Why Upgrade to ATG 10.x

The following features are new to ATG Commerce:
Note: this is not an exhaustive list of ATG 10.x feature, this is just a subset of new features that are exclusively available in version 10.x, a comprehensive list of 10.x feature is available on Oracle support portal.

Multisite Support

• ATG Commerce provides full multisite support:
• All ATG Commerce repository items—including categories, products, and SKUs—can be associated with specific sites. Site association supports merchandising strategies that let you filter and promote items based on sites.
• Orders, pricelists, coupons, and search form handlers support site-awareness.
• Shopping carts can be shared across sites or restricted to a given site or group of sites.
• ATG Commerce reports let you track sales and other metrics by site.
• ATG B2BCommerce is also updated to support multiple sites.

Promotions Enhancements

• New UI for promotion and coupon management, providing a new navigation model and split screen and drag and drop features.
• Easy-to-use templates simplify promotion creation and management.
• Enhanced support for custom promotions, including new form-based replacement for the Discount Rule Editor screens.
• Tiered discount promotions let you define multiple levels of discounts within a single promotion.
• In a multisite environment, assign promotions to one or more registered sites.
• With this release, Commerce simplifies catalog planning and creation by providing custom catalog functionality to all users. This simplifies implementation and future expansion, and eliminates the need to run extra modules to obtain desired catalog functionality.

ATG Commerce Reference Store

The following features are new to ATG Commerce Reference Store (CRS).

• CRS has been recoded and reconfigured to function as a multisite implementation with three sites, ATG Store US, ATG Store Germany, and ATG Home. As a result, a number of CRS features are now site-aware.
• A variety of site-aware targeters, scenarios, and promotions have been added to CRS.
• New promotions have been added that include a coupon that supports multiple
• Promotions and a tiered promotion.
• Multisite search functionality has been added that allows you to search the current site or multiple sites.
• CRS checkout and shipping flows have been improved.
• Text-based content for the storefronts is now contained in a repository. This allows the application to take advantage of internationalization features and it also allows merchandisers to edit the content in the ATG Business Control Center.
• Two new SKU sub-types have been added,
• Clothing-skuand furniture-sku.
• These item types add properties that are appropriate for clothing and furniture items, respectively.
• A wood finish picker for products, such as furniture, that are made of wood has been added.

ATG Search

The following features are new to ATG Search.

• Multisite Support Along with other ATG applications, ATG Search supports the new multisite feature. Multisite uses for ATG Search are configured using the new Site Administration utility.
• New user interface elements allow you to target user searches to specific subsets of your content whenever you set up a new site, or to search across your entire index from any site.
• Search reports now include site data, allowing you to track user activity at finer granularity.
• Content Labels and Target Types ATG Search uses a new mechanism, based on content labels and target types, for identifying the content to be searched for a given project. Independent projects have separate groupings of content for indexing.
• A project’s content sets are grouped and identified for querying by one or more content labels. A project’s target type specifies the instance of the index—for example, Production or Staging—where queries are directed.
• Parallel Indexing and Index Queuing Changes to the indexing process allow you to update multiple indexes at one time (resources permitting, and only if those indexes do not share content), and to queue indexing tasks to be performed later.
• Metadata Enhancements You can now add index-only metadata tags to unstructured content.
• New Search Feedback Option ATG Search now supports a feedback option that provides information on alternate searches using fewer words, if the original query provides insufficient results.

Upgrade path (ATG migration)

Migration paths 9.x to 10.0: ATG recommended option for customers upgrading from ATG 9.x to current ATG 10.x versions is a 2-step process.

• Upgrading from 9.x to base 10.0 version
• Upgrading 10.0 to 10.x (either 10.1 or 10.2)
• Detailed upgrade steps and documentation is available on Oracle support portal.

Note: this document only addresses ATG OOTB (Out Of The Box) components and databases objects that are created by ATG Commerce. It does not cover customizations, User Interface and java code.
Reason for this approach is to minimize the risk and re-use scripts and steps already provided and made available by ATG incrementally in accordance with ATG release schedule.

Methodology/Tools/Accelerators used:

iBizSoft has developed a custom methodology based on prior experience in migrating several customers by maintaining a log of issues faced and solutions that have been refined over time while providing successful migration/upgrade services to industry leading ATG Commerce (B2B and B2C) implementations.
IBizSoft have following standard toolset that is made available to project team working on upgrade as a standard practice.

• Pre-packaged ATG migration guide to handle ATG mandated upgrade activities.
• SQL tools and script to migrate custom data objects while maintaining referential integrity and data quality.
• Command line based tools to analyze existing ATG components (FormHandlers, Repository items, Droplets and JSP’s) to determine level of customization and compile list of components that need special attention while migrating.
• Well defined rules for identifying Publishing and Commerce workflows to analyze upgrade requirements.
• Automated Test tools (Selenium based) to test standard promotions and scenarios).
• Complete checklist (constantly updated) to keep track of lessons learned and to optimize the time to market for our customers.
• Our standard offering for a B2C/B2B migration is 14-16 weeks activity performed by our specialized team of Analysts, Developers, Architects and testers.

Lookout for…

Customizations to OOTB ATG components like, FormHandlers, Droplets, Promotions, CSC, and workflows. Ideally the development team responsible for customization will have all customizations done to ATG platform documents and design specification ready, but remember I said “Ideally” earlier. This is the tricky and can consume lot of time and effort if you have to use a brute force method to deal with customizations. I wish there was an easy way to flag OOTB components and other customized components, but there is none out there. As part of our offering we have developed in-house tools to scan the code repository and compare standard implementation across ATG versions and identify violations and code changes that can potentially cause issues or delays in Migration, as a standard operating process we routinely run these tools as part of out initial analysis and compile a exhaustive list of components that will need special treatment and attention as part of Migration effort. Additionally we publish a report to customer informing the findings and violations, propose solutions and validate it with business and IT owners, these then flows into our estimation and eventually is incorporated into Migration plan and strategy.

Testing and deployment

• Pre-defined testing plan and strategy document to certify ATG Upgrade/Migration. This plan covers 80% of testing which is common across all migrations remaining 20% is quickly analyzed and incorporated in the final test plan and strategy by experience QA analyst who have been involved in multiple ATG Migrations.
• Manual Functional testing done by experienced QA analyst specifically trained and experienced in Migration testing and certifications.
• Automated scripts and customizable framework to test standard B2B and B2C commerce flows.
• Database scripts to create test data and validating data migration.
• Hudson/ANT based deployment scripts to configure and promote application deployments to QA, Stage and production environments.
• Pre-defined performance and Non Functional requirements validations are part of overall Migration strategy, testing and Certification.