What Family Export in Akeneo Serenity Shows Completeness Attributes
If you've ever run a family export in Akeneo Serenity and wondered why some attributes appear tied to completeness calculations while others don't, you're not alone. The relationship between family exports and completeness attributes is one of the more nuanced areas of Akeneo's product information management (PIM) system — and understanding it properly changes how you structure your catalog data.
What Is a Family in Akeneo Serenity?
In Akeneo Serenity, a family is a group of attributes that defines the structure of a set of products. Every product belongs to exactly one family, and that family determines which attributes apply to those products, which are required, and how completeness is calculated.
When you export a family, you're not just exporting a list of attribute codes. You're exporting the entire structural definition — including which attributes are marked as required for completeness across each channel and locale combination.
What the Family Export File Actually Contains
The family export in Akeneo Serenity produces a CSV or XLSX file depending on your export profile configuration. That file typically includes:
- The family code and label
- All attribute codes associated with the family
- The attribute_as_label designation (which attribute serves as the product display name)
- The attribute_as_main_media designation
- Completeness-required attributes, broken down by channel and locale
The completeness columns are the critical part for anyone managing product enrichment workflows. They follow a naming pattern like:
requirements-[channel_code]-[locale_code] So if you have a channel called ecommerce and a locale of en_US, the completeness requirements column would appear as requirements-ecommerce-en_US.
How Completeness Attributes Are Represented in the Export 📋
Inside those requirements columns, you'll find a list of attribute codes separated by commas. These are the attributes that must be populated on a product for it to reach 100% completeness for that specific channel-locale combination.
Important distinction: An attribute can belong to a family without being required for completeness. Membership in the family and requirement for completeness are two separate settings. The export reflects both:
- All family attributes appear under the
attributescolumn - Only completeness-required attributes appear in the
requirements-[channel]-[locale]columns
This means you can have a family with 40 attributes, but only 12 of them driving the completeness score for your main e-commerce channel in English.
Why Channel and Locale Matter for Completeness
Akeneo Serenity's completeness model is deliberately multi-dimensional. A product might need a short description for a mobile app channel but a long description plus a video URL for a full web storefront. Those differences are reflected directly in the family configuration — and therefore in the export.
| Export Column | What It Shows |
|---|---|
attributes | Every attribute code in the family |
requirements-ecommerce-en_US | Attributes required for 100% completeness on that channel/locale |
requirements-print-fr_FR | A completely different set of requirements for print in French |
attribute_as_label | Which attribute is used as the product's display name |
When you import a modified family export back into Akeneo, changes to these requirements columns directly update which attributes count toward completeness — making the export/import cycle a powerful tool for bulk-managing catalog requirements across large teams.
The Difference Between Scopable, Localizable, and Global Attributes
The completeness columns in the export interact with attribute scope and localization settings:
- Global attributes (not scopable, not localizable) appear once in requirements and apply across all channels and locales
- Scopable attributes must be specified per channel in the requirements
- Localizable attributes must be specified per locale within each channel
This layering is why two different requirements- columns for the same channel might look slightly different depending on how each attribute is configured. A non-localizable attribute required on the ecommerce channel will appear in every locale column for that channel. A localizable attribute might only be required in specific locales.
Variables That Shape What Your Export Looks Like 🔍
No two family exports look identical because several configuration factors influence the output:
- Number of channels activated in your Serenity instance — more channels means more
requirements-columns - Number of active locales per channel — each locale generates its own completeness column
- How many attributes are scoped to completeness vs. informational only — this is a product team decision, not a system default
- Whether family variants are in use — variant families (used for products with variations like size or color) have their own completeness logic, separating requirements at the common level from requirements at the variant level
- Export profile settings — some export profiles are scoped to specific channels or locales, which may filter which requirements columns appear
Family Variants and Completeness in the Export
If your catalog uses family variants (Akeneo's structure for product models with variations), the completeness picture becomes more layered. Attributes at the common level of a product model and attributes at the variant level are tracked separately.
The family export for a variant family will reflect which attributes live at which level of the hierarchy and which ones are required for completeness at each level. This is particularly relevant in commerce contexts where a parent product (the model) carries shared attributes like brand or material, while child variants carry SKU-specific data like size or color.
Getting this structure right in the family configuration — visible in the export — directly affects whether your product completeness scores reflect enrichment reality or give misleading signals to your merchandising team.
What the Export Doesn't Tell You
The family export is a structural snapshot. It shows which attributes are required for completeness, but it doesn't show:
- How many products in that family are currently incomplete
- Which specific products are missing which attributes
- Completeness percentages at the product level
That data lives in the product export, completeness dashboard, and API endpoints — not in the family export itself.
The right way to use the family export for completeness work depends entirely on what you're trying to accomplish: auditing your requirements structure, migrating families between environments, onboarding new channel requirements, or troubleshooting unexpected completeness scores. Each of those scenarios uses the same export file but focuses on different columns — and what counts as "correct" in the export is always relative to your catalog's channel architecture and business rules.