Managing Variation Products

Variation Products relate the current product to a set of similar products which vary with respect to their values for one or more attributes, referred to as variation attributes. To define variation products:

  1. Locate or create the product to act as variation master.
    For details, see Locating Products.
  2. Click the name of the product.
    The General tab of the Standard Product dialog is displayed.
  3. Change to the Variations tab.
    This displays all variation attributes and variation products that have already been defined.
    Note: Variation masters shared from the master repository can be edited only in the master repository.
  4. In the Variable Variation Attributes section, click the name of the variation attribute to be edited, or click New to add a new variation attribute.
    This displays the Variable Attribute dialog.
    Note: Product attributes must be maintained in the individual variation products, not in the master.
  5. Edit the details as required and click OK.
    The required details include name, ID, and variation selection. For the variation selection, the following options are currently available:

    • Default: Displays a selectbox that includes the attribute values to select from.

    • Swatch Image: Displays a "swatch image" that represents the attribute values to select from.

    • Default and Swatch Image: Displays a selectbox that includes the attribute values as well as a "swatch image" that represents the attribute values to select from.

    • HTML Color Code: Displays a color map that represents the attribute values to select from.

    • Default and HTML Color Code: Displays a selectbox that includes the attribute values as well as a color map that represents the attribute values to select from.

    Note: For Swatch Image and HTML Color Code, the additional attribute Product Attribute Name is required for each variation product in order to manage the individual attribute values to select from.
    Repeat this step for additional variation attributes. Note that the system uses the attribute display name you provide here for display purposes only, for example in the drop-down list used to offer variation products to storefront users. The attribute names do not have to be identical to attribute names defined for standard and custom attributes of the products. The system uses only the ID to match variation attributes against standard and custom product attributes.
  6. In the Variation Products section, click New to either assign variation products manually or to create variation products based upon variation types.
    To assign manually, choose the products from the list view and click Finish. To create variation products based upon variation types, choose the variation type you would like to use. Click Finish to start a batch process that creates the variation products accordingly.
  7. The selected or created products are now displayed in a table.
    For each product, the system matches the IDs of the variation attributes against the IDs of the attributes defined on selected variation products. If the variation attribute exists on the selected variation product, the table displays the respective attribute value.
    Note: Variation attributes have to be added to the search index. In order for the changes to take effect, the search index must be rebuilt. For general information on working with search indexes, see Managing Search Indexes. For more detailed information on how to configure the product search index, refer to Cookbook - Product Search Configuration (Intershop Support login required).
    Note: The indexing process looks for index attributes that have a ProductVariationAVdata provider assigned and will index the variation attribute values of all variations as a list of values at the product master. In other terms the variation products themselves are not indexed as separate products.
  8. In the Default column of the Variation Products table, select the default variation product.
Note: If you set a local (not shared) default variation product to offline, another variation product automatically becomes the default variation. In case no online variation product exists, the master variation product will be set to offline as well.
Note: If you set a shared variation product to offline, the master is not affected. Also no new default variation product will be set.
Tip: The above mentioned information refers to the online/offline status of variation products only. For general information, see Setting Product Online Status.