1. Contents
  2. Guides
  3. Product data
  4. Configuring properties

Configuring properties

This guide adds a new attribute to your range: as a field on every product, filled from the supplier file or by hand, and in the shop wherever your system shows attributes. The route has two venues, the settings and the individual product, plus one assignment each in the import and in the upload. What properties are for and when a built-in field serves better is under properties (concepts).

Prerequisites

  • The value does not already exist as a built-in field. Dimensions, weight, EAN and a few more are present on the product and have their fixed counterpart in the shop. The checklist is under properties (concepts).
  • For the way into the shop: a channel that has been set up, with a task uploading products.

An opened option property in the settings, name and group at the top, below them the checkboxes and the option list with five gloss levels

Step by step

  1. Create it. Open Settings and there the Properties button, then the tab of the object type, here Products. The New button opens a menu with the seven types. The type is fixed once the property is created. The rule of thumb: values that repeat belong in an Option, values with a unit such as "0.75 l" are Text.

  2. Set name and group. In the detail view you enter the Name the field carries on the product. It has to be unique per object type. Through the Group field you hang the property into a collapsible block of the detail page. Without a group it sits in front of all blocks, permanently visible. You create a new group with New Group above the group tabs and rename it in the field above the list.

  3. On an option, set up the option list. Auto Fill is set: the list is filled during the import from the delivered values, you do not type them. Where several sources deliver the same value in different spellings, tick Ignore Case Sensitive and Ignore Whitespace, otherwise every spelling becomes an entry of its own. By default the list keeps itself in alphabetical order. For an order that follows the goods, pack sizes say, where "10 l" does not belong before "2.5 l", untick Sort Alphabetically and order through Move Up and Move Down. That order is also the one the shop shows the values in.

  4. Fill it. By hand that happens on the product, in the Properties section, with the input field of the respective type. An empty field does no harm. Where the value comes from the supplier file, an assignment belongs into the import's transfer plan instead: the file's column as the source, the property as the target. The source list only offers columns whose data type fits the property's type.

  5. Take it into the shop. For that the property needs its mapping on the channel and its assignment in the transfer plan, and the systems distribute this work differently: with some the plan arises from the mapping by itself (TriData, for instance), with others the upload task additionally needs its own assignment, or nothing arrives (Shopware, for instance). What applies to your system, and which section the property goes into, is on its page under channels and tasks. If a property only serves your own ordering, simply leave it out here. It then stays in TRADElube.

Checking the result

  • The field sits on every product in the Properties section, at the place group and position dictate.
  • On an option, the option list in the settings carries the delivered values after the first execution, each exactly once and in the intended order.
  • In the shop the attribute appears after the next execution of the upload task, on the products carrying a value.

Frequent pitfalls

  • The type is fixed once created. A number created as text in step 1 only shows up in the transfer plan, because the source list is filtered by data type. The only remedy is to create the property anew and reassign it. The minute of thought beforehand is cheaper.
  • The assignment in the upload gets forgotten. Without the assignment from step 5 the property is filled in TRADElube and absent from the shop, and no execution fails over it, because from the transfer's point of view nothing is wrong. If you miss the attribute in the shop, check that row first.
  • What the import assigns, the file maintains. A value changed by hand in step 4 on an imported product is overwritten again by the next execution transferring the row. Properties the import does not fill are the ones maintained by hand.

Further reading