Item collection

This guide introduces you to item collections and the related key concepts.

What is an item collection

An item collection is a container for storing and managing item data in the Data hub. It provides a unified way to organize your catalog information and distribute it to Bloomreach products like Discovery, Engagement, and Clarity. 

Why are item collections important

Item collections act as a single source of truth for your core business data. Organize and configure your data once in an item collection and use it across all Bloomreach applications.

This unified approach ensures data consistency across your Bloomreach implementation. When you update a product price or add a new variant, the change propagates to all connected products simultaneously, reducing sync issues and data discrepancies.

How item collections work

Item collections transform raw product data into structured, validated information through 5 interconnected components. Each component serves a specific role in the data flow from source to destination.

Records

Records store your raw, unstructured source data. Each record represents a product or variant with fields like title, price, or color. Records serve as your source of truth before any transformation occurs.

Schema

The schema defines how raw records become structured items. It maps your specific field names to standardized attributes that Bloomreach products understand, including item identifiers, system attributes like price and title, and custom attributes unique to your business.

Items

Items are structured, validated representations of your data after schema mapping. They include typed attributes ready for personalized emails, SMS, weblayers, recommendations, search indexing, personalization rules, and merchandising campaigns in Bloomreach products.

Jobs

Jobs are asynchronous operations that run in the background when you update records, modify schemas, import data, or configure destinations. Jobs track processing progress and provide error details if issues occur.

Destinations

Destinations define where your item data flows. You'll typically configure two destinations: Bloomreach Engagement for marketing and personalization and Bloomreach Discovery for search and merchandising. Once destinations are configured, items sync automatically. 

Key relationships

Each item collection has a defined relationship with other Data hub components:

• A collection belongs to one workspace.

• A collection contains one item type, that is product for product catalog data.

• A collection can have multiple destinations connecting to applications.

• Various operations within a collection generate jobs for tracking.

Plan item collections structure

A workspace can contain one or more item collections. Consider how your business is structured across brands, sites, and regions, and how that structure should appear in Data hub. The common patterns are:

One item collection for all products

Use a single item collection that contains all products and variants across your business. Include brand, locale, and other segmentation fields as attributes on the items.

This is the simplest pattern to operate. Bloomreach recommends this in cases where you don't need explicit control over the behavior of applications by brands, sites, regions, and so on.

Multiple item collections for distinct domains

Use separate item collections when there are different product domains or data owners, for example, separate business units. Each collection can have its own schema, ingestion method, and destinations.

• Multiple languages: Create one item collection per unique language.
• Country-language combinations: When products, pricing, or availability differ across regions, use a separate collection per country-language combination. For example, English (United Kingdom) and English (United States).
• Multiple brands or business units: Use separate collections when distinct brands or business units operate as different product domains with separate data owners.
• Environment separation: Maintain separate collections for development, staging, and production environments. For example, my_store_dev, my_store.

If you're unsure, consult your Bloomreach technical consultant or solution architect to define your collection structure. The right approach depends on your specific implementation.

Tools to interact with item collections

Interact with an item collection either through the user interface (UI) or programmatically via the Item collections API, depending on your workflow needs. 

Via UI

The UI allows you to create, view, and manage item collections directly within the Data hub platform.

Perform actions such as: 

• Creating a new collection. 

• Viewing records.

• Map schema for attributes.

• Viewing items.

• Monitoring jobs.

• Set destinations.  

The UI offers an intuitive, visual experience that is ideal if you prefer direct interaction and immediate feedback without needing to write code.

Via API

The API provides endpoints to update records, update items and destinations, and monitor jobs. It accepts product data in flexible JSON format and makes that data available to Discovery, Engagement, and other Bloomreach applications through a single integration point.

The API enables automation and integration with other systems, ideal for your development workflow to maintain complete control over all aspects of the collection data flow. If you have a development team, Bloomreach recommends choosing the direct API approach. 

Next steps

Start working with item collections:

• Create your first item collection.

• Explore API integration for programmatic data management.

• Configure imports for automated data synchronization.

Limitations

Discovery multi-view capability is currently not supported.