The MAM integration

MAM Software (Autopart and VAST) is a business system many parts and trade suppliers run their stock, accounts and invoicing in. Commerce Orbit can work with it: MAM stays the source of stock, and optionally prices, while your shop sells from Commerce Orbit and sends each order to MAM.

The integration is off until you switch it on, and you can switch it off again at any time. Open it from the sidebar: MAM integration, under Settings. The connection settings are on its Settings tab, in the Connection section. Everyone can see the page; Admins change the settings and switch it on and off; Editors can also run a sync and import parts.

What it does

The ERP connection is in the Growth and Enterprise plans. See Plans and the trial.

You can change how often each sync runs: stock from every 5 minutes to once a day, prices from every 15 minutes, catalogue and accounts from every hour, each up to once a week. Sync now runs one straight away.

Commerce Orbit asks MAM for up to 50 parts in one request and only takes a part whose number matches exactly, so a similar part number never sets the wrong stock or price.

Who wins

• Stock: MAM. A product with a MAM part number gets its stock from MAM at every stock sync, overwriting changes made here. See Stock and locations.
• Prices: your choice. With MAM prices on, a linked product's price in your main currency comes from MAM's list price. With it off, you set prices here. Prices in other currencies are always yours. MAM's prices don't include VAT; when your prices do, Commerce Orbit adds your VAT rate.
• Text, photos, collections and SEO: always Commerce Orbit. MAM has no photos or descriptions to send.
• What an order costs: MAM's own price, unless you turn on Send prices with orders. Then each line goes with what the customer paid, without VAT, and MAM uses it if MAM Software has set it up to take web prices (parameter P950). Either way, make sure the two agree.
• Trade customers' prices: for a signed-in customer whose company, or who themselves, is linked to a MAM account, the account's own price from MAM on every page. See Customers and companies.

Sandbox and live

Sandbox is a pretend MAM built into Commerce Orbit, with Northwilds parts such as NW-STORM-SHELL-JACKET, three branches (OSL, BGN and TRD) with different stock at each, and three trade accounts with prices of their own: NW1001 (Fjellguidene AS, branch OSL) pays 15% under list, 22% on tents and 18% on footwear; NW1002 (Turlaget Nord, TRD) 10% under, 20% on packs and 15% on paddling; NW1003 (Alpin Hütte GmbH, BGN) 12% under and 25% on clothing, and is on stop. Its prices are without 19% VAT, like a real MAM's. The Northwilds example data has a buyer for each account to sign in as. Use it to try everything without touching your real MAM. It behaves like the real thing: answers take a moment, one order in eight doesn't answer the first time, and two switches make it act down or slow (6 seconds an answer), so you can see what your shop does then.

Live talks to your MAM's seller services. Every MAM installation is set up differently, so the values come from MAM Software (or your MAM partner) for your company.

Connect your own MAM

1. Open MAM integration in the sidebar, then the Settings tab.
2. Under Connection, choose Your MAM. The connection fields appear below it.
3. Fill them in from the checklist below, then select Check connection.
4. When every step shows a tick, select Save MAM settings, then switch the integration on at the top of the page.

Until the address, user name and password are saved, and the supplier ID and sender ID if orders go to MAM, the page opens on Settings with a Connect your MAM card listing what is missing, and the sidebar shows Set up next to MAM integration.

What to ask MAM Software for

And from your own team, under Accounts on the same tab:

• the web account: the MAM account that orders from shoppers without a company go to, such as WEB001
• the catalogue account: the account whose prices and stock syncs use, usually your standard retail account
• optionally a carriage part: a part number for shipping, so the shipping charge goes to MAM as a line of its own

Wait for MAM, under Technical, is how long syncs and orders wait for an answer: 8 seconds unless you change it, from 2 to 60.

Check connection

Check connection tries the values in the form before you save them, and nothing is ordered or changed in MAM. Give it an account to ask about, and a part number to check the IDs with. It shows a tick, a cross or "not checked" for each step:

1. Address: MAM is asked whether it is up.
2. SOAP version: which version MAM took.
3. User name and password: MAM is asked about the account.
4. Account: whether MAM knows it.
5. Supplier ID, sender ID and component: MAM is asked for the price of the part, in the same kind of message orders use.

A saved password is only used with the address it was saved for. After changing the address, type the password again. See MAM troubleshooting for what each cross means.

Part numbers, accounts and MAM's limits

MAM accepts only short values, and Commerce Orbit checks them before sending:

A product with one variant can have its part number on the product; a product with sizes or colours needs one on each variant.

Signed-in customers

A customer signs in to the shop with their email address, never with an account number. When they or their company are linked to a MAM account, every price and stock figure they see is that account's, asked for live. See Customers and companies for linking accounts and what customers see.

Under Settings, Signed-in customers:

How Commerce Orbit keeps this light for MAM:

• Everything on a page is asked for together, up to 50 parts in one request, and two customers of the same account browsing at once share the request.
• Answers are kept per account for the time above, so moving between pages rarely asks MAM again.
• A page never waits longer than you set. Without an answer, it shows your price marked "Standard price: your account price couldn't be checked just now", and asks again when the page is opened next. After MAM fails, it isn't asked again for 30 seconds.
• Only a part whose number matches exactly gets MAM's price. A similar part number never prices the wrong product.

Branches

Give each location the code of its MAM branch, such as OSL for the Oslo warehouse. Stock then comes per branch. Without any branch, MAM's total stock goes to your default location. Orders go to MAM with the default location's branch.

Import parts

MAM has no way to export its catalogue, so you bring parts in under Find parts, by searching or from a file.

• Search: search by part number, such as NW-RIDGE, to see matching parts with their stock and price, and which you already have. Import makes a draft product with MAM's description, price and stock, tagged from-mam.
• From a file: upload a .csv or .txt file with part numbers in its first column, one per line, up to 500. A first line such as Part number is skipped. Each part MAM knows that isn't a product yet becomes a draft product, as Import makes it. Afterwards Commerce Orbit says how many were added, how many were already in your catalogue and how many MAM doesn't know.

Part numbers must match MAM's exactly. Add photos and text to the drafts, then make them active.

Orders and duplicates

Each placed order goes into a queue as it is placed, so nothing is lost if MAM is busy. Commerce Orbit sends it with the order number as MAM's customer reference.

When MAM doesn't answer, Commerce Orbit doesn't know whether the order arrived. Before it tries again, it searches MAM for a document with that reference, and only sends again if there is none. The same check runs when someone sends an order again by hand. So an order is never entered twice.

Tries wait longer each time, from 2 minutes up to 6 hours, for 10 tries in all. See MAM troubleshooting for orders that are held or failed.

You choose whether card orders go to MAM, or only orders on invoice, and you can stop sending orders altogether while keeping stock and prices.

Hold orders that fail is off unless you switch it on. On, an order that MAM doesn't take, or that can't be sent at the first try, isn't tried again by itself: it shows Held and waits for someone to check it and send it again from the order page. Admins and Editors get a MAM order notification for it. Leave it off to let Commerce Orbit keep trying while MAM is away.

When MAM is slow or down

Guests never wait for MAM: product pages, carts and the storefront API show them the last synced stock and prices. Signed-in customers with a MAM account wait at most the time in the settings, then see your own prices, clearly marked. At checkout, without MAM's answer in time, the price the customer was shown is used if it is still within the time answers are kept; otherwise the company's price list, and the order's history says so.

When a sync fails, the connection shows Degraded. After three failures in a row it shows Down, and Admins and Editors get a notification, and another when MAM is back. Orders wait in the queue and go to MAM by themselves when it answers again.

Switch it off and on

Switch off stops every call to MAM. Products from MAM become normal products with their last synced stock and prices, which you can change here. New orders aren't queued for MAM. Orders already in the queue wait.

Switch on runs every sync straight away and sends the orders that waited. Orders placed while it was off weren't queued; Orders to MAM offers to send them. See MAM troubleshooting.

The sync log

The log lists every sync, connection check and order sent, newest first: when it ran, how long it took, how many parts it saw, changed or couldn't find, and MAM's message when something went wrong. The queue lists each order on its way to MAM, with its tries and the last error.