Product: Product Manager

Article Link: http://help.truecommerce.com/en/articles/6287939-what-s-new-in-product-manager-june-2022

With the latest release of Product Manager, we're rolling out a few updates to make your life easier. We’ve broken the new items into 3 categories. Click the link to go directly to that section.

Onboarding Enhancements

Data Management

Voice of the Customer: You asked for it!

When you are creating a publication, you can now see the list of available fields while still in the template. The field selector remains docked on the left until you decide to close it.

Additionally, we have re-ordered the fields so you can more easily find what you’re looking for. The initial view should default to show only Product and Item and not fully expanded.

We’ve also included a filter field at the top. If you search for an attribute that’s on both the product and the item, you will see that listed twice in the results list.

As a company, you currently list out your internal categories and you likely have a separate list of categories for each channel you publish to. For example, your company’s categories might be slightly different from the categories that the channel requires. You would use the category mapping feature in Product Manager to map your categories to that channel’s categories.

For some channels like eBay, this can happen via an API integration. For others, it needs to be done manually. We have created a way to create categories via import.

You can create internal categories, channel categories or brand categories. Based on the type you select, the fields in the template change.

This includes anything that is linked to the category such as tags, variants, attributes. Any new variants or attributes that are found in the import will be added to an auto created group so you know which ones are new. This is similar to how we currently do product imports.

For channel category imports, you also can indicate if an attribute is required.

In your import file, you can pull your categories in using a single cell (Option1) or you can list them in individual cells (Option2), up to 10 levels.

Currently there are some challenges when typos or mistakes are included in the import file for categories. Categories get created automatically even if there is a mistake or a typo. At that point, products get associated to the incorrect categories and it can cause extra work or even issues with the publication if not corrected.

With this new release, you can make a change to your settings which allows you more control over this. There are two settings:

Auto Create Category - This is how the system works today. This setting allows a new category to be created if the category inside the product file is not found.

Prevent Product Creation – New! This setting would prevent categories from being created in the product file if they are not found. In this case, the Product record would be rejected, and an error would be logged to indicate the Product record was not created.

This new feature allows the same Source Attribute Group/Source Attribute to be configured multiple times and mapped to separate Target Attribute Groups/Target Attributes.

Mapping details should apply as normal for each setup if they exist. If no Mapping Details are setup, the Source Attribute should be mapped as it exists to the Target Attribute.

Some Product Manager tenants are set up to have one central tenant that many suppliers of that retailer will log into and import data as well as edit and manipulate products. Since many different suppliers will be logging into this tenant, security and identity claims will be important to ensure the integrity of the system.

We’ve set it up so that Identity Claims will be used to ensure a supplier’s users see only the data they are intended to see.

You can now specify which Subscriptions a user or role should be able to see (or not be able to see) to ensure they do not have visibility or access to subscriptions or definitions belonging to another supplier.

If your tenant allows multiple suppliers to log in, you could have duplicate product names and SKUs that without a proper association to supplier or brands which could cause confusion and mix products up with one another.

With this release, we now allow certain fields inside a subscription to be defaulted based on the user identity claim that is uploading the data. Notice under the Brand and Supplier fields, there is now a checkbox for User Default.

You can now filter on a list of products that are not 100% ready in terms of channel/brand validations so you can easily spot and correct products that need additional enrichment.

You would click the magnifying glass to bring up the search panel, scroll to Readiness and you can determine how you want to search (Greater Than, Less Than). You can then use a search value between 0 and 100.

In the past, if you had a product or item with no image assigned, you would see a generic thumbnail.

Now you can choose a generic image that you have uploaded to represent the default image. This is done via Settings.

This image be used anytime a product or item does not have an image assigned to it.

Once a proper image is assigned to a Product or Item, the default image is no longer used. The default image will not be exported if there is not a proper image assigned to the Product/Item.

The system lets you choose a product and determine what the default download template should be. Now you can choose from multiple templates/publications based on the products you are exporting.

Once you select a product (or products) and click Download, you will be presented with a dialog box with a drop-down menu of publication definitions. When you first access that box, it will present the publication that is currently configured as the default. You can then change it by choosing something from the drop-down.

You can click a checkbox if you want it to default to a single publication.

This way you won’t see the dialog box when you click the Download button. If you change your mind and want to see the drop-down options again, you can change it in Settings.

Once you click Accept, it will process the download in the background and you can continue to work in the system. You will no longer see the progress box. Instead you will see a ‘toast’ pop-up at the bottom right when the download starts and when it finishes. And the download will show in your browser when it’s ready.

In this release, we have redesigned the Taxonomy menu to make it easier to find what you need. Previously you had to click the Variants tab to access Attributes and Descriptions. The new menu looks shows them all as discrete menu options so you can access them more easily!

rev: 6/8/22