, the BelVG developers configured the synchronization of the products in the online shop with the ERP system. After that we configured the automatic import. The module runs once a day and updates the information on the product pages when it is updated in the ERP system. If required, it is possible to set the module to update the information more frequently or launch an update manually.

Module adjustment for automatic upload of images and videos

The Blaha managers used to manually add the images and videos to every new product. It was necessary to automate this process. For this purpose, our team added the following changes to the import module mentioned above:

• Images are imported from a separate media database in Magento. The images are uploaded to the database by the shop manager. Their names correspond with the SKU number of a product. So when importing the product, the system checks whether there is an image for it in the database and assigns it to the product. If the image is updated in the database, it will also be updated on the product page automatically.
• Video import takes place through a special attribute in the ERP system. A website admin puts YouTube video links separated by commas in this attribute. When importing a video, the module analyzes the attribute, recognizes the videos and adds them to the image block on the page of a required product.

Automatic Removal of Unavailable Products

The next task was to automatically remove products that are no longer in stock and will not be sold in the future. This change also considered simple products that needed to be changed into configurable. Because in Magento the default way to change the product type is to delete a simple one and create a new configurable product.

For this purpose, our team implemented the functionality that forms the list in the ERP system with SKU of the products to be removed. The import module then automatically removes them from the Magento shop. And if the product type is to be changed, all simple products are removed and the pages for the configurable products are automatically created. The existing images are assigned to these new products according to their SKU.

Bug with Attribute’s Property

Issue

If a product received a new property in the ERP system which was not added to the online store before, it could not be imported into the online store automatically. First this property had to be created manually in the admin panel.

Solution

We modified the import module to detect new properties for attributes in the ERP system and automatically add them to the admin panel. When these properties are added, it allows the module to automatically import the rest of the product information.