Meet unique commerce needs like multidimensional filtering with Commerce Extensions from Elastic Path

Elastic Path is setting a new standard in the commerce industry with the introduction of Commerce Extensions, a groundbreaking solution designed to let branded manufacturers and retailers craft unique API solutions that are tailored to specific operational needs and customer expectations.

The launch of Commerce Extensions builds upon existing products, like Elastic Path Composer, which streamlined API service integrations into a single, user-friendly tool. Now, with Commerce Extensions, brands can take customization to the next level. Learn about Commerce Extension’s key features and benefits, the multi-location inventory use case, how Commerce Extensions compares to the Flows extensions we already offer, and what’s coming next from Elastic Path.

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Introduction to Commerce Extensions

Commerce Extensions is a new Elastic Path feature that empowers users to rapidly develop additional APIs, enhancing our platform's ability to meet their unique commerce strategies. With Commerce Extensions, brands that use Elastic Path Composable Commerce can create "Custom APIs'' that can manage large, private datasets efficiently – including unlocking both simple and complex multidimensional filtering options. Commerce Extensions greatly expands the use cases that Elastic Path can support directly within our solution.

Key Features and Benefits

• Customization: Users can create tailored APIs to serve specific functions within their business model.
• Flexibility: Supports large data sets and complex multidimensional filtering capabilities
• Security: Ensures that sensitive data remains protected

Use Case Spotlight: Multi-Location Inventory

For years, managing inventory across multiple locations has been a source of angst, time, and work hours. With Commerce Extensions, brands get effortless multi-dimensional filtering – making multi-location inventory a breeze.

Commerce Extensions has “Custom APIs” that are designed to handle specific data points such as SKUs, collection names, location names, and inventory amounts. This information allows businesses to quickly provide inventory information to customers, enhancing the shopping experience, and ensuring that product catalog is accurate in each and every location.

Below, you’ll see questions about how to build example filters, the ways customers engage with filters, and how Commerce Extensions brings exceptional multi-location filtering to life.

Q&A for Common Multi-Location Inventory Queries for Merchandisers and Customers:

Question 1: A customer is on a product page and lives near the Hamptons store and wants to know if a specific product in a specific color is available at their local store.

Answer: Filtering on the SKU’s Slug and location name will retrieve the corresponding record.

Filter: eq(slug,KIT-BST-213):eq(location-name,CBGB)

Here’s how it looks in Elastic Path:

Question 2: I am the buyer for the "Timeless" collection. Show me all SKUs that are out of stock in all locations for SKUs in my collection.

Answer: Filter: eq(inventory,0):eq(collection-name,Timeless)

Question 3: As a customer, I am looking to purchase several pieces that fit a room I am redecorating. I want to know all the products available for the collection I like.

Answer: Filtering on collection name, location name and inventory amount greater than 0 will provide a list of all products in stock in that collection at that location.

Filter:eq(location-name,Hamptons):eq(collection-name,Timeless):gt(inventory,0)

Question 4: As a merchant, I want to know: if the inventory level field in the custom API of my entries changes, will I be notified?

Answer: By combining custom API events from Commerce Extensions with Composer, you get access to a fast, simple integration that can be created to monitor data changes in any custom API entry. Notifications are then triggered and delivered when the criteria is reached.

Comparing Flows and Commerce Extensions

Flows, our preexisting extension system, excels at extending product information and other customer-facing data. In contrast, Commerce Extensions offers enhanced security features for handling data that should not be directly accessible to the frontend, providing greater control over data access and security.

What’s Coming Next?

The initial release of Commerce Extensions focuses on string, integer, float, and boolean data types as well as events for entries. Our future plans are to expand to additional data types, relationships between API entries, and enhanced security features in future updates.

Conclusion

Elastic Path's Commerce Extensions marks a significant milestone in commerce platform customization, promising a new era of operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. We look forward to seeing the innovative solutions our customers will build using this powerful new tool.