We are excited to announce enhancements we recently made to the process of creating variations and publishing variation listings to make it easier to navigate, simplify the workflow, and reduce any possible listing errors.
Variations are part of a set of products related to each other and are broken down by attributes such as size or color. A parent variation is a SKU that is not listed to the sales channels but defines the primary product and ties the children variants together as a set of variants. A variation is a product SKU that is defined by its variant attribute (size, color) and is listed to the channels along with its variant siblings.
We hope that this release addresses some of the feedback you’ve shared with us. We’ll continue to make enhancements to the variations workflow along with other areas of the platform.
View this video to see what is new:
View this video to learn how to create and list variations:
For additional information, please visit the SellerActive Knowledge Base. Your feedback helps us continue to improve our product so please send us any suggestions or feature requests you may have for consideration to support@selleractive.com.
Product Release Summary
Updates to Variations in the SKU Pane
Searching for a Variant product to link to the parent product’s variation group is much easier and faster to do now. You may now use a grid to search on SKU and/or Title. An image of the item will also display to make it easier to quickly identify the variant you’re looking for.
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You may also add multiple variants to a variation group at a time now, as opposed to one at a time previously.
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A “Link Product” button has replaced the “Add Variation” button to more accurately describe the workflow of linking existing variant products vs. creating new ones. This hopefully provides more clarification on the end result of clicking this button. As opposed to creating a brand new variation from the SKUPane, you are actually linking already existing Products.
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The SKU pane title now includes an image, variation type and link to the parent if it is a variation so that you may easily identify and navigate from a variant to the variation parent. Our Product Team felt that it was difficult to differentiate when you are in a variation listing or the parent listing. You can now easily move between the listings and know where you are in that process.
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When viewing a variant group, you can now easily navigate between variants with new navigational links to each variant, which will allow you to quickly set prices or strategies for each variant or viewing any publish errors for those variants. Clicking on the SKU will take you directly to that product.
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Variant attribute selection is now required to publish a variation set. Variation attribute options, such as color and size, give your customers a variety of options to choose from when viewing your product on the Sales Channels. To prevent listing errors later, all variants associated with a variation group will now be marked as incomplete until a variation attribute type is selected. This field is also highlighted with a red error icon if that information is missing. Previously you were able to publish a variation set to the marketplace prior to these options being selected. Our Product team found that if we make these fields required before the publishing attempt, it would prevent unnecessary publishing errors.
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Certain tabs were removed from SKU pane views to simplify the views based on what is relevant. Removed from the SKU pane for Variation parents were the Inventory, Bundle and Listings tabs. Removed from the SKU Pane for variants was the variations tab.
New Variation parent SKU pane:
New Variation SKU pane:
Updates to Variations in the Listings Workspace
Parent Variations will no longer appear in the Listings Workspace. They were removed from this workspace because Parent Variations cannot be listed and this previously caused confusion for users.
Variations are now easily identifiable in the Listings Workspace:
- If you have “Grouping” turned off, you’ll be able to add and see a Variation column. To add this column to your view, select the “Column Chooser” and select Variation to add it to your grid view. Items with the white t-shirt icon indicate it is a variation. Hovering over this icon will display the parent sku in the tool tip as a quick reference.
- If you have “Grouping” turned on, the Product Title will have a white t-shirt icon to indicate it is a variation and also reference and link to its specific parent variation.
Have any questions? Please contact our support team via email at support@selleractive.com, or call 1-800-545-7385 and select option 2.