Specifying attributes and choices within a product database

[Charlesn]

Hello all,

I'm just putting the finishing touches to a new site for a client who is basically acting as a portal for 50 other retailers.

They've been receiving the other retailers product databases and importing them into their master database, but at the moment they are importing items in different sizes/options as individual products. Obviously this isn't ideal and it would be much easier to control this via attributes and choices. Can this information be included into the product database?

I've had a look and the database mapping doesn't seem to have anything to match it to if I added a new column. With so many products being added to the site it will be quite a headache for them to manually add each attribute/choice. Especially as they won't have the same sort of in-depth product knowledge that you would expect of someone selling their own products.

Anyone tried this or know a way around it?

Cheers
Charlie

[TraceyG]

Hi,

Components/Attributes and Choices can only be imported via a hierarchical import file because they are contained within a separate table in the Actinic database (ProductProperties). I would suggest that you import one of the sample hierarchical files from the 'Site1/Common' folder to see what format is required (or export a catalog that contains choices as that will be in hierarchical format).

[Charlesn]

My client is really struggling to get their heads round a flat database file, this is only going to confuse them even more (turns out they aren't exactly familiar with Excel, Databases, Outlook or actually using a computer!) so I think I'll probably give it a miss.

Can this be added to the wishlist though? Surely it can't be that tricky to have another couple of columns in a flat database file to accommodate this? A column each for Attribute Name and HTML for Name, then you could add new columns called 'Choice 1 Name', Choice 1 HTML', Choice 2 Name', Choice 2 HTML' as required to specify the choices?

I appreciate components would be infinitely more complicated as you would have prices etc to content with, but attributes could be relatively simple?

Thanks
Charlie

[TraceyG]

I'll add it to the wish-list for you but I think it's a bit more complicated than you think

[Charlesn]

Such are the joys of having somebody with no experience of software development suggesting something that is apparently easy!