Grouped products from ERP to Magento. How?

[maarten_golf]

Hi,

We are planning to connect our M2 website to our ERP system (MS Dynamics NAV). Connection using one of the available NAV-Magento connectors.To pass product data to Magento and receive transaction data from Magento. The ERP will be 'leading' wrt to creating and managing basic Product data (SKU, Name, description, price, etc..).

Given that we want to manage all basic product data in the ERP, does that mean w.r.t. Grouped products, we need to create a virtual item number in the ERP for each set of grouped SKU's? A 'virtual' item number being an physically non-existent Item nr in the ERP solely for the purpose that Magento will assign this the product type 'Grouped'?

If so it would mean we would 'pollute' our ERP Item database with such fictional SKU's.

Is there not another way to inform Magento which 'simple' items from the ERP are to be grouped together?

I hope I'm clear in my explanation. It's complicated to explain purely via text

Thanks in advance for any tips or guidance!

Maarten

[ryan_lunka]

I know exactly what you're talking about! We usually use the term "virtual matrix" to describe this, because you are creating a matrixed product structure that doesn't technically exist in the source system (your ERP) and you do it in a data map.

The way you approach the problem--and whether it's possible in your specific case--depends on how data is structured in your ERP. You'll at least have to put a field on your simple products that holds an identifier (we usually use the term "parent sku") that ties the simple products together. This way you aren't creating a fake product in your ERP.

When you pull any product out of the ERP that has the parent SKU field filled out, you go and get all the other products that have the same value in parent SKU. Once you've got the whole group, you can restructure them via data map as one matrix--or in your case grouped--product.

Does that make sense?

If you are looking for help with this integration, that's what we do all day, every day at nChannel. We're very experienced with both Magento and the Dynamics ERPs. Let us know if we can help further.

https://www.nchannel.com/connectors/magento-2/

[maarten_golf]

Hello Ryan,

Thanks for your quick reply and clear answer. Makes a lot of sense!

My question (and hence your answer) pertained to Magento 'Grouped' products.

What about 'Configurable' products? Is my assumption correct that if Configurable products are desired then using your suggested answer would not be possible? In other words, a 'dummy' article would then have to be created in NAV?

[ryan_lunka]

Generally speaking, what I described should work for any kind of composite product structure--configurable products included. It's actually more common that we would use this pattern to create configurable products (i.e. matrix products) than grouped.