This page provides a Glossary of Infosys Equinox terms and concepts.


Infosys Equinox‘s Developer Portal references terms that are generally understood by those familiar with the Commerce industry. However, to avoid confusion about the use or context of terms referenced on this portal, the following list of terms and concepts and their associated definitions within the context of the Infosys Equinox platform are provided.

 

Term Definition Related Microservice(s)
Accounts (B2B)

Infosys Equinox‘s clients’ customers – users who browse and buy products from the business. In B2B, they are also referred to as the buyer organization.

Accounts
Account Rep A designated person assigned by the merchant (seller organization) to manage one (1) or more accounts (buyer organization). Accounts
Account Type Categorization of an account based on the industry to which it caters. Accounts
ACL An Access Control List (ACL) is a list of permissions attached to an object. An ACL specifies which users or system processes are granted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed on given objects.  
Address Management Service A service, usually provided by a third-party, that validates the address provided by the user for its correctness and suggests a more relevant address if the address seems to be an invalid one. Examples – QAS, UPS, etc. Cart
Admin UI An interface to manage the entire platform by managing businesses, services, stores associated with the business, and the individual microservices.  
Apache SOLR or SOLR An open-source enterprise search platform that

Infosys Equinox uses to enable real-time indexing and search capabilities such as full text, faceted etc.

Search, Catalog, Merchandising
Apache ZooKeeper or ZooKeeper A centralized service for maintaining configuration information, naming, providing distributed synchronization, and providing group services. All of these kinds of services are used in some form or another by distributed applications.  
API Application Programming Interface (API), which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other.  
Approval Workflow Enables separation of concerns between business users on who can author, edit the content and who can approve it before it gets live for external consumption Catalog, Merchandising, Pricing, Promotions
Asset/Creative An instance of a widget with specific properties (e.g. a Women’s Casual Dress Banner for a One Day Sale on Labor Day). Merchandising
ATP Available-to-Promise, which means the quantity of a specific stock-keeping unit (SKU) in the specific bin actually available for sale. Inventory
Attributes Refers to product variants (e.g. size, color, brand, etc.). Catalog
Authorization (Microservice) Manages Infosys Equinox user accounts. Authorization
Available Credit Limit The remaining credit available to an account after reducing previous credits from the credit limit allotted. Accounts
B2B A business model in which commerce transactions are carried out between two (2) businesses. In Infosys Equinox, the B2C or B2B mode of operations is controlled by the store type. Store
B2C A business model in which commerce transactions are carried out between a business and an end-customer (storefront user). In Infosys Equinox, the B2C or B2B mode of operations is controlled by the store type. Store
Backorder The ability to take an order for items that are not currently in stock and process it when the stock gets replenished. Inventory
Base Fee Default fee applicable to a shipping method. Any additional shipping charges at the cart or cart item levels will be added to the base fee. Cart, Shipping
Billing Address The Bill-To address to which payment information needs to be tied. Cart
Bin Items Product stock-keeping units (SKUs) added to Inventory bins. Inventory
Bin Containers for bin-items or stock-keeping units (SKUs). Inventory
Boost and Bury A mechanism by which the ranking of certain products or stock-keeping units (SKUs) is made higher or lower than others in the presentation layer. Search, Merchandising
Bundle Price The price of a group of certain related products sold together. Pricing
Bundles Allows merchants to group related products so that they can be presented and sold together. Generally, bundles require the purchaser to buy the entire bundle. See Collections. Catalog
Business Admin A Business Admin is a user who has administrative (full control) over implementation for a business they represent on Infosys Equinox. S/he is a superuser of the business with privileges sufficient to invite new users to the business, to create/update services, stores, roles, and to customize roles. Authorization
Business User A Business User is a user who has access only to certain privileges based on the role(s) assigned. For instance, if a business user is assigned with “Catalog Manager” role, s/he can only manage the catalogs. S/he will not have access to other services or stores. Similarly, a user can be given multiple roles under a business so that they can be both a “Catalog Manager” and a “Marketing Manager,” managing both Catalog and Promotion services. Authorization
Business A Business is typically a client who has signed up with Infosys Equinox to launch a commerce store or a digital experience. A Business is also the parent of a store or set of stores. The basic use of the Business is to manage common sets of users, catalogs, and other services for stores. Foundation, Store
Cache Clear A process to purges all active cache so that requests are fetched directly from its data source, refreshing the cache with updated data/content. See Cache.  
Cache In-memory storage of data and configuration information to improve site and platform performance. See Cache Clear.  
Cart-Checkout (Microservice) The important milestone in purchasing on a Commerce site is to add items to shopping bag (cart), apply for payments, and place orders. The cart module facilitates adding items to bag and the checkout module supports completion of payment and placing an order. These two (2) modules work closely together and are known as the cart-checkout microservice. Cart
Cart The cart provides consumers or buyers a place where they can gather items for purchase. The cart module facilitates this feature by allowing consumers to add and manage items in their cart. Also knows as the Shopping Bag. Cart
Catalog (Microservice) The Catalog microservice manages information about individual products and stock-keeping units (SKUs). Catalog
Category A set of similar or related products grouped together, e.g. Men’s Shoes – is a category with shoes where gender=’men’. Merchandising
Checkout When the consumer browses on the site, s/he needs a way to place an order. The checkout module facilitates this function by allowing consumers to make payment and place the order for the items added in the shopping bag or cart. Cart
CMS A content management system (CMS) manages the creation and modification of digital content. CMS features include Web-based publishing, format management, history editing, and version control, indexing, search, and retrieval. By their nature, CMS supports the separation of content and presentation. CMS, Catalog, Studio
Collections (Catalog) Similar to bundles, a collection is a group of related products. However, in a collection, the consumer can choose to purchase only a subset of products in the collection and is not required to purchase the entire set of products as is the case in bundles. See Bundles. Catalog
Consumers or Customers A buyer who browses and purchases products from his/her mobile, tablet or desktop device. Customers (User), Storefront
Content Editor A user who uploads/edits the contents such as images, data, videos in the content management systems through the content microservice. See CMS. CMS
Contract A document that contains some terms of the business relationship in terms of the catalog, price list, etc. that has been mutually agreed by both the buyer and the seller organizations. Every contract has an expiry date. Accounts
Credit Limit The maximum amount of credit that has been allotted to an account by the merchant (seller organization). Accounts
Custom Roles Customizing user roles with advanced user privileges. Authorization
Customer Journey The behavior of the customer in the Commerce site is popularly known as a customer journey. For instance, a customer lands on the site, moves to the women’s category, adds an item to the cart, moves to the kids section and adds two (2) items to cart and then buys these three (3) items that were added to the cart. All these actions of the customer in a single session is treated as a customer journey. A journey is a collection of actions by a customer on a site for a given period of time. Customers (User), Storefront
Customers (User) (Microservice) Provides customer-based functions for Cart, Payment, Orders, Loyalty, and Preferences management. Customers (User), Storefront
DAM Digital Asset Management. In the context of Infosys Equinox Commerce, this generally refers to the management of brand assets with a focus on the facilitation of content re-use throughout the platform. Here the content is largely marketing- or sales-related, for example, product imagery, logos, marketing collateral or fonts, to give a few examples. CMS, Catalog, Studio
Deep Link Use of a hyperlink that links to a specific, generally searchable or indexed, piece of web content on a website (e.g., http://domain/path/page), rather than the website’s home page (e.g., http://domain/).  
Default Locale The default locale is a configured locale used when a locale is not specified in an API request. See Locale. Catalog, Store, Search
Digital Assets Images, video, audio, PDFs, and other assets electronically stored, typically in a digital asset management (DAM) tool. See DAM. Catalog
Downloadable Product It is a type of a product e.g. digital product where the fulfillment can be instantly downloaded after an order is placed. See Physical product, Product, and Virtual product. Catalog
Drools Engine Drools is a business rules management system that Infosys Equinox uses to manage various rules for promotions and loyalty services.  
Editor Role Role set includes those privileges sufficient to perform view and edit operation in a service instance (e.g. Catalog, Promotion, etc.) Authorization
Editor An editor is a user role. Users belonging to the role can modify or create content and submit content for approval.  
End-Users (B2C) Infosys Equinox clients’ customers who browse and buy products on the client’s storefront. Customers (User)
Endpoint An endpoint refers to an application programming interface (API) resource that provides a response for a given request. Infosys Equinox Commerce endpoints are documented on this portal.  
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software varies, but refer generally to business management software that enables the tracking of inventory and resources, amongst other capabilities. Infosys Equinox integrates with ERP software to get the product and inventory details and to submit order information. Catalog, Inventory
Extensions Extensions in the context of Infosys Equinox Commerce refer to the enabling of new capabilities on the platform otherwise not available out of the box.  
Feed or Data Feed An ongoing stream of structured data that provides end-users or systems with updates of current information from one or more sources. Feeds
Filter Allows organizing and listing of products based on certain product tags. Catalog
Finance Manager An admin who manages finance related information in the Pricing microservice, for example.  
Floor Price The minimum price of a product below which it cannot be sold to a consumer. Pricing
Foundation Services A set of services that enable the management of a business, store, collections, and relevant store-service associations Business On-Boarding, Store
Fulfillment The process of picking items from the warehouse, packing, and shipping/distributing to consumers or buyers. Order
Group A set of related products can be grouped together so that they can be returned together on the product detail page. See also Bundles and Collections. Catalog
Happy Path Happy path testing is a well-defined test case using known input, which executes without exception, and produces an expected output.  
Headless Commerce The concept of supporting a Commerce frontend based on remote application programming interfaces (APIs) and platform services.  
Hidden Products A product that is not available to be shown in the category. the customer or buyer must have a deep link to view the product. Catalog
Instance A full deployment of Infosys Equinox Commerce platform that can be used to host one or more businesses.  
Internationalization The ability of the code to support different languages and locales. It mainly involves the code’s ability to support multiple language strings, date formats, currency, etc. See Locale.  
Inventory Transactions Actions performed on bin items, which impact the Available-to-Promise (ATP) and/or backorder quantity. Inventory
Inventory (Microservice) Enables a store manager (or related operations role) to monitor and manage inventory available for sale in the storefront. Inventory
List ACLs A list can be shared with friends and family and configured to be managed by users other than the list owners. Access control lists (ACLs) allow others to manage, delete, view and share lists. Lists
List Item Tags List Items can be tagged with either user-generated or business-enabled content, enabling items to be filtered and presented in various manners. List Management
List Items Products or stock-keeping units (SKUs) that have been saved for later purchasing, purchase consideration or sharing. Lists
List Tag A list can be tagged with user-generated content. This allows the user to identify the list for specific purposes or search for lists. For example, a customer may tag lists based on the type of items contained in it such as “household”, “clothing”, “toys” or “gifts”. Lists
List Used to keep track of products or stock-keeping units (SKUs) that are of interest to a customer or buyer. Lists are often referred to as “Favorites” or “Wishlist”. Lists
List (Microservice) Implements business and customer-facing features for creating, managing and maintaining user lists (a.k.a. wish lists) maintained in end-user accounts. Lists
Locale A set of parameters that defines the user’s language, region, currency, and date format. e.g. en_US refers to the English language, USA region, USD currency, and MM/DD/YYYY format. A set of possible locales is provided at the time of the deployment of the Instance. When a Store service is instantiated, a set of allowed locales for that store AND a default locale are identified by the administrator. See Default Locale, Localization and Internationalization. Store, Search, Storefront
Localization Translation of a software interface and messages to another language plus adaptation of some formats (e.g. measures, dates and currency) plus adaptation to local cultures. See Locale, Default Locale, and Internationalization.  
Manager Role A rule set that covers almost all available privileges in a Service instance. Authorization
Marketing Manager A user who manages promotions to market offers and discounts throughout the client’s Commerce site. Promotions
Master Catalog Master Catalog refers to the one single hierarchically highest catalog. Each instance of Catalog will always have a Master Catalog and may also have other sub-catalogs or sales catalogs. All Catalog data is first entered in the Master Catalog and may subsequently have different values in a sales catalog. Catalog
Memcache An in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, application programming interface (API) calls, or page rendering, intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.  
Merchandiser A user who manages the display of products or offers on the Commerce site with the goal of increasing sales. Catalog
Merchant (B2B) In B2B, Infosys Equinox‘s clients are the merchants also called the seller organization. Accounts
Microservice A self-contained application construct that is building block of a loosely coupled services architecture consisting of other microservices.  
Milestone A time period when an instance of Category/Site Navigation is expected to go live. A Category/Site Navigation can have multiple milestones. Merchandising
Model This describes the context of a promotion or offer type: SKU, Cart, Payment, User, Store, or Cookie. Promotions
MongoDB A free and open-source cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with schemas. See www.mongodb.com.  
Multitenant In a multi-tenancy architecture, multiple users (tenants) access the same application logic simultaneously. See Tenant.  
MySQL An open-source relational database management system. See www.mysql.com.  
Omni-Channel Cart A single cart experience across mobile and web visits to a client’s storefront and across multiple devices when the buyer is logged into the client’s online store. Cart
Omni-Channel Retail that integrates the different methods of shopping available to consumers (e.g., online, in a physical store, or by telephone). Cart
Operational Information Flow Information flows associated with the operational aspect of Commerce, such as information flows regarding the overall health of the system.  
Order (Microservice) The order encompasses order management, order tracking, and customer service. Additionally, it offers detailed reporting capabilities and interfaces seamlessly with all existing order fulfillment solutions. Order
Order Item Status The status of an item in an order (e.g. Submitted, Shipped, Returned, etc.). Note: Different actions are available for each item status. Order
Order Management The ability of Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) to manage orders, assist consumers, and help them resolve order-related issues. Customers (User), Order
Order on Behalf of Refers to the act of a Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) adding products to a consumer’s cart and placing an order on their behalf. Customers (User), Order
Payment Gateway A merchant service provided by a business used to process payments for orders. Cart
Payment Method (B2B) The method by which a buyer organization makes a payment to the seller organization (our client). In B2B, the payment method is usually against Credit or a Purchase Order (PO). Accounts
Payment Splits The act of splitting a single, but full payment amount, into two (2) or more simultaneous transactions made by different payment methods. Cart
Payment Terms (B2B) The number of days within which the buyer organization owes a payment to the seller organization (merchant) for credit used (i.e. purchases). Typically, payment terms expressed as NET30, NET45, etc.). Accounts
Payment Types Refers to available purchase payment methods (e.g. credit and debit card payments, cash, bank transfer, Apple Pay, Android Pay, etc.). Cart
Payments The act of making payments for products added to the consumer’s cart in order to place an order. Cart
Physical Product A product that has physical dimensions, size, shape, weight and therefore needs to be packed and shipped to a consumer. See Downloadable Product, Product, and Virtual Product. Catalog
Plug-Ins Typically, a third-party module or software component that can be configured to work with our products to add a specific feature or functionality, such as a payment processor.  
Postman A Google Chrome extension that acts as a REST client in a browser, allowing the user to create an application programming interface (API) requests and inspect responses.  
Predictive Search The Search user interface (UI) presents immediate results based on how prediction is (optionally) enabled for Search. Search
PREPROD PREPROD is short for Pre-Production. Infosys Equinox Studio offers four different environments: 1) DEV – Development; 2) STG – Staging; 3) PREPROD – Pre-Production and 4) PROD – Production. These environments enable the authors to create and manage experiences through different environments such that only finalized and approved items are published to the PROD environment. Studio
Presentation Layer This is the layer that manages the user interface, such a Commerce storefront presented in a browser or mobile app. The presentation layer relies on underlying data and logic layers that comprise the application “stack”. Studio
Price List Contains the prevailing price of a list of stock-keeping units (SKUs) and is always tied to a single currency. Pricing
Price Manager Manages pricing for catalogs. Catalog, Pricing
Price Type An attribute of the price list that enables the user to defined custom price types. Transaction Price would be there by default. The other price types can be added by the user (e.g. New year sale, year ending price, etc.). Pricing
Pricing (Microservice) Manages the prices of stock-keeping units (SKUs) via price-lists Pricing
Privileges Permission or right is given to a user role to perform an action in the admin console. Authorization
PROD PROD is short for Production. Infosys Equinox Studio offers four different environments: 1) DEV – Development; 2) STG – Staging; 3) PREPROD – Pre-Production and 4) PROD – Production. These environments enable the authors to create and manage experiences through different environments such that only finalized and approved items are published to the PROD environment. Studio
Product Enrichment Refers to the process of enriching the product data and imagery such that consumers receive sufficient product information to enable the consumer to make quick and informed decisions about purchasing the product. Catalog
Product Refers to an item that is manufactured and available for sale. Since a Product can have multiple variants, those variants are referred to as store keeping units (SKUs). For example, an “Oxford Classic Casual Shoe” would be a product, but a Black version of the shoe in size 9 shoe would be a SKU. See Downloadable Product, Physical Product, SKU, Virtual Product. Catalog
Production Generally, refers to a live, consumer-facing application state incorporating best-practices for performance, scalability, and security. Applications are promoted from the pre-production tier to the production tier, after validation and testing.  
Project The project is an entity through which any changes to the content need to be addressed and published via approval. Catalog, Pricing, Cart, Promotions
Promotion Group Container for individual promotions that are grouped logically based on an event or marketing campaign. Creation of a Promotion Group is required and must be defined before a Promotion can be created. Promotions
Promotions (Microservice) The microservice that supports the ability to define and manage offers presented to buyers or consumers on a client’s storefronts and apps. Promotions
Publisher A role in Infosys Equinox Studio that provides the user with the ability to publish the content created using Infosys Equinox Studio. Studio
Publishing The process of publishing content/data to a production environment. Catalog, Studio
Refunds The amount transferred back to a customer account on returning a product purchased from a store. The refunds could be made using the same payment method (e.g. Credit Card) or using an alternate payment method (e.g. Store Credit). Order
Returns The process of returning a product, purchased by a consumer, to a store. Order
Role A role is a function assumed or part played by a person. As such, it is a combination of different access privileges within Infosys Equinox. For example, an Editor role will have access to Infosys Equinox Studio where she/he can create digital experiences for the consumers. A Publisher role would have sufficient privileges to review and approve content created by an Editor.  
Rules Engine An environment that provides a flexible definition of business rules such as promotions. Infosys Equinox uses the Drools rules engine within its platform. Promotions
SEO Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a range of techniques that aid in promoting site content and products within search results for a Search Engine (e.g. Google, Bing, etc.). Analytics, Search
Shipping Address Ship-to-Address to which a product needs to be shipped. Cart
Shipping Class Classification of items for purposes of shipping cost calculation. This data usually flows into the shipping service from the catalog service. Catalog, Shipping
Shipping Method Indicates the different methods or modes of shipping supported by the shipping service associated with a store. Every shipping method will have one (1) or more shipping classes and a shipping cost associated with each of these classes (e.g. Standard Shipping, Express Delivery, etc.) Shipping
Shipping Zone A region to which shipping is supported by a store. This is a combination of the country and the zip code. Shipping restrictions to specific regions within a country can be managed using the zip codes. Shipping
Shop An act of purchasing a client’s product or services by consumers or end-users. Cart
Single Tenant In a single-tenancy architecture, the tenant purchases their own copy of the software and the software can be customized to meet the specific and needs of that client.  
Site Navigation The tree structure defines the categories/sub-categories etc. and how they are related so that the end-user can easily find products. Merchandising
Skava Stream Data management and orchestration layer that performs transformation and data capture for requests flowing through the Infosys Equinox Platform.  
Skava Studio A cloud-based design tool that allows users to create and manage engaging next-generation digital experiences with Commerce features across multiple devices, including native mobile applications, mobile web, tablet, and desktop. Studio
SKU Stock keeping unit (SKU) refers to a particular variant of a Product that is purchased by a consumer. Catalog, Inventory, Order, Promotions
Sorting Sorting refers to the order or sequence in which Categories/Products/SKUs are presented to consumers. Catalog
SSO Single Sign-On (SSO), an authentication process that allows an end-user to access multiple applications with one (1) set of login credentials.  
Staging A runtime tier that precedes the production or live state. Staging is typically used for QA and/or end-user testing.  
STG STG is short for Staging. Infosys Equinox Studio offers four different environments: 1) DEV – Development; 2) STG – Staging; 3) PREPROD – Pre-Production and 4) PROD – Production. These environments enable the authors to create and manage experiences through different environments such that only finalized and approved items are published to the PROD environment. Studio
Store A logical entity that is part of the Foundation microservice and is hierarchically a child of the Business entity. The Store entity has default properties such as Name, Store locale, Store type (B2C/B2B), Store Status and can also have any number of custom properties. The Store is the central entity that holds the association of all the microservices in order to deliver the complete e-commerce solution. It also acts as a specific physical location or an online store. Business Onboarding, Store

Store Manager

A role that has the privileges to manage/update the details of a Store.

Authorization

Storefront The consumer-facing website that presents products, content, and promotions across multiple channels.  
Studio Environments Infosys Equinox Studio offers four (4) different environments: 1) DEV – Development; 2) STG – Staging; 3) PREPROD – Pre-Production and 4) PROD – Production. These environments enable authors to create and manage experiences through different environments such that only finalized and approved items are published to the PROD environment. Each environment serves a distinct purpose to support the life cycle from development, testing, validation, and end-user production availability. Studio
Subcategory Frequently, there is a need to define hierarchically related subcategories inside a category for further classification (taxonomy) of the catalog, e.g. Category – Men, Subcategory – Shoes, Subcategory – Casual Shoes. See Category. Catalog
Subscription Percentage The percentage of discount applied when a particular stock-keeping unit (SKU) is subscribed. Price
Swagger Standard tools and specification used to describe a RESTful application programming interface (API) so that human-readable documentation and client examples can be generated automatically. Swagger aides in development across the entire API lifecycle, from design and documentation, to test and deployment.  
Synonym Mapping A technique for providing search terms that have a contextual relationship or other similarities to user search input, effectively allowing the display of results for ‘like’ words in addition to direct string matching approaches. For example, a user’s search for “Dress” could yield suggestions/results for ‘Skirts’, where “Skirt” is set up as a synonym for the term “Dress”. Search
Taxonomy The classification of products using categories and subcategories to enable the end-users to browse and find items easily for faster purchase. Catalog
Template (Merchandising) A property that will be provided to the storefront which will indicate how the product list pages (PLPs), department pages, product detail pages (PDPs), etc. will be presented. Merchandising
Tenant A group of users who share a common access with specific privileges to a software instance. See Multi-tenancy.  
Threshold Limit A limit (number) in the inventory count at which either out-of-stock or low inventory alerts can be triggered. Inventory
Timeline Provides a complete view of milestones within a Category/Site navigation. Since the changes in merchandising are very dynamic, it is essential to view a timeline that shows the different milestones and when they go into effect. Merchandising
Transaction Price The price at which the particular item is sold. The pricing service allows multiple prices and offers the ability to define the specific price which will be used for the sale as well as what label should be attached to that price. Pricing
Transactional Information Flow The information flow associated with the consumer’s browse-purchase-customer-service transaction flow.  
Typeahead Search Aids in predicting search terms during entry by recommending synonyms or words having related spelling / lexical relationships. Search
Variable Price Products, such as gift cards, that can be purchased at a price chosen by consumer choice (e.g. 10, 25, 50, etc.). Pricing
Variant A version of a product that differs in some respect from other versions of the same product. For example, a shoe called “Oxford Classic” available in different colors and sizes. Pricing
Versioning (Content) When creating/editing content, the system will automatically maintain different versions upon editing. Each version must be processed through established workflows for approval and ultimately publishing. Previous versions of content can be utilized allowing editors to “Rollback” content to a previously desired version in the case where it is required.  
Viewer Role A role that includes only those privileges sufficient to allow a user to View a service instance and its data. Authorization
Virtual Product A product that is distributed electronically, e.g. a digital gift card. See Downloadable product, Physical product, and Product. Catalog
Visual Merchandising The ability to highlight certain ‘featured items’ (boost) within a product category and also to de-emphasize certain products (bury) using convenient drag and drop user interface. Catalog
Widget A webpage component developed by UX (user experience) developers (e.g. a Banner widget, Video widget, etc.). Merchandising




Revision History
2019-03-17 | JP – Minor copyedits.
2019-06-08 | PLK – Minor copyedits.
2019-01-24 | PLK – Content uploaded.