Catalog Items

Generally you will create a catalog item for each item on your price list which has electronically deliverable components. You then associate one or more products with each catalog item.

The most common and most generally useful approach is to create subscription catalog items, which include ongoing product updates (maintenance). This type of catalog item is not version specific. It may include more than one product, each of which will be updated separately based on the effective and expiration dates of the product and the entitlement to the catalog item. It is not necessary to create a separate catalog item for the initial sale, which includes one year maintenance and the subsequent sale of maintenance agreements, since these catalog items will behave the same way. However, if you want to maintain a 1:1 mapping between your price list and the catalog items, you can create different catalog items with ID’s and names which correspond to your “initial sale” and “maintenance” price list items.

Under certain circumstances the manufacturer may also want to create catalog Items which specifically exclude updates (non-subscription catalog items), or make the associated products unavailable after the expiration date of the entitlement (temporary products), for example to deliver beta or evaluation versions.