Platform as a service (PaaS) is a facet of cloud computing. It involves services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an application.

The capability provided to the customer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure customer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The customer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure (network, servers, operating systems, or storage), but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.

Intershop offers Intershop Commerce Management and Intershop Order Management as PaaS solutions to their partners and customers, including the option to modify and extend the standard offering as well as to re-distribute the offered services.

A pack slip is a document (paper) shipped together with the products to the customer. It contains a list of content of the package indicating the products and quantities of delivered products or services.

Intershop 7 and Intershop Commerce Management provide an option to have gifting-related messages printed on the pack slips, "pack slip messages".

Depending on the context, "partner" may refer to different concepts.

1. 6WR/ISAFe:
   In the context of the 6WR project or ISAFe, partners are companies or organizations who provide extensions, solutions, services etc. around Intershop Commerce Suite.
2. Shop Manager:
   In the e-commerce manager's perspective, a partner is an actor in Enfinity Suite 6, Intershop 7 and Intershop Commerce Management that represents a selling organization within a partner channel, syndicates products or other content from the parent organization (sales organization or parent partner), and distributes products or other content over own channels.

A release of a software product (Intershop Commerce Management, Intershop Order Management, Payment Connectors, PWA, Microservices) that is intended to fix a number of issues of a previous version.

• For Intershop Commerce Management the definition given in Concept - Versioning applies.
  In contrast to hotfixes, patches may include new features.
• For Microservices the definition given at https://semver.org applies. 

• Concept - Versioning
• https://semver.org

A payment method is a method that reflects the kind of money transfer from one party to another (customer to merchant). There are different payment methods that can be offered in online shops, e.g.

• cash in advance
• cash on delivery
• credit card
• open invoice
• direct debit
• others

A payment service provider (PSP) is a company that offers merchants online services for accepting electronic payments by a variety of payment methods including credit card, bank-based payments such as direct debit, bank transfer, and real-time bank transfer based on online banking.

Typically, a PSP can connect to multiple acquiring banks, card and payment networks. In many cases the PSP will fully manage these technical connections, relationships with the external network, and bank accounts. This makes the merchant less dependent on financial institutions and free from the task of establishing these connections directly - especially when operating internationally.

A payment service provider is the business partner who handles the financial transactions in case, for example, a credit card will be offered as payment method. The partner is involved in the process of card authorization and capture.

A payment solution is a software for accepting electronic payments by a variety of payment methods including, for example, credit card, bank-based payments such as direct debit bank transfer or real-time bank transfer based on online banking.

Payment solutions are provided by a payment service provider (PSP).

Generally, the performance of an e-commerce software is one of the major criteria for its market acceptance. Customers expect quick response times when visiting a web shop, and the owner of the e-commerce software wants to optimize the operational efforts and costs.

With respect to Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, performance and scalability measures apply to the following areas on different levels:

• application architecture
• application design, incl. coding guidelines
• cluster configuration
• database server tuning
• application server settings
• OS tuning

The performance report is a document, available for different builds (generally, builds that reach the QA entry criteria for testing) and give a detailed overview about the following NFR test measurements:

• baseline
• maximum throughput (-> scalability)
• stability (60h)
• all measurements are performed with and without active page cache
• all measurements are performed with PrimeTech and with QA Enterprise mass data environment

Permission marketing is a marketing technique that requires the approval of the customer.

For example, the merchant sends e-mail newsletters only to those customers who have specifically requested it. Different kind of procedures are possible:

• opt-in
• confirmed opt-in
• double opt-in

Permission marketing comes into force during the newsletter subscription. The kind of procedure that has to be implemented depends on the legal requirement of the country where the consumer are coming from. In Germany, for example, the double opt-in procedure is preferred from the legal point of view but not specially requested.

Persistent objects (POs) are Java objects used to write and read data to/from the database ("ORM beans"). They are persistent implementations of business objects.

See persistent object layer.

Generally, online shop personalization summarizes all means for creating different experiences that are unique to individual customers or customer segments.

Personalization can be based both on

• explicit data, such as user profile or user preferences, and
• implicit data like viewed pages or previously purchased items.

Mainly, personalization aims at the content to be presented, like catalog views, individual product recommendations, promotions etc. Additionally, personalization can impact formal presentation criteria like display language, colors, etc.

A personalization group is a temporary group of users (customers) for which the storefront must be personalized in the same way. The personalization is done for groups of users rather than for single users for efficiency reasons. This reduces the number of possible page variations and allows for better page caching and reuse of personalized pages.

The personalization group membership for a user can be determined using various criteria, like authentication state (anonymous, logged in), registration state, customer segment, address etc. The personalization group membership may change with the users interaction in the storefront, like after authentication (login, logout), registration at the store or other actions.

Personalization groups are expressed by a PGID, which is contained in the URL. The PGID is important to distinct between personalized pages with otherwise equal URLs. For example, the same product page can have multiple instances with different prices, one for each personalization group.

A pick list is a document used in a fulfillment center that enables a person to pack the packet that will be delivered to the customer.

The pick list is a list indicating:

• the products to be packed (usually SKU and name)
• the stock location of the products (usually corridor and shelf)
• the needed amount of the product
• the ID of the packet
• service information like gift wrapping (optional)
• bar codes of the products (optional)

Depending on the context, "pipeline" may refer to different concepts:

1. Developer
   In Enfinity Suite 6/Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management development, it refers to the fundamental architecture that describes all business workflows. Pipelines connect pipelets to model complex business processes, and call appropriate ISML templates to turn the results of a business process into a response that is sent back to the user client.
2. Sales
   In the sales context, it describes the individual steps salespeople take in the sales process: from the initial contact with a potential customer ("prospect"), to qualifying that prospect into a "lead", and further validating that lead into a "sales opportunity" followed through stages like meeting and proposal until the "close".

Depending on the context, "pricing" may refer to different concepts:

1. Shop Manager
   A tab in the product detail view ( Commerce Management ) that summarizes the price settings for a product.
2. Developer
   The mechanisms for defining product prices in various ways, which are then used by the storefront for display purposes and as a base for selling them, including
   • price types (like sale price, list price or cost price)
   • price storage (like product prices or price lists)
   • price display (e.g., specific content components)
   • ...

Priority represents the importance of items, where more important items are listed or dealt with before less important items.

The top priority is 1. A higher value indicates a lower priority.

Priority defines when items need to be ordered by importance, but the absolute value of the priority does not have an influence on the results of the calculation, only the fact that the priority is higher or lower.

In Intershop 7 and Intershop Commerce Management, process chains are a mechanism for automating the sequential execution of interdependent scheduled jobs or pipelines.

Defining a process chain involves, basically, the following tasks:

• specifying the chain elements, i.e., the jobs or pipelines to be processed
• creating a specific scheduled job that triggers the execution

Depending on the context, "product" may refer to different concepts:

1. Shop Manager:
   A product is an item that can be created, managed, changed, imported by a shop manager in the online shop to sell it to customers.
2. Sales and Software Engineering:
   A product is an installable, self-contained and executable software that provides the minimum set of functionality (via features) required to serve a business need. It is built, sold and maintained by Intershop.

In Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, product assignment refers to the (logical) allocation of a product to a category. Via product assignment, products become part of a catalog. Product assignment can be done either manually or dynamically:

• manual assignment
  Manual assignment means that the category-product associations are created explicitly when editing a product or a category
• dynamic assignment
  Dynamic assignment makes it possible to automate the category-product associations on the basis of product filters

In Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management, product data feeds are a mechanism to externalize the content of the product repository on a regular base to different targets:

• files: can be used to feed this information to search engines, product comparison Web sites, or other similar aggregators of e-commerce information (e.g., Sitemap XML, Feed Dynamix Feed and Product RSS Feed)
• a separate Intershop system: used to selectively transfer product data (database content and related file system content) from a source to a target system, similar to data replication but designed to transfer small sets of data

A product datasheet is an online document that contains all relevant information about a release of Intershop products, including

• properties like published variants, related documents, related products and extensions
• a list of fixed defects
• a list of touched files with this product version
• a list of applicable custom fixes

A product datasheet is a single entry of Intershop's product calendar and is updated during the product lifecycle.

Generally, product information management refers to features that support integration, centralized maintenance, and flexible distribution of product data across all touchpoints. To this end, the product information management included with Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management provides, among others

• centralized management of product data
• flexible distribution and customization of catalogs
• effortless feed to multiple touchpoints
• consistency of multi-source data
• data validation and completeness checks
• workflows for cross-departmental cooperation
• integration of enterprise PIM systems

Depending on the context, "product lifecycle" may refer to different concepts:

1. Sales:
   The Intershop product lifecycle describes all phases of a released software product. The lifecycle starts with the date of general availability (GA) and extends over the date of end of life and ends with the date of end of support.
2. Shop Manager:
   In Enfinity Suite 6 , Intershop 7 and Intershop Commerce Management, product lifecycle is a business feature for controlling the availability of products offered in the storefront. To this end, two attributes can be defined:
   • The last order date defines the latest point in time at which a product can be ordered. The product remains visible in the storefront, but cannot be ordered anymore.
   • The end-of-life date has the same effect. It can be used for additional purposes, e.g., to indicate when support for a product expires.

Product lifecycle definitions can also be used as advanced search parameters.

Product links are static connections between products and other products or categories in Enfinity Suite 6/Intershop 7/Intershop Commerce Management. Depending on the business semantics, there are

• replacement
• cross selling
• up selling
• accessory
• follow up
• different order unit
• spare parts
• gift wrap (Intershop 7)
• gift message (Intershop 7)
• warranty (Intershop 7)

Product sorting refers to the mechanisms used to control the order in which catalog categories and products are displayed in the storefront. Generally, there are three options:

• sorting based on predefined product filters
• sorting based on specific sorting attributes
• manual sorting

Professional Services is Intershop's department responsible for providing services around solutions based on Intershop 7 and Intershop Commerce Suite for Intershop customers and partners. These services include, among others

• Full Service and shop management
• technology consulting
• project implementation
• customization support
• hosting
• ...

Depending on the context, "project" may refer to different concepts:

1. Development:
   A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service
2. Intershop Cloud Management
   From a tenant's perspective, a project is the "bracket" to control the environments that are required to run an e-commerce initiative.
   
3. Shop Manager:
   A project is an external and configurable purchasing context defined by a business customer. In can be used as an additional hierarchy for business customer. As opposed to a contract, a project is buyer-centric. Business customers can assign contracts to and unassigned them from projects.
   Configurable parameters withinIS7 may be:
   • user roles (buyers, approvers, project managers etc.)
   • workflows (custom order approval, price negotiations etc.)
   • transactions (requisitions, purchase orders etc.)
   • prices based on contracts
   • offerings (e.g. for all products of a selected commodity group or vendor)
   • conditions (specific budgets, defined periods)

A promotion is a marketing instrument with the intention to push the sales and to increase the customer satisfaction. A promotion applies to predefined customer segments, products and time periods. Specific discounts like reduced prices, bonus products, free shipping etc. can be offered via a promotion.

Different kinds of promotions are possible:

• Reduced prices apply irrespective of specific rules related to customer groups or shopping cart items
• Discounts related to customer groups and shopping cart items
• Discounts that apply with coupons only

A promotion code is an alphanumeric string or a number that entitles the owner (customer) to get the benefit of a promotion if the conditions are met.

The promotion code can be distributed to the customers via coupons.

Deprecated: use "apply" instead

Enfinity Suite 6 UI action to bring into effect the conditions and rules defined by a filter, view, rule, etc.