Automatic Links

The Automatic Links page allows you to use Quable PIM's powerful rule engine to specify conditions for automatically linking uploaded assets to your existing documents or variants.

The page displays a list of your existing automatic link rules (if any) and action buttons to add, edit, or delete rules.

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Coding skills may be required to create automatic link rules since the process includes creating a regular expression (regex) and two JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) statements.

Rules

Automatic links are based on rules that dynamically creates association between your documents/variants and assets based on part of the uploaded asset's name (a regular expression defined when creating the rule for the link). All assets that should be linked via a specific automatic link rule must be named according to the pattern defined in the rule.

When an asset is uploaded, Quable PIM interprets the regular expression defined in the rule, and searches for a document or variant that corresponds to the rule's conditions. If a match is found, the association is made.

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Each automatic link rule is limited a single document type. You must create distinct rules for each document type that you want automatically linked with uploaded assets.

Naming Convention

Automatic link rules depend on regular expressions to interpret the name of uploaded assets and know which document type to associate them with. This requires that the names of your assets follow a specific pattern.

There are no limitations on your overall pattern, however, a document identifier must be included in the asset name. A document identifier is a string of alphanumeric characters that identify a document (document's code or attribute value). This enables Quable PIM to identify the document type to be linked.

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There is no specific format required, but it's highly recommended to keep your naming convention as simple as possible. Your Quable PIM Product Manager can provide you a template to help you create your own naming convention.

Example 1

You want to automatically link assets to your product document type with the product_main_pictures link type. Your Quable PIM administrator has created an automatic rule to look for this naming convention:

The rule looks for:

• segments with specific data types,
• separated by underscores ( _ ), and
• a file extension.

The following table provides a breakdown of the segments in this example.

To comply with this rule for an automatic link, your assets could be named:

As long as the name of the assets are in the correct format and include the document type code and the number 1, the assets will automatically be linked to the correct documents.

Example 2

You want to automatically link assets to to your product document type with the product_pictures link type. Your Quable PIM administrator has created an automatic rule to look for this naming convention:

The rule looks for:

• segments with specific data types,
• separated by parenthesis ( ( ) ) and a hyphen (- ), and
• a file extension.

The following table provides a breakdown of the segments in this example.

To comply with this rule for an automatic link, your assets could be named:

Create Rules

To create an automatic link rule, click the New Rule button. A form is displayed to define the automatic link rule.

The form requires the following pieces of information:

• Slug - identifies the rule
• Event - indicates the action that triggers the rule
• Rule if - defines the conditions to meet
• Rule then - defines the action to take

This information is combined to create a JSON statement that Quable PIM interprets to make the automatic link. Each piece of information is described in the following sections.

Slug

The Slug is a human-readable identifier for the automatic link rule. This is typically a name which should be as descriptive as possible.

Event

Importing an asset into Quable PIM is a distinct Event. This is what triggers the automatic link rule to take effect.

Rule if

The Rule if section defines a JSON statement with the conditions that must be met for the rule to apply:

Rule then

The Rule then section defines a JSON statement with the action to take if the conditions defined in the Rule if statement are met:

Example

You have a product document type with an attribute whose code is color. The attribute has two possible values (red, blue). To link the blue.jpg asset to all documents of the product type with blue as the value for the color attribute, your rule would look like:

Rule if statement:

{
    "target_document_type": "product",
    "target_value_type": "eav",
    "target_value": "color",
    "rule": "equal",
    "from_value_regex": "\/^([a-zA-Z0-9]*)\\.[jpg|png]\/",
    "from_value_type": "originalfilename",
    "from_value": ""
}

Rule then statement:

{
"action": "createXObject",
"document_type": "article_images_media",
"side_entity": "target"
}

Edit Rules

You can modify an automatic link rule by selecting one from the list and clicking the Edit button. The information form is displayed.

When you've finished making modifications, click the Apply button to save your changes or the Back button link to return to the Automatic Links page without saving the changes.

Delete Rules

To delete an automatic link rule, select one from the list and click the Remove button. A dialog is displayed to cancel or confirm the deletion.

Click Yes to delete the rule or No to cancel the deletion.

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Attention

This action is irreversible. Once an automatic link rule has been deleted, it can't be recovered.