General Information

NetSuite does not have an equivalent entity with the same purpose as Shared Catalog in Magento 2 B2B. However, NetSuite allows custom pricing for each customer. Our RocketWeb NetSuite Connector fetches Company-specific prices from NetSuite and generates the Magento B2B Shared Catalog. To read more about the Shared Catalog, visit https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/catalog/catalog-shared.html.

This process is triggered after New or Updated Company is imported to Magento from NetSuite (see 2024.1 [b2b] Company Import from NetSuite). The message is added to the import shared_catalog queue with the Company Id (see: RocketWeb/NetSuiteSharedCatalog/Model/CompanyHandler/CompanyCatalogHandler.php).

Once the message is created, it will be processed with the specific shared_catalog processor - RocketWeb/NetSuiteSharedCatalog/Model/Process/Import/SharedCatalog.php. This processor will gather all information about company Price Groups and Company Price Lists (this data is in fact specific pricing for the company). To check the process in detail, see \RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogProvider\UpdateCompany::getPriceLevels() and \RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogProvider\UpdateCompany::getPriceGroupIds(). This data is saved to Company object custom attributes: netsuite_group_list, netsuite_price_list, netsuite_custom_list.

Shared Catalog Creation/Updating

After pricing data is added to the Company object, the Connector starts Shared Catalogs manipulations. Firstly, the system checks if any specific pricing for the company exists by checking all 3 attributes (netsuite_group_list, netsuite_price_list, netsuite_custom_list). If they ALL are empty (contains empty serialized array) - the system unassigns all Shared Catalogs from the Company and assigns Public Catalog to it (see: \RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogProcess\PublicCatalog::validate() and \RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogProcess\PublicCatalog::execute()).

If they are not empty, the Connector starts the process of a Shared Catalog Creation (\RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogProcess\CustomCatalog::execute()). It builds hash using Company's pricing data saved previously, and compares it to the hash of the current Saved Catalog assigned to the Company (hash calculation and saving to Shared Catalog is performed in \RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogProvider\Builder::buildItemsWithPrices() and \RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogManagement::getCompanyCatalogHash()).

Once the hash is compared and is confirmed different, the Connector unassigns the Shared Catalog from the Company and starts a new catalog creation. This process is done by a group of handlers :

 <type name="RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogProcess\CustomCatalog">
        <arguments>
            <argument name="handlers" xsi:type="array">
                <item name="assign_company"
                      xsi:type="object">RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogHandler\AssignCompany</item>
                <item name="set_name_and_desc"
                      xsi:type="object">RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogHandler\SetNameAndDescription\Proxy</item>
                <item name="assign_products"
                      xsi:type="object">RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogHandler\AssignProductsAndPrices\Proxy</item>
            </argument>
        </arguments>
    </type>

As a result, the Connector saves the Shared Catalog with products that have custom or specific Company pricing.

Shared Catalog Recalculation

NetSuite does not have a specific category or entity corresponding to Shared Catalogs or containing all price information. Because of this, the Connector needs to also check price changes for Products if they intersect with Company-specific prices. For this purpose, the NetSuite Connector has 2 additional CRON modes (see: /wiki/spaces/NCCF/pages/4580081676). They are find_recalculation and recalculate. With the assistance of these 2 additional modes, we can recalculate the prices on the Product changes for all Companies.

This process is started on the Product Import (2024.1 Item Master). Before saving a product, we add information about price changes to the specific product attribute called netsuite_recalculate (see: RocketWeb/NetSuiteSharedCatalog/Plugin/ProductPlugin.php). This information is used by the find_recalculation CRON process. This process searches through the Companies to match data in netsuite_recalculate and netsuite_group_list, netsuite_price_list, netsuite_custom_list. Once it finds matches, it marks companies for recalculation (details can be found in: \RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\Process\Recalculation\FindRecalculation::process()).

The recalculation is pretty straightforward - it fetches all Companies marked for recalculation previously, and simply passes each to the \RocketWeb\NetSuiteSharedCatalog\Model\SharedCatalogProcess\CustomCatalog::execute() where Shared Catalog actualization is performed.

For performance improvement, find_recalculation and recalculate use direct query to the Database. Also, there are known issues about the price data persisting. At the moment data is saved in the JSON format that makes searching not very efficient for large catalogs. The RocketWeb Team is working on solving these technical restrictions.

Clean Up Unused Shared Catalogs

When the process of Shared Catalogs Creation/Update is running, the Connector does not check if the Shared Catalog is used. This process is done separately with Magento 2 default CRON system. By default, each day at 1:49 AM (value can be changed), RocketWeb NetSuite Connector searches for Shared Catalogs that are not assigned to any company and deletes them. For details see: RocketWeb/NetSuiteSharedCatalog/Model/Cron/CleanUpCatalogs.php