Can you use BCS External Content Types in conjunction with Product Catalogs in 2013?

Question

Does anybody know if it is possible to use an External Content Type as the basis for a Product Catalog in SharePoint 2013? So if we store a load of Product data in a database are we then able to surface this in a SharePoint Product catalog via BCS and then use Content By Search / Cross Site Publishing to push this content on to web pages?

I'm thinking this probably isn't possible - if not what's the best approach to achieving this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

When you create a catalog connection in SharePoint 2013, the following items get configured for you automatically:

• Result Source
• Managed Navigation
• Catalog Category Page
• Catalog Item Page

When using BCS External Content Types, you have to configure all of the items above manually but it is definitely possible. These are some high-level steps:

• Create the external content types, make sure to set a Title field and default action url
• Crawl external content, create new managed properties as needed
• Create result sources by building search queries that only returns items for specific external content types
• Create catalog category and item pages, add and configure search web parts
• Link your catalog pages to site navigation

The following blog post should get you started: Business Connectivity Services, External Content Types and Content By Search in SharePoint 2013 – Part 1. The next blog post will show how to consume the external content on the publishing site using search web parts.