6. Items

The Items tab is used for all your product or service maintenance duties. You can do such things as maintain existing items by changing prices, changing descriptions, adding new products, deleting discontinued items and so on. Because Interchange is flexible, the Item page can be configured to display many different things, such as regular products, services such as hourly units of consulting, downloadable products, documents in reference related sites and so on. In the Interchange Demo the Items area of the Interchange Users Interface (UI) contains 2 primary screens. Item List is the default (the one that comes up when you click on the Items tab or link from some where else within the UI), and Create New Item. Each screen is accessible by clicking on its respective tab.

If you look at the first screen below, the Item List screen, you will see the standard UI layout... that is the upper and lower common areas which we discussed in a previous chapter, then starting from the top and working down there is a ROW OF TABS, starting with Orders, Customers, Items and so on. Think of these tabs as your navigation menu within the UI. Each of these tabs when clicked on will take you to the respective area. Once again it is important to remember that because Interchange is configurable, the tabs you see below may not be the ones you are looking at on your screen. But more than likely they will be similar.

Next as we continue downward on the demo screen is a Search Window. We also discussed these in an earlier chapter, but search windows will be used a little differently in each screen so lets take a minute to describe the use of this one.

"Limit with search" - Use this window to find a particular Item or group of Items. You can enter multiple criteria into this window to help narrow the search. For example, if you are looking for a certain type of nail, but are not sure which one, simply type in “nail” in the search window, all products that have the string “nail” somewhere in their record will be returned. If you know that the product is a nail and cost is exactly 13.99, you can enter “nail 13.99” and it will return all products which contain the string “nail” AND have a string of numbers = 13.99 somewhere in the record. (usually in the price field but could be in the SKU, or other fields depending on your business rules)

Below the Search Window in the Demo you see 2 tabs, Item List, and Create New Item. In some cases, as in the IC Demo you may see a 3rd tab, edit. As I mentioned in earlier chapters, the edit button is not to be taken lightly, and unless you have had some training with it leave it alone. In many cases your Interchange developer will have removed these edit links. Each of the 2 tabs that I just mentioned will take you to a different Item Screen. So lets discuss each one in turn.

6.1 Item List

The Item List screen displays a list of Items. This is also the default Item screen, and the default list of Items. That simply means that when you click on the Item tab from anywhere in the User Interface (UI), you will come initially to the Item List screen. The “default list” part of that statement means that when items are added, or when an employee creates them using the Create New Item screen, they are placed on the Item List by default.

Once Interchange has placed a record of an Item into the Item List location, it will stay there until you do something with it. Normally you will leave it in Item Lists while the Item is … well, active. An Item will probably remain in the Active status until some business rule set by your company dictates that the Item status be changed. Interchange offers you 2 potential Item states, Active and Deleted. Remember that deleting an item is permanent, so make sure the decision to delete an Item is made appropriately.

Lets move on now and describe the functions of the Item List screen (Remember that all of the columns described below are configurable in Interchange, especially in the Items area you probably will not have all of the same columns described from the Demo).

Sort link – The Item table has headings at the top of each column that are called Sort Links. You may want to sort your information for any number of reasons. Interchange makes it easy. At the top of each column, is the column heading. In the Item List table on the Demo the column headings are: SKU, Short Description, Product Group, Category, Product Price, Qty price, Promo, Inventory. All of these headings are sort links. If you click on any of these headings, the page will be sorted according to the order of the column selected. For example, if you wanted to sort by the Items description, from A-Z, simply click on the Short Description Column. Want to sort from Z-A? Click on the Short Description link again. This time is will be sorted in reverse order.
Line Item Link – Line item links are links that are accessible from the each record line. In the Item table there are 4 line item links. SKU, Qty Price, Promo, and Inventory. In the screen above the first line item link is “os28057c”. When you click on this link it will take you to the Item Edit page. The next line item link is the word Yes in the Qty Price column. This link will take you to the Item Price page. Next in line is the Promo column link, also show with the word “Yes” in the example. This link goes to the Feature Item page. The final Line Item link in the example is the number 50, this link will take you to the Item Inventory page. The columns in the Item List page may vary, and as such the Line Item Links may vary. To see all options available to change for a product, look at the Item Edit Tab description below, where each option is a tab.
Vertical Check boxes - The vertical column of check boxes under the “Action” label and adjacent to individual Item records, allows you to select individual Items, or a group of Items that you want perform an operation on. For example if you place a check mark in the box adjacent to the first Item, os28057c, then you can use one of the BUTTONS at the bottom of the page to:

Delete Checked Items - CAUTION! This is permanent. Use this button to DELETE all Items with a check mark in the vertical check box next to the adjacent Item record WITHOUT FURTHER ACTION!
Edit Checked Items - Use this button to move to the Item Edit page all items with a check mark in the vertical check box next to the adjacent Item. You will arrive at the Item Edit page with the first item select by checkmark. Once you edit this item, and click on OK, the next selected item will appear on the Item Edit page, and so on until you have clicked OK for each of the selected items.

Finally, when you select from any of the Line Item Links, the resulting page that you are taken to includes an additional row of Navigation tabs. This row of tabs is located directly below the standard row of Navigation tabs, Orders, Customers, Items, and so on. The tabs are shown below and consist of : Item List, sku:12345, Create New Item, Clone Item, Pricing, Up-Sell, Cross Sell, Promotion, Inventory, and Options.

Because these tabs INCLUDE the Create New Item page, we will discuss each of the tabs in order from left to right, and each will be discussed as a sub section. Normally these sections would be included within the Item List tab description, or the Create New Item tab description, as they are really sub tabs within each of these. So if that is confusing enough, lets move on to the first tab after Item List (which we have just described), sku: or Item Edit.

6.1.1 – Item List – Item Edit or (sku:)

Sub Tabs

General - View general information regarding an item, such as description, group, category, etc.
Pricing - View and Update product pricing.
Images – View, upload images for product, such as full size and thumbnail images.
Shipping /Tax /Other – View and edit product weight, tax options, gift certificate options.

6.1.1a – Item List – Item Edit or (sku:) – General

The General tab of the Item Edit or sku: screen, displays the following information, from top to bottom. If you notice in the row of Item Edit Tabs shown above, on the “sku:” tab the sku or part number of the product being edited is displayed. This sku is also shown in the area directly below the Item Edit Tabs; on the demo the sku displayed is os28057c. Further down the page are labeled text boxes, and each box is editable and updates your products database for the applicable item.

The first box in the demo display is Short Description. Self-explanatory, this is the description that is returned on search results on the web site or other “list” based information about the item. I will break from the top to bottom explanation here to describe the Detailed Description box. This is similar to the Short Description, but it contains a Detailed Description that is displayed on the Product page and other pages that refer to one or two products, rather than a “list” of products. I put that here to contrast the differences in the two Description fields.

Moving back up the page are two “Grouping” boxes. The first is Product group. You can choose and existing group from the drop down window, or you can create a new one by typing into the text box. A Product Group is generally a top level for product grouping, with the Category being the next level down in the tree. In the example, Hardware is the Product Group, and Nails is the Category that the current product, with the part number or sku of os28057c, is classified in.

Further down we see an “Inactive?” Label with a dropdown window. This selects whether the product is seen or accessible from the customers side of the website. Select inactive if you do not want this product to be accessible by customers at this time. For this option to work, you must confirm that you have a field defined in the appropriate products file. The file will be in one of your /dbconf/ directories, (pgsql, mysql) depending on which database you are using. Lets assume Postgres for this example. Go to “yourcatalog/dbconf/pgsql/products.pgsql” file, and make sure the following line is there:

DATABASE products HIDE_FIELD inactive

Product images displays the current Image, and Thumbnail image for the product IF they are available and IF the pictures uploaded to the server for each product follow the proper naming convention. For the images to appear the “Image” must be named as follows: “12345.gif” where “12345” is the exact sku of the product. For example in the sample above, the image name is “os28057c.gif” . For images to appear in the “Thumb” they must be named “12345_b.gif” where “12345” is the exact sku of the product. For example in the sample above the thumb image name is “os28057c_b.gif”. Keep this in mind when naming images and thumbs for your site. (This can be changed by your Interchange developer, for example if you use .jpg or .png picture format instead of .gif)

6.1.1b – Item List – Item Edit or (sku:) – Pricing

Pricing area simply allows you to change the pricing for the item. In the demo, 2 pricing fields are shown, Product Price, and Dealer Price. This allows you to set separate pricing for different customers. The pricing fields need to be set in conjunction with the Customer Dealer Status Tab, among other things.

6.1.1c – Item List – Item Edit or (sku:) – Images

Images tab is where you can upload your product images and thumbnails. To upload an image, simply click on the Browse button, select the image from your computer that you want to upload, and press the Open or Save button. Remember, for the image to properly display not only in your admin section but in the rest of the site as well, you must follow the proper naming convention. For the images to appear the “Image” must be named as follows: “12345.gif” where “12345” is the exact sku of the product. For example in the sample above, the image name is “os28057c.gif” . For images to appear in the “Thumb” they must be named “12345_b.gif” where “12345” is the exact sku of the product. For example in the sample above the thumb image name is “os28057c_b.gif”. Keep this in mind when naming images and thumbs for your site. (This can be changed by your Interchange developer, for example if you use .jpg or .png picture format instead of .gif)

6.1.1d – Item List – Item Edit or (sku:) – Shipping / Tax / Other

This tab has 3 simple product attributes to view or edit. First the products weight in pounds. This will be used to determine shipping charges if shipping is configured to use weight in the shipping charge calculation.

Next is the Taxable field. Simply select yes or no if the product is or is not subject to tax. If “yes” is selected, this will subject the product to taxes that need to be applied based on your selections in Administration – Commerce – Taxes.

Finally, Gift certificate Handling. This simply replaces the calculated quantity with the words “Amount of Gift:” in the quantity field. The customer will be entering a “quantity” on the web page, which will then be multiplied by the price you have set for each “unit”. So you may set the product price at $1 (in the price window described above) and the customer can purchase 50 units, or a $50 gift certificate. Once they select how many “units” they are purchasing, the cart will display the “Amount of Gift” verbiage in the quantity field. You can set the unit price at whatever level you like.

6.1.2 – Item List – Create New Item

Sub Tabs

General - Enter general information to create an item, such as description, group, category, etc.
Pricing - Enter the new product pricing.
Images – Upload images for the new product, such as full size and thumbnail images.
Shipping /Tax /Other – Enter the new product weight, tax options, gift certificate options.

6.1.2a – Item List – Create New Item – General

The General tab of Create New Item (and the Cloned Item) screen, is almost identical to the General tab in the Item Edit screen, with the exception of one thing. Before the Short Description there is a text box for the SKU or product part number. This box is NORMALLY populated automatically, but can be edited or changed. Many things depend on the SKU so it is a good idea to keep (if possible under business rules) this number as simple as possible. Other fields such as Short Description should be used to describe the product. The rest of the General tab is identical to the Item Edit tab.

The next box in the demo display is Short Description. Self-explanatory, this is the description that is returned on search results on the web site or other “list” based information about the item. I will break from the top to bottom explanation here to describe the Detailed Description box. This is similar to the Short Description, but it contains a Detailed Description that is displayed on the Product page and other pages that refer to one or two products, rather than a “list” of products. I put that here to contrast the differences in the two Description fields.

DATABASE products HIDE_FIELD inactive

6.1.2b – Item List – Create New Item – Pricing

Pricing area simply allows you to enter the pricing for the item. In the demo, 2 pricing fields are shown, Product Price, and Dealer Price. This allows you to set separate pricing for different customers. The pricing fields need to be set in conjunction with the Customer Dealer Status Tab, among other things if you want to use anything other than the standard pricing mode.

6.1.2c – Item List – Create New Item – Images

6.1.2d – Item List – Create New Item – Shipping / Tax / Other

6.1.3 – Item List – Clone Item

Sub Tabs

General – Use or edit existing general information to create a new item, based on attributes of an existing item such as description, group, category, etc.
Pricing - Use or edit existing pricing to price a new cloned item.
Images – Use existing images for the new product, or upload new ones.
Shipping /Tax /Other – Use existing product weight, tax options, gift certificate options or generate new info for the cloned product.

The Clone Item tab of the Item list is another Interchange utility included to help improve your productivity. Someone, somewhere working with Interchange probably had to add several products that were similar to each other to the products database. When they did they probably thought, “there should be an easier way to do this”, and either added it or had an Interchange developer do it for them. Keep that in mind as you use Interchange, if there is something that would save your organization significant time, contact your Interchange developer and ask him or her about it. In most cases it can be done!

Back to the Clone Item tab, this tab simply allows you to use some or all of an existing products attributes to define a new product. It has 4 tabs, General, Pricing, Images, and Shipping / Tax / Other, which are in most ways the same as the tabs of the same names on the Create New Item tab. (in fact the links for each of these tabs directs you to the Create New Item tab descriptions) The difference is that on each of the Clone Item sub tabs, there are 5 check boxes, followed by 5 possible table selections that you want to have the Cloned products attributes written to. You only need to make the selection on one of the tabs, all product attributes from all tabs for the selected product will be written for the new “Cloned product” to the selected table(s). These table selections and their descriptions are:

Clone to products – This will add your new product to the products table. This table is usually required if you want your product to show up anywhere on the site.
Clone to pricing – This will add your new product attributes to the pricing table. The pricing table is the location for custom pricing arrangements such as quantity pricing. You should choose this if you have quantity or other special pricing on the product.
Clone to inventory – Take special care if selecting this option. This will propagate current inventory levels from the source product to the target product. For example, if the product you are using as a source for the cloning currently has 27 pieces in stock, the new product you cloned will also reflect 27 pieces in stock. So if the number you have on hand for the new cloned product is different from what the source product has in stock, you should not select this checkbox. Instead clone the item, then select the new item from the Item List - Inventory screen, and set the proper inventory level.
Clone to merchandising – This will insert cloned data regarding merchandising, such as promotions, start and stop dates, upsell, cross sell, and so on. For more information regarding merchandising, see Product Merchandising.
Clone entries of options matching on sku – This simply (well maybe not simply) means that every option in the Option table that is keyed by the SKU of the clone source product, will get a new entry using the cloned product SKU. So for example, if you had a clone source product with a SKU of 123, lets say a Golfers Tee Shirt. And lets also say that this Golfers Tee Shirt had 3 size options, small, medium, and large. Now you clone this Golfers Tee Shirt because you also offer a Fishermen’s Tee Shirt. This Tee Shirt ALSO comes in the 3 sizes, small, medium, and large. So you select the options checkbox. IF the Fishermen’s Tee Shirt only came in two sizes, then you would not select the options checkbox. Instead, after you cloned the item you would go to the Item List – Options screen and enter the proper options for your new product.

So a quick summary:

Choose a source product to clone,
Decide which of the attributes of the source product are applicable to the target product,
Check the appropriate boxes, and click on the OK button.
Follow up by editing the new item with any changes necessary.

6.1.4 – Item List – Pricing

The Item List Pricing tab is an area that allows you to view, edit, or add pricing attributes for a given product. If you notice in the row of Item Edit Tabs shown above, on the “sku:” tab the sku or part number of the product being edited is displayed. This sku is also shown in the area directly below the Item Edit Tabs; on the demo the sku displayed is os28057c. Further down the page are labeled text boxes, and each box is editable and updates your products database for the applicable item.

Starting at the top of the page and working down, the

Base Pricing area contains Discount Group, Short Description, Product Price, and Dealer Price.

Discount group allows quantity pricing for a group of products (sometimes known as mix-and-match i.e., where 5 of these plus 5 of those afford the q10 price for both these and those).
Short Description is not editable and is simply the products description. It is there to help you recognize which product you are working with.
Product Price – This is the retail price displayed throughout the site.
Dealer Price – This is the price that will be displayed if the customer is a dealer, and dealer pricing has been enabled. * The pricing fields need to be set in conjunction with the Customer Dealer Status Tab, among other things if you want to use anything other than the standard pricing mode.

Quantity Pricing area contains quantity pricing for Retail, and Wholesale. Although it is not shown in the Demo, the first group of Qty boxes (Qty 2, Qty 5, Qty 10, so on) represents retail, and the second group wholesale.

Qty 2 Retail, 2 or more. If set, this will be the price per item when the order quantity is 2 or greater.
Qty 5 Retail, 5 or more. If set, this will be the price per item when the order quantity is 5 or greater.
Qty 10 Retail, 10 or more. If set, this will be the price per item when the order quantity is 10 or greater.
Qty 25 Retail, 25 or more. If set, this will be the price per item when the order quantity is 25 or greater.
Qty 100 Retail, 100 or more. If set, this will be the price per item when the order quantity is 100 or greater.
Qty 2 Dealer, 2 or more. If set, this will be the dealer price per item when the order quantity is 2 or greater.
Qty 5 Dealer, 5 or more. If set, this will be the dealer price per item when the order quantity is 5 or greater.
Qty 10 Dealer, 10 or more. If set, this will be the dealer price per item when the order quantity is 10 or greater.
Qty 25 Dealer, 25 or more. If set, this will be the dealer price per item when the order quantity is 25 or greater.
Qty 100 Dealer, 100 or more. If set, this will be the dealer price per item when the order quantity is 100 or greater.

6.1.5 – Item List – Upsell

The Item List Upsell tab, like many others in Interchange is actually an edit window for another table, Merchandising. This is a location to select which products, if any, will be placed in an Upsell list to be associated with the current Product being edited. What this means is that you can select products that you think customers may be interested in if they are looking at the current product being edited. To select products that you wish to be associated with this one, simply type the sku’s or product part numbers, separated by white space into the text box labeled with Up-sell SKUs, and click on OK.

In the example, if you wanted one product, 10007, to be selected as an upsell item for this item, os28006, you would simply type:

10007

into the text box. If you wanted more than one, you would have entered them like this:

10007 100008 100009

You could also use the select… link next to the Upsell SKUs text window. This will take you to a page with all of your products listed. You can simple use a checkbox method to choose as many products as you wish to be associated with this product for Upsell. In many cases, this can simplify things quite a bit, you don’t have to remember which SKU is associated with which product and so on. However, if your database holds thousands of products this page can be quite formidable!

Settings in table options linked by sku. This has been eliminated

To use the Upsell list, you need to use the component “Upsell” in a selected page. The flypage is a good page to use the Upsell component on, as it is the page that displays a single products detail, and you can show associated products that a customer might be interested in. For more information on how to use the Upsell and other components, go to the Content – Content Edit area.

6.1.6 – Item List – Cross-Sell

The Item List Cross-Sell tab, is very similar to the Upsell Tab, and like many others in Interchange is actually an edit window for another table, Merchandising. This is a location to select which products, if any, will be placed in a Cross-Sell list to be associated with the current Product being edited. What this means is that you can select products that you think customers may be interested in if they are looking at the current product being edited. To select products that you wish to be associated with this one, simply type the sku’s or product part numbers, separated by white space into the text box labeled with Up-sell SKUs, and click on OK. In addition to being able to associate products with this product, you can also associate this product with a Cross-Sale Category. This means that the product can belong to a family of products that will be associated on various pages of the site depending on where in the site you wish to have them shown. For example, if your product was a 10-penny Nail, you may assign it to a Cross-sale category of Nails. Then you may have the category show up every time someone looked at hammers. You know, if you have a hammer, you gotta have a nail! The category may display one or two cross-sell items, or maybe display random items from the category. You control it all. But the list to choose from is chosen here.

In the Cross –Sell tab you can also create a Teaser line that will introduce the component, such as “Other related items:” or “You may also like…” and so on. This will appear as a mini header on the Cross – Sell Component.

Next text box in Cross – Sell is the Closer. The Closer is the companion to the Teaser and is used at the end of the component if desired. Some thing to get the customer to act such as “Buy now while quantities last” or “Limited Time Offer”.

Settings in table options linked by sku. This has been eliminated.

To use the Cross-sell list, you need to use the component “Cross-sell” in a selected page. The results page is a good page to use the Cross-sell component on, as it is the page that displays the results of a search entered by the customer. You can show associated products that a customer might be interested in. For more information on how to use the Cross - sell and other components, go to the Content – Content Edit area.

6.1.7 – Item List – Promotion

The Item List Promotion tab is similar to the Cross - sell Tab, and like many others in Interchange is actually an edit window for another table, Merchandising. Although the Promotion tab is similar to the Cross – sell tab, it has some important differences. First the Promotion tab does not let you associate this item directly with other items, or other items directly with it. What it does do is allow you to associate this product with a Promotion. You can associate as many items with a promotion as you like, so in that sense they are being linked, but not directly with each other. Lets go down the page, shown above and detail each area.

We start with the Short Description, which is simply the description for the product being edited. Next is the drop down window labeled “Promotions”. This is where you will select which promotion you want to associate the product with. The default promotions are none, Specials, New Items, and expired. These can be expanded, but you will need your Interchange Developer to help with this. So lets continue with the defaults. Really the only 2 we are interested in are Specials, and New Items. Lets use New Items, and assume this is a new item.

The next box down is the Teaser line. This will replace the Name of the item in the display, so you may want to keep the name involved, such as in the example above we have “New Product – 24” Level”.

Next text box in Cross – Sell is the Closer. The Closer is the companion to the Teaser and is used at the end of the component if desired. Some thing to get the customer to act such as “Buy now ” or “Limited Time Offer”. This line will replace the standard “More Info” link if used.

The next 3 boxes are Timed?, Start Date, End Date and they work together. If you only want your product to be in a promotion for a certain time period, this is where you set those limits. First, select yes for the Timed? drop down. Next select your start date, then the end date. That’s all there is to it. Set it and forget it. (-:

The reason for the display of options here is simply to give you more information to use in deciding how to classify your product. The options do not affect the promotion, but may help you in determining the nature of the current product, and whether it should be merchandised in a certain way.

To use the Promotion settings, you need to use the component “Promotion” in a selected page. The index page is a good page to use the Promotion component on, as it is the page that the customer normally sees first. You can show your newest products, or your best deals. Remember, first you only get one chance at a first impression! For more information on how to use the Promotion and other components, go to the Content – Content Edit area.

6.1.8 – Item List – Inventory

The Item List Inventory tab, like many others in Interchange is actually an edit window for another table, Inventory. This is a location to update or check on the current status of individual products in your inventory. When you select the Inventory tab, the Item sku that you are editing is displayed in two places, both on the SKU tab, as well as just below the Item Edit Tab row, in the example above it is shown as “Inventory: edit item os28082”

There are 3 areas shown on the example above, General, Stock Info, and Order Parameters.

General – The general area contains only one entry box, On Hand. On hand simply displays how many items Interchange thinks you have on hand. As items are sold, inventory is decremented. To add items to inventory, you need to do it manually (or by file upload) here. To change an amount, simple highlight the amount in the box and type in the new amount.
Stock info – The stock info area contains 3 areas of info.

Out of Stock – This is a drop down window, where you can select which message will be displayed to the customer if the inventory number is at 0 or less when the customer views or attempts to order the product. There are 4 standard messages, more can be easily added by your Interchange developer.
Sales Account – You can use this to put an account number or name for the Sales account used by your company for this item. This has very little use within Interchange, but if you integrate Interchange with your accounting system, this field can be used to post the sales and inventory information to the proper accounts.
COGS Account – You can use this to put an account number or name for the Cost of Goods account used by your company for this item. This has very little use within Interchange, but if you integrate Interchange with your accounting system, this field can be used to post the sales and inventory information to the proper accounts.

Order Parameters – The order parameters simply allows you to set a minimum quantity that must be order for this product. For example, you may have golf balls that must be ordered by the dozen, but you want to keep track of inventory individually. So you enter 12 into the text box and when a customer selects this product, the quantity is automatically selected for him.

6.1.9 – Item List – Options

The cover page for Item List Options is displayed above. There are 4 possible selections. No Options, Matrix Options, Old Interchange 4.8 Options, and Simple Options. To apply one of these types, simply select the radio button next to your choice and select Update. Well what are you selecting? Lets move on and find out.

6.1.9a – Item List – Options – Matrix Options

Matrix options as you can see from the above example, can be quite complex. I have selected one of the products from the Demo that has a few variants, which will allow us to demonstrate how the Matrix options work. Again towards the top of the screen, you see the Item List tabs, and on the sku tab the product sku or part number of the product being edited is displayed. Also, just below that tab line, there is the display “Configure Matrix Options for Ergo Roller”, which of course is the Short Description for the sku os28004.

There are 3 main components to the Matrix options tab, Option Type, Display Type, and Add Variant.

Option Type – This simply brings you back to the previous entry window, and allows you to choose a different type of option. Click on the Change link if you wish to go back and select a different Option Type.
Display Type – This option allows you to select how the customer will be presented with configuration choices for the product. The example above shows Display type: one. The other option for the display type here would be separate widgets. Look at the pictures below to see the difference between One widget, and Separate widgets. It either puts all choices on one line in the select box, or gives you multiple select boxes, one for each variant.

One Widget:

Separate Widgets:

The next item as we move down the demo display is a list of possible variants. This may be a little deceiving, as in order to have this list displayed, you need to click on Create all possible combinations at some point. When you do that, a list is created that consists of all possible combinations of the variants and their options that are shown in the Add Variant area. For example, in the demo one option name is bristle, and with that option comes 3 choices, Human Hair, Camel Hair, and Synthetic. Under Color, we have either White or Black. So if you look at the list of possible combinations, you can see that each possible combination of the aforementioned option and their respective choices is displayed with this list. Once this list is created, each of the combinations is added to the table Variants, as a unique item, which is related to the original base Sku that we are currently editing. Now this variant has a life of its own, and can be edited on so forth. It can also be deleted by clicking on the red X at the right hand side of each record. But before we get too far describing Variants, lets find out how to create one.

I have displayed just the Add Variant portion of the Items List Options screen here. Lets discuss each area, starting with the Option Name, and Choices located directly beneath the Add Variant title.

Option Name – The option name column represents a name for the group of choices that are available for a particular attribute of our variant. In the example, the first option is bristle. This of course represents the possible types of bristles that are available for the Ergo roller. The next Option is color. This represents another name for a group of choices, separate from the previous ones we just discussed. So for the product Ergo Roller, there are 2 available Option groups, each of which are separate and consist of further choices.
Choices – Choices are the actual final “options” that will make up the finished Ergo Roller. The customer will be able to choose one (1) choice from each available Option Name (group of choices).
Add New Option – This menu item allows you to add a new option, along with its choices.
Clone Options – This drop down associated with the Clone Options button allows you to use existing options previously created. For example, although you cannot see it in the example above, in the drop down window there are several choices, one of which is Spackling Knife. If you chose Spackling Knife, your List of variants would be increased by 2. The option names would be “Blade”(with choices of steel, plastic, and titanium), and “Handle” (with choices of wood and ebony). Of course you would not want blade options for your Ergo roller, but that is just to illustrate how you can “clone” other option sets into the existing set. In addition, if you have an option set that has say 3 of 5 options that you want, you can simply clone the set and then delete (using the red X to the right of each option) the 2 options you did not want. This would save you the trouble of having to recreate from scratch those 3 options.

If you look at the form to the right of the Add Variant table in the example above, you will see a number of editable text boxes. In the example many of them have text in them. I populated that by selecting a choice from each one of the options on the Add Variant table, so that you could see how they are displayed. If you have selected a choice in each of the available options, then the available attributes for each variant will be displayed in this area. Lets discuss each one in turn:

Variant ID – In the example the choice for the option Bristle is “Human hair”, and the choice for the option Color is White. You will notice that the Variant ID consists of an identifier comprised of the Base Sku, and each of the options. Interchange creates this number, and it is used as a unique identifier for this Variant. This value is stored in a table called Variant. Each variant can be thought of as a product, and this field is its sku or part number.
Base Sku – This displays the SKU of the product that was used as a base to create this variant. It is not editable.
Short Description – This is the short description that will be displayed on the site when this variant is selected. You can edit it to be more descriptive, or you can leave it with the default description.
Price – The retail price that you will charge a normal customer for this variant.
Dealer Price – The wholesale price that you will charge special customers that have been designated as Dealers.
On hand – You can maintain a separate Inventory quantity for your variants. Enter the current amount here.
Weight – The shipping weight to be used for the variant, this will be used to calculate shipping costs based on your configuration of the Shipping options.

6.1.9b – Item List – Options – Old Interchange 4.8 Options

Not used unless your system contains legacy features. Contact your Interchange Developer for more help.

6.1.9c – Item List – Options – Simple Options

Simple options as you can see from the above example, can be another display of Matrix options. I have selected the same product from the Demo that we used for the Matrix example, in order to point out the similarities. Again towards the top of the screen, you see the Item List tabs, and on the sku tab the product sku or part number of the product being edited is displayed. Also, just below that tab line, there is the display “Configure Simple Options for Ergo Roller”, which of course is the Short Description for the sku os28004.

There are 4 main components to the Simple options tab, Option Type, Option:, Create a new Option, and Clone an existing option.

Option Type – This simply brings you back to the previous entry window, and allows you to choose a different type of option. Click on the Change link if you wish to go back and select a different Option Type.
Option: – This area simply displays the options that exist for this product. You can edit the options and we will describe each sub window here:

Option: - The first item in the Option window is the Option Name. In the example above, the option name is bristle. The name is used by Interchange to identify the option. This is not editable. You create the name when you create the option.
Label – The first editable window is Label. This is simply the name used to describe the option, it is similar to the Option Name in that it describes the Option, but the label is used more to identify the option for the user, rather than for Interchange.
Choices – The next window, although it is not labeled in the example holds the choices available for each option. We saw choices in the Matrix option page as well. This is just a different way of displaying them. Use the format shown to add, edit, or delete choices. For example, if you wanted to add a choice for Bristle type, you could put the following into the window:

DOG=Dog Hair

This would create a choice identified by DOG to Interchange, and shown as Dog Hair to the user. Make sure and use a carriage return after each option.

Edit Widget: - This allows you to select what type of widget the customer will be shown to select the choice for this option. They are standard HTML form widgets, and the individual function of each is beyond this manual. Consult an HTML forms reference book for more information. There are many options available but some of them are:

Select box
Multiple select
Radio buttons
Checkbox

Edit Price Differential: - Price differential that is added to(or subtracted from) the base product price for any choice which requires it. In the example, the Bristle choices change the price of the product. The Human Hair choice raises the price by $1.55; Camel hair raises the price by $1.05, and Synthetic LOWERS the price by $2.70. Depending on the Widget type selected above, the price differential will normally be displayed for the customer.

Create a New Option – This area obviously allows you to add an option for the selected SKU. Lets discuss each field:

Name – This should be set to a simple alpha string, such as bristle or color. This is the field that is used by Interchange to identify your new option.
Label – This should be set to a user-friendly name that will be descriptive so that you know what the option represents.
Set label to name – In some cases, the simple string used for Name will suffice as the Label. Check this box if you wish to use the Name as the label as well. (You do not need to enter anything into the label field if this box is selected.)
Choices – The next window, again it is not labeled in the example, holds the choices available for each option. We saw choices in the Matrix option page as well. This is just a different way of displaying them. Use the format shown in the example above to add choices. Once you have entered your choices, you simply click on the Create Option button, and your options will be added and displayed on the left side of the screen

Clone an Existing option set – Use the drop down window to select an option set that you have used for other products, and click on the Clone options button. This will add the selected option set to the current set. As was mentioned earlier, you can use this to add a group of options, even if you do not want all of the group’s options. Simply delete (or edit) the unneeded options after cloning.
Commit Changes – Make sure and click on the Commit Changes button at the bottom of the page after setting up your options!


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