Setting Up Global Product Properties

Product Properties define the products’ pricing and delivery options. Product properties can be either product-specific or global, that is, available to all products in the Mall. A predefined list of global properties is available for your use. Some of these properties are system properties and cannot be deleted, while others can be modified or removed.

Superusers can create additional global properties that will be available for use as product property templates in the entire Mall. For example, you may want to create a product property that cannot be modified by the store administrator or be used for aggregation. Furthermore, global properties may be presented by default each time a store administrator creates a product. For example, you can create a product property for customer comments that will be displayed as a text box. Naturally, you can allow store administrators to override global property settings.

The following properties are system properties and cannot be deleted from the Global Properties list:

· Base: Refers to the product base price. This property is mandatory for all products and the settings cannot be modified.

· Schedule e-mail sending time: Mandatory for email products. The settings cannot be modified.

· Color: Enables printing in black and white or in color. This property is mandatory for upload products and the settings cannot be modified.

· Double Sided Printing: Enables printing on one side of the page or on both sides. This property is mandatory for upload products and the settings cannot be modified

· Binding Side: Enables binding on the long or the short side of the page. This property is a default property for composite products. The settings cannot be modified.

· Binding Type: Enables you to select a binding type. This property is a default property for composite products. The settings can be modified.

The Global Product Property List page lists all available product properties. The Base product property that appears in the list is an initial product property defined during uStore installation. Users assigned to the Superuser root group can add new product properties and schedule email sending time.

The Global Product Property list shows the settings of all available global product properties. Available settings for global properties are described in the following table.

1. Click Add New Property to create a new global product property.
The Global Product Property List page opens.

2. Enter a name, description and ID for the newly created global product property.

– You can design and display an icon to appear in the Storefront next to the property name. This icon can be uploaded in the Property Options Icon Management window.

– When using the Excel pricing model, you cannot use parentheses or other special characters to name product properties.

– Mandatory in Every Product: The property will be added to any product that will be created. The property will be added to all the existing and newly created products. Note that if the property affects pricing calculation, prices will be set to zero in all the existing products.

– Fulfillment Property for Store Admin Use Only: Select this option if you'd like to enable the operator to add ad-hoc production information for the ordered item, on top of the information provided via product properties.
For example, if the production took longer than planned, you can create a "Labour Hours" property, where the operator can add the extra time it took to produce the item.

§ You’d like the operator to provide production instructions to the production workflow, presented in the job ticket of the order item.

§ You’d like to update an unexpected fulfillment cost for an order item, which will be available for reporting.

The operator sets the fulfillment property values in the Item Details page of the order.

– Store Admin May Change Configuration: Enables store administrators to select the following options when setting up the product properties:

– Store Admin May Change Values: Enables store administrators to set the following sections when setting up the product properties:

– Visible for Customer: You can override visibility settings as well as default property options when you set up a product. For more information, see Overriding Product Profile Settings.

You can define a product property that affects delivery cost calculations. For example, you can define several types of paper (for example, matte, glossy and plain) where each paper type has a different weight and thus affects the delivery cost when sending via a delivery provider such as FedEx or UPS.

– Affects Aggregation: For more information on aggregating orders, refer to Handling Orders.

– Show in Shopping Cart and Order History: The value of the property is displayed in the Shopping Cart and Order History pages.

– Split Shipping per Value Selection: The property can trigger split shipping. When in the Finalize step of the ordering process a customer selects a product property value, the system verifies that this value is identical to the values selected for this product property in other products of the same order. If the values are not identical, the system automatically triggers split shipping.

For example, if a customer ordered two products, both of which have a Turnaround Time Product Property, and the value of this property is different for each product (5 days for Product 1 and 10 days for Product 2), then each one of these products will be shipped separately. In the Storefront, when the Shopping Cart has items with properties that are set to Split shipping per value selection, if these properties have the same name but are assigned different values, the system will show a warning. The warning will also be displayed if the Shopping Cart contains one item with a property that is set to Split shipping per value Selection, and another item that does not contain this property.

5. The When the dial has no values, take values from section allows you to set each property’s default value for all arbitrary properties, and all value options, including default, for multi-optional inputs, such as a dropdown List. This is done using one or more of the following options:

This option is relevant for the default value selection only. To display values used in the previous orders, select this checkbox and then select one of the following options:

– Same Product: the value this customer gave this Dial in the previous order of this product.

– All Products in the Store: the value this customer gave this Dial in the previous order of any other product. However, if there was already an order from this product, it will take its value. (Note that all products need to be from the same document in the same campaign.)

This option allows you to retrieve a value for single option controls, such as text boxes, and options and selected values for multiple option controls, such as dropdown lists, from a database, rather than defining them manually.

For example, you can define an input control of type dropdown list that is populated with the customers’ addresses as registered in the uStore database instead of manually defining each entry of the list. This way, you can present each store shopper a personalized list. You can use the predefined uStore databases or you can define a custom database that conforms to the uStore database structure.

Note that you can only use either a global data source (available for all stores) or a data source that was defined for the specific store you are configuring. For more information on how to define a data source, refer to Defining Data Sources.

The Override existing value option instructs uStore to override the existing value of a control, set by the shopper in the storefront, to always reflect the latest database value. This can occur in any page in the store where the property/dial appears, e.g. customization step, finalize step.

Also, when reordering, before the order is placed in the cart, uStore will retrieve the most up-to-date dial/property value from the database.

If left unselected, the value will be retrieved only once, when the dial/property does not have a value.

After you select a data source from the data source list available for the store, use the Wizard option to populate personalized values from the data source, or set the personalized values manually by entering an SQL query in the Custom option.

Wizard

Provide the following information:

– Table or View: select the table or view from which data is pulled.

– Display Text Field (Multiple Options Input Controls): the text that is displayed in the input control and is associated with a Value field. For example, the presented text may be an address while the associated value field that is passed on to uProduce is a ZIP code. This selection is available only in multiple input controls.

– Value Field: select the field (column) in the table or view that will be used to populate the input control. For example, you may have a field in your table or view that stores a recipient names; select that field to populate the input control with names from the Recipient column.

– Conditions: The wizard enables you to define filters by which the specific value in the Value Field is pulled. You can use the following ID filters:

§ User ID Field - available in the Users table

§ External User ID Field - available in the External Users table

§ User Email Field- available in the User Email table

§ Store ID Field - available in the Stores table

§ Product ID Field - available in the Products table

§ Language ID Field - available in the Culture table

You can also use any desired ID filters provided they are mapped to the above uStore ID filters. If you are defining a single option input control and the filter you are defining returns several records, only the first one will be displayed to the user.

§ Filter (for Dependent Dropdown List only): A column in the database ("Display Text Field") is filtered according to certain criteria. There are three criteria:

Fixed: the column data is filtered by a fixed value. For example, the wine list can be filtered by its color.

Dial: the column data is filtered by the dial selected in the previous dropdown list. Both dials should be of the Dependent Dropdown List type (Dial settings only).

Property: the column data is filtered by the property selected in the previous dropdown list. Both dials should be of the Dependent Dropdown List type (Property settings only).

– Default Field (multiple options input Controls): select the field (column) in the table or view that will be used to set the default value of the input control. Then, enter the specific value in that field that actually sets the default value. For example, the default value field can be 'IsDefault' and the actual values that set the default value can be '1' for 'is default' and '0' for 'not default'. In this case, you should select 'IsDefault' in the Default Field list and enter '1' as its value.

– Override Default Sorting Field (Multiple Options Input Controls): allows you to sort the input control entries by the order in a specified table field (or view). The sorting order is determined by the data type in the selected field, as follows:

§ lexicographic order for text

§ alphanumeric order for numbers

§ chronological order for dates

– Hide when there are no options to select (for Dependent Dropdown List only): the second dropdown list will appear only if there are values to select.

For example, if you choose USA from the Country dropdown list, the State dropdown list will appear; but if you choose England from the Country list, the State list will not be shown.

For this option to work, the data for the first dropdown list and the data for the second dropdown list must be in separate tables. For example, you should have one table for the list of countries that contains a field for CountryID and another field for CountryName. You will then need a separate table for the list of states with a field for StateID, Country and Name.

Custom

To manually define the Data Source for personalized values, select Custom and enter an SQL query in the Query field.

– If you are using a single option Input Control such as a Text Box, you should enter a query that returns a single value. You should use one or more of the following parameters: @UserID, @StoreID, @ProductID, @CultureID, @OrderProductID (which is @OrderItemID), @ExternalUserID, @UserEmail.

– If you are using a multiple options input control such as a Dropdown list, you should enter a query that can return several values. You should use one or more of the following parameters: @UserID, @StoreID, @ProductID, @CultureID, @OrderProductID (which is @OrderItemID), @ExternalUserID, @UserEmail.

– Default Value: the dial’s default value, which may be overridden by the customer. You can also create a list of values to be used as default values when necessary. To add a fixed value to the value list, enter the value text in Text field and click Add.

– Spell Checking: applies only to textual dials and properties that implement text or multiline text input controls. To use the spell checker in a textual control, select the Use Spell Check checkbox, and then select a language from the Language list.

You can select both the Take Values from Data Source and the Take values from Predefined Value/s options. In that case, if a value is missing in the Data Source, it will be taken from the values set in the predefined list.

6. Select the Validation Option. The available validation options vary according to the selected Input Control, as explained in Validation Options.

7. Click Save to save the global product property.
The global product property appears in the Global Product Properties list. All properties that affect the price are displayed in the Pricing Setup page of each product as well (see Setting Up the Product Pricing for Single Products).

Setting Up Global Product Properties

See Also