Grouping versions into a single product

Automatic Grouping through Systems Integration

If you have systems integration set up between your ePos/ERP and the AB Commerce platform, products may be automatically grouped together through versions.

Options for Grouping Products

There are 4 different options for how you can group products into versions. Each of these are discussed in the following articles.

Manual Grouping of Products

If you don’t have systems integration in place, you can manually group products instead.  To manually group a set of products together as versions of a master product, take the following steps:

1. Log in as Website Admin – And select Catalogue and Products from the menu bar.
2. Select the products to group together:
   • Select the products you want to group by checking their checkbox in the right hand side of the table of products.
   • Click on the GROUP PRODUCTS
   • You can group to an existing product  ore a new parent product.
     • For a new parent product code - Click NEW PARENT PRODUCT and enter the parent product title and a unique product code. The title is what is displayed to the user for the group of products and the unique code should be a code that is not being used anywhere else.  One approach is to add “P-“ to the first version’s product code  (“P” standing for parent product).
     • For an existing product code - Click EXISTING PRODUCT CODE and enter the product code. 
3. Make the new product active in the product details tab.
4. Add a primary category and a brand in the CATEGORIES tab.
5. Click FINISH and the new product is created with the versions underneath it.

Remember to upload at least one product image to your parent product.   If a version looks different to the parent then you should upload a version images too.

Remember to upload a description to your parent product. The description should work for all versions. 

Remember that a items url will change when you group it into a "parent with versions".   If the product is live on the website before you group it into a "parent with versions" then you may wish to add 301 redirects so that the item can continue to be found using the old url.  This is especially important if product had built up a ranking with search engines.  Best to note the old urls before grouping the product.  You can get the new url for each version by adding it to the basket then clicking on the link to the item in the basket.

To ungroup products, take the following steps:

1. Log in as Website Admin – And select Catalogue and Products from the menu bar.
2. Select the products to ungroup:
   • Select the products you want to ungroup by checking their checkbox in the right hand side of the table of products.
   • Click on the UNGROUP PRODUCTS button and the products will not be versions anymore.