Exporting the PIF

You can export the product information into a Microsoft Excel file called a product information file (PIF) to attribute the products.

You can export the product information into a Microsoft Excel file called a product information file (PIF) to attribute the products. The PIF is exported from OpenLink, manipulated, and then imported back into OpenLink. The current values from the product database will populate the attribute columns in the PIF, which you can edit. Those columns with missing values will appear as blank, in which you can enter your own values. After exporting, it is important that you do not change the PIF column structure in the Excel file due to data integrity and importing restrictions. See Attribute Table for detailed information about the attribute columns.

You can select the product attribute columns and determine their order in the PIF output. The selected attribute columns will also display in the Edit Content page. The attribute columns that can be selected are considered optional and are not required for modeling. For example, columns such as Brand Class and Size Class are primarily used for Price Optimization rules, and the Level1Code/Descr columns are customer product hierarchy levels often used as a reference for setting up Demand Groups.

Products can be automatically assigned to Line Groups, and Size Classes and Size Families as part of the PIF export process. If you choose to also keep the existing values, the products will be added to existing groups. Any existing assignments will also remain. If you do not keep the existing values, new Line Groups will be created using brand, volume of measure, and base cost/price; Size relationships will be created using product name/description, brand, and volume of measure. This feature will be most valuable when there are no pre-existing values in the application, and you are setting up Line or Size relationships for the first time. See Auto-Assigning Line Groups and Size Relationships for more information. Note that products can also be assigned by choosing the Assign Product Relationships right-click menu option in the Category Manager page.

Note: Before you export, be sure of the following:
  • Product Status Resolver has been run
  • The last scan date is recent. You can check the last scan date in the Last Scan column in the Category Manager page (OpenLink > Category Manager)
    .
  • The last Summary Statistics run date is recent. Summary Statistics include statistics for sales and volume, for example. If Summary Statistics has not been run recently, you can update them as an automated process in the Task Scheduler for one or more categories.
Note: Summary Statistics should initially be run once from the Task Scheduler. This full run will update the Summary Statistics based on two years of POS data. Subsequently, they will be automatically updated after each new POS data load, and there will be no need to schedule a job. You can view the last Summary Statistics run date in the Last Summary Stats Run column in the Category Manager page (OpenLink > Category Manager) in the Detailed tab.