Our client would like to be able to give out a preconfigued URL (URL with GET param, similar to affiliate partner URL) to their customers and for customers who visit the catalog through that URL to be able to see only a subset of products in that catalog.
I have noticed it is possible in ICM 7.10 to create affiliate partner and programs which generate specific URLs and it is also possible to define a catalog view which exclude certain products from the catalog for a targeted group of customers or customer segments but it is not possible to exclude products from the catalog for a partner.
Is there some other out-of-the-box platform functionality which would allow our client to assign a certain catalog view based on the URL which customer has used to visit the catalog or do we need to implement a fully customized solution to achieve this?
Yeah, this is not possible with affiliate links.
You'll need to write some custom code, but it might not be that difficult. The usergroups list (customer segments) that the user belongs to are kept in the session object (T_CurrentUserUserGroupKeys). See WebshopPGIDProvider it puts the user by default in the everyone group. You can write a pipeline that puts the customer in a segment by updating this list so that you can then use the segment for the catalog view. Just remember to do this before the pgid is generated.