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Metrics type: Supporting MetricsCategory: Ecommerce Platform
The count of Salesforce Commerce Cloud products with the storefront online flag set to false, products that exist in the catalog but are not visible to shoppers.

At a glance

The number of Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC, formerly Demandware) products whose storefront online flag is set to false, meaning they exist in the catalog but are not displayed or purchasable on the storefront. SFCC separates “exists in catalog” from “visible to shoppers” via this online flag, so a product can be fully configured, priced, and stocked yet still be invisible because the flag is off. This card surfaces how much of your catalog is sitting dark, which can be deliberate (seasonal, draft) or an oversight (a product that should be live but is not).

Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Salesforce Commerce Cloud data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

Worked example

A retailer on a single SFCC B2C realm with a catalog of 62,600 products (masters plus variants). Snapshot taken 12 Mar 26. Three things to notice:
  1. 3,700 offline products is not automatically a problem, but the 400 “no clear reason” rows are. Most of the offline count is deliberate: seasonal pull-downs, drafts, and discontinued lines. The 400 with no obvious reason are the ones to chase, each could be a finished product that simply never had its online flag flipped, which is silent lost revenue.
  2. The discontinued bucket (1,200) is a housekeeping decision, not a fault. Keeping retired products offline preserves order history and SEO redirects while removing them from the storefront. That is a legitimate pattern. It does inflate this card’s headline, so a slowly rising offline count can simply reflect catalog age rather than a new problem.
  3. A sudden spike points at a catalog import or feed. If this number jumps overnight, a PIM sync or catalog feed likely toggled online flags in bulk. That is the most common cause of an unexpected swing and is worth verifying against the last import run. Pair with Total Products to see whether the total moved too.
  4. Offline is not the same as out of stock. None of these 3,700 are necessarily out of stock, and an out-of-stock product can still be online and visible. To find products that are visible but unbuyable, use Out-of-Stock Products instead, the two cards catch different leaks.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Reconciling against Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Where to look in Business Manager: SFCC’s admin tool is Business Manager, at a per-realm URL like https://<realm>.business.demandware.net. To inspect the online flag:
  • Merchant Tools, Products and Catalogs, Products: the product list. Use the Online filter to show products that are online=false. The result count in the list header is the figure this card reports (scoped to the same catalog / site context).
  • Open any product and check the Online setting on its General tab. SFCC lets you set online status, and optionally online-from / online-to dates for scheduled visibility, which is how seasonal products go dark automatically.
  • Catalog context matters: the online flag is evaluated per site/catalog, so confirm you are filtering in the same catalog scope this card uses before comparing counts.
Set the Online filter to “No” and read the header count to reconcile against the card. Why our number may legitimately differ from Business Manager:

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Is a high offline count bad? Not by itself. A lot of offline products is normal for a mature catalog: seasonal lines pulled down, drafts in progress, and discontinued products kept for history. What matters is whether any of them should be online and are not. Read the number against your own baseline and investigate sudden jumps. What is the difference between offline and out of stock? Offline means the storefront online flag is false, the product is hidden from shoppers regardless of stock. Out of stock means the product may still be visible but has no available inventory. They are separate states with separate fixes: flip a flag versus replenish stock. This card covers only the offline case. A product I expected to be live is in this count. Why? The most common reasons are: its online flag was never flipped after setup, a scheduled online-from date has not arrived yet, a catalog feed toggled it off, or it was unassigned from the storefront catalog. Open it in Business Manager and check the Online setting and any online-from / online-to dates first. Can a product be offline on one site but online on another? Yes. SFCC evaluates the online flag in a catalog / site context, so a multi-site realm can have a product live on the US site and offline on the UK site. When reconciling, make sure you are comparing the same site scope this card is counting. Does taking a product offline delete it or its order history? No. Offline only hides the product from the storefront. The catalog record, its SKUs, and all historical orders referencing it remain intact. That is exactly why merchants keep discontinued products offline rather than deleting them. Why did this number spike after a catalog import? Bulk imports and PIM syncs frequently set online flags as part of the payload. A misconfigured feed can switch a whole category offline in one run. A sudden jump in this card right after an import is the classic signature, verify against the last job and roll back the flags if it was unintended. Is this real-time? Yes. It reflects the current catalog online state, recomputed as flags change. There is no period selector, the time window is RT.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Offline Products (online=false) is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Salesforce Commerce Cloud and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.