Akinon App Store: Revolutionizing Digital Commerce

A stitch in time saves nine!

We’ve all heard it, and in eCommerce, it couldn’t be truer. Leave a small gap in your platform’s capabilities, and before you know it, that “tiny fix” becomes a full scale project eating up time and budget. You want to launch a new payment method? That’s weeks of development. Need a loyalty program? Better block your calendar for testing and integration. Every upgrade feels like starting from scratch.

But what if adding these features was as simple as installing an app on your phone? No long waits, no heavy coding, just click, configure, and go live. That’s exactly what Akinon has made possible with its App Store.

Excited to know more about App Store? Let’s dive in!

Understanding the Akinon App Store

The Akinon App Store is a marketplace of ready to use applications designed to extend your digital commerce capabilities without the usual complexity of lengthy development cycles. It also lets you build custom applications that work easily within your Akinon Commerce Cloud (ACC) environment, creating a powerful eCommerce solution tailored to your specific business needs.

Beyond custom development, you can explore a wide range of ready to use omnichannel applications, from those developed by Akinon to apps created by other developers and partner organizations, and instantly download them to unlock new growth opportunities. You can even distribute your own applications to other organizations through the App Store, becoming part of an exciting growth journey, building a thriving app business, or simply delivering value and delight to others.

How the Akinon App Store Works: Development to Deployment

For an application to be published on the App Store, Akinon recommends certain criteria. Below are some of them:

1. Code & Infrastructure Standards

• Use Git for version control, keeping repositories private and secure.
  
• Applications should integrate easily with Akinon’s provided infrastructure, including Postgre, Redis, CDN, Elasticsearch, and email services.
  
• Follow an Everything as a Code (EaC) approach. For example, database schema changes should be automated through tools like Liquibase, never applied manually.
  

2. Build Requirements

• Builds must be clean and repeatable, using dependency managers such as NPM, Maven, or Setuptools.
  
• Prepare applications to run in containerized environments. All necessary build artifacts should be stored for deployment.
  

3. Testing & Quality Gates

• All unit tests must pass automatically during the build process. Failed tests block further stages.
  
• Run static code analysis to identify and fix vulnerabilities or code issues before release.
  

4. Release & Versioning

• Each release must be properly versioned and tagged, ensuring traceability.
  
• Configuration values should be declared in an akinon.js file to define required and optional parameters for installation.
  

5. Deployment Guidelines

• Applications must:
  
  • Run statelessly (no dependency on local session storage)
    
  • Support multiple instances
    
  • Listen on port 8008 for web services
    
    
• Handle shutdown signals (SIGTERM) gracefully, completing cleanup within 1 minute.
  

6. API & Integration Standards

• Use RESTful APIs at least at Level 2 of the Richardson Maturity Model.
  
• Create service points that comply with _open-api 2.0>_ standards and in the _<u>/open-api_ endpoints.
  

7. Observability & Logging

• Forward or inject an X-Trace-Id header (UUID format recommended) for tracking requests.
  
• Write application logs to the console. These logs can be accessed in real time or at intervals via the user panel and metric/log addon.
  

8. User Interface Compliance

• Any application with a user-facing interface must follow Akinon’s UI guidelines.
  
• Applications will be reviewed for UI compliance, and Akinon may request an active account to test the app during the review process.
  

By following these guidelines, developers can make sure that their applications are secure, high performing, and ready for seamless deployment across the Akinon Commerce Cloud ecosystem.

How to Install Applications from the App Store in ACC

One of the best parts about the Akinon App Store is how easy it is to bring new capabilities into your commerce environment. Instead of lengthy integration projects, installing an app in Akinon Commerce Cloud (ACC) is just a few quick steps:

Select App Store from the left side menu. You will be guided to the Application Catalog, where the process of installing applications into a project starts. The whole procedure consists of only four steps. The process begins with the selection of an App, then choosing a project, and after that, configuring application settings, and finally proceeding with the installation.

1. In the Application Catalog, you will find both public and private applications. There are options to search and filter applications based on criteria like “Application Name,” “Application Provider,” and “Category.” Here, the Application Provider is the account under which the application was created, and the category is the type of application.
   
2. You can view only your applications by filtering the list. Select Show only my applications checkbox. Otherwise, public applications from other accounts will also appear in the list.
   
3. Click on any application card from the list to proceed to the next step.
   
4. Once selected, you’ll be taken to the application’s launch page, where you can choose the project in which you want to use the app.
   
5. If the application has a dependency on another app, a dynamic dropdown will appear alongside the project selection, allowing you to pick the related app as well.
   
6. On the application’s launch page, you’ll find images uploaded during its creation along with key details such as an overview, technical specifications, release notes, and support information. The Release Notes section outlines the latest updates and changes introduced in the most recent version.
   
7. To begin installation, open the Select Project dropdown and choose the project where you’d like to install the application. This menu lists all available projects within your account.
   
8. Once a project is selected, click Configure Application Values to move on to the next step.
   
9. The Application Values page lets users provide the specific configuration values required by the app. These values are defined by the application owner in the “akinon.json” file during migration and are displayed dynamically on this page based on their conditions.
   
10. In some cases, no values may be needed. However, when applicable, anyone installing the application within a project must fill them in. Depending on the app’s requirements, these fields may be either mandatory or optional.
    
11. Once the necessary values are entered, click Save and Continue to proceed to the installation step.
    
12. Next, a page appears providing the summary of all the actions completed in the previous steps. If needed, you can go back to the respective tabs to make adjustments.
    
13. Once everything looks accurate, click Install to begin the application deployment. After installation, a confirmation message will appear.
    
14. To review the details of the project where the application was installed, simply click View Project.
    
15. Deployment may differ from app to app. While some install automatically, others require the application owner to trigger deployment.
    
    

Conclusion

The Akinon App Store takes the complexity out of extending your commerce platform. With ready to use apps and seamless deployment, businesses can scale faster without getting stuck in heavy development work. It creates opportunities for both developers and brands to collaborate and innovate. Simply put, it’s a powerful step toward building agile, future ready digital commerce.