ceaksan - E-commerce & User Behavior Analytics

What is Akeneo PIM? How is it set up?

Discover how Akeneo PIM Community Edition simplifies product data management with free, open-source tools for businesses seeking cost-effective PIM solutions.

Ceyhun Enki Aksan
Ceyhun Enki Aksan Entrepreneur, Maker

In my previous article, I discussed how products can be easily managed through Product Information Management (PIM), how product data can be sent to various channels, and the services available during this process.

You can find more details in my article on Product Information Management (PIM). In this article, I would like to talk about Akeneo’s Akeneo PIM Community Edition (CE), which is an open-source solution available in the listed repository.

Akeneo

Akeneo has been providing solutions in the context of PXM (Product Experience Management)1 and PIM (Product Information Management) since 20132. As a global market leader, the company has specialized in open-source product information management solutions3. This enables the company to provide a unified, consistent product experience, enriched product presentations, and improved customer experiences across all channels—including e-commerce platforms, applications (mobile, web, etc.), distribution channels, print publications, and retail sales points—through its PIM service.

Thanks to its investments, Akeneo has experienced rapid growth and currently serves over 300 corporate customers with more than 180 employees. Additionally, its PIM applications (Community and Enterprise) have been downloaded over 60,000 times.

The open-source PIM application mentioned above was initially released in a public beta version in September 2013, and since March 2014, it has been continuously developed and refined into a stable version. As of 2020, the application running on version 4.0.0 “Hare Tonic” is available, with all further details accessible via akeneo.com.

On the other hand, you can reach solution providers for specific countries and different support levels (bronze, silver, gold) through the Solutions Partners section, and/or join the Slack community to get support from other community members.

Akeneo PIM

Akeneo PIM is a Product Information Management (PIM) application designed to simplify product management processes. The primary objective of the PIM application is to use a company’s entire product data in a centralized repository. This application supports role-based access management and provides import and export functionalities4 5.

You can visit demo.akeneo.com to explore the application, logging in with the username admin and password admin.

Akeneo PIM Features

There are certainly differences in features between the enterprise and community editions. On the other hand, pre-configured solutions are available for data integration with (Magento 2, WooCommerce, Drupal, Google Sheets, Google Manufacturer, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, eBay, and more)6 7 8. Looking at the common features:

  • Product data can be easily imported into the application via Excel and CSV files and source system connections.
  • Product information can be structured as required. Catalog structures can be defined in various contexts such as categories, product groups, and product attributes.
  • Product data (descriptions, attributes, etc.) can be enriched comprehensively and easily, including images and other media files, and then delivered to target links.
  • Products can be managed collectively (edited, grouped, transferred, etc.).
  • Multimedia assets can be easily organized, enriched, and converted on a channel-specific basis.
  • Brand teams, designers, and other stakeholders can create information in different contexts, link it to products, and share it.
  • Products and other attributes can be customized for specific target audiences.
  • Responsibilities for products and attributes can be assigned to individuals based on team workflows.
  • Business rules can be applied to automate processes.
  • Product data and sharing activities can be synchronized for sales channels and local points of presence.
  • Product data can be automatically updated via Franklin Insights.
  • Product data quality and consistency can be measured quickly, with actionable improvement recommendations.
  • Custom catalogs can be effectively managed using versioning.
  • Data can be easily exported via the PIM interface or API. Additionally, solutions are available for direct data export to external systems.
  • Direct integrations can be established between other applications through Akeneo PIM.

Akeneo PIM Community Edition Installation

During installation, you can choose either the Standard or Developer edition. The Standard Edition is tailored for end-user usage, allowing you to quickly add and manage your products9. The Developer Edition, on the other hand, is provided as a version designed to support application development and is accessible via GitHub10.

System requirements are as follows:

  • Debian (Linux) ≥ 10 (64 bits), Ubuntu (Linux) ≥ 18.04 (64 bits), or CentOS / RHEL* (Linux) ≥ 7
  • Apache web server ≥ 2.4
  • mod_rewrite
  • mod-fastcgi
  • PHP ≥ 7.3

For more detailed information on system requirements, refer to the section titled System Requirements.

Let’s proceed with the Standard Edition. You can quickly download and configure using Docker and then run make.

docker run -u www-data -v $(pwd):/srv/pim -w /srv/pim --rm akeneo/pim-php-dev:4.0 \
php -d memory_limit=4G /usr/local/bin/composer create-project --prefer-dist \
akeneo/pim-community-standard /srv/pim "4.0.*@stable"

make

Of course, you can also perform the download without using Docker.

php -d memory_limit=4G composer create-project --prefer-dist akeneo/pim-community-standard /srv/pim "4.0.*@stable"
NO_DOCKER=true make

In the final method, let’s proceed with downloading and configuring using an archive. First, obtain the link to the latest archive file available on the website11.

wget https://download.akeneo.com/pim-community-standard-v4.0-latest-icecat.tar.gz
tar -xvzf pim*.tar.gz

After installation and configuration, you can access the panel via localhost:8080. Your initial username and password are: admin.

After the login process, you can view the pre-defined regions and channels under the Activity section. You can also examine the products listed under the Products section. For a different view, simply click the ... field in the Views section12 13 14.

Our main sections are Settings and System. Under Settings, you’ll find product attributes, attribute groups, categories, product families, group types, groups, relationship types, currency units, regions, and channels. The System section manages the connections between users and data sources.

In the next article on Akeneo PIM, I will cover creating Connections and API operations.

*[PXM]: Product Experience Management
*[PIM]: Product Information Management

GitHub

Footnotes

  1. What is Product Experience Management? ↩
  2. Akeneo, Wikipedia ↩
  3. About Us. Akeneo ↩
  4. French-based product information management platform Akeneo raises $46 million in funding ↩
  5. Installing Akeneo PIM Community Edition (CE) with the Archive ↩
  6. Featured extensions. Akeneo Marketplace ↩
  7. Akeneo PIM in a nutshell ↩
  8. Akeneo Cookbook ↩
  9. System installation on Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) ↩
  10. [akeneo. ↩
  11. Installing Akeneo PIM Community Edition (CE). Akeneo Technical Docs ↩
  12. Installing Akeneo 4 ↩
  13. How To Install Akeneo PIM on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS ↩
  14. How to Install Dataset in Akeneo? ↩
akeneo tools-services pim