CIF Configuration not available

Hello,

I'm an intern and my current task is to setup the CIF addon and the Venia project. While I was able to install both the project and core components, when I try to access Venia store through Commerce icon in AEM I get the following response:

I've double checked the installation files regarding author and publish instances, the bundles for the venia project and cif core components are installed and active. I've asked my superior if I needed to have Commerce installed and he gave me no as an answer. He said that I could use/set venia.magento.com as an environment variable and it should work fine. It didn't. I've also tried to follow the steps of this link:

https://www.tothenew.com/blog/install-and-configure-the-cif-add-on-in-aem-to-connect-venia-store/

But was unable to set it up. Do I need to install Adobe Commerce or is it really not necessary? How can I set up my commerce endpoint and environment variable so I'm able to access commerce through AEM? Any hints on where is the problem or how can I look for logs to find the problem?