Products and variants
All shops of an installation share one catalogue. A product can stand on its own or have variants – records of their own under a main product, for sizes or colours, say.
In the back end
Under Consho master data → Products. The mask is divided into sections: Product, Identification, Sales, Description and images, Safety and guarantee, Shipping, Delivery and validity, Publication – plus the custom fields of the product type.
| Main product | empty: a product in its own right. Chosen: the record becomes a variant and inherits description, images and page. |
|---|---|
| Product type | determines which properties and custom fields the product can have, and its kind. The kind always comes from the main product's type. |
| SKU, GTIN / EAN, Manufacturer part number | the identification. The check digit of the GTIN is recalculated; a variant does not inherit GTIN and manufacturer part number. |
| Shops | which shops the product is visible in. On a variant, “nothing ticked” means: as the main product. |
| Images | from the file manager, sortable. The first image appears in the list, the basket and search results. |
| Published, Show from / until | as with Contao content. |
Properties and variant axes
Properties describe what an article is – material, brand, volume – and can be filtered by. Several values of the same property act as “or” in the filter. Variant axes say what sets a variant apart from its siblings, such as the size. A filter on an axis finds the main product as soon as a visible variant matches.
You create the properties themselves under Consho setup → Properties, their values with the “Values” operation. The alias becomes part of the filter address (colour:red) and deliberately does not change when you correct the name – otherwise saved links would break.
Custom fields and product types
Custom fields (Consho setup → Custom fields) hold details that are not filtered by: text, number, date or yes/no. On a variant, an empty field takes the main product's value.
The product type (Consho setup → Product types) bundles property groups and custom fields and sets the kind: Goods, Digital content, Service or Gift voucher. The kind is copied into the order at the purchase. Optionally you choose a partial of your own for the product page.
Behaviour on the website
The product page shows properties, custom fields and the choice of variants as links. Combinations for which there is no variant cannot be chosen. A variant without an active main product is invisible – and so is a main product whose variants are all inactive.
Findings and pitfalls
- Product without a shop: a published product that is assigned to no shop appears nowhere. Assign it under “Shops” at the product.
- Product without a price in the shop's currency: it is missing from lists and the sitemap.
- Duplicate GTIN on several products.
- Fields do not match the kind of the product type: empty the field or check the type.
- Refused on saving: a product as a variant of itself, a product with variants of its own as a variant, two variants with the same axis values, an invalid GTIN.