Extended Information

[nigel9097]

Hi,

Is there any way of setting all products to display the Extended information window, without going through each product and ticking the box for the pop up window. Can it be done some where in one go, dont want to go through them individually as there are over 6000 products.

Regards,

Nigel

[Mark H]

Bit of a long shot, but if you already have a spreadsheet with your product references on it, you could copy it, add certain Actinic fields as headers, then either dynamically link Actinic to it (File / External Links) or import it (File / Import) as a flat file.

If you look at the Actinic fields which you can link/import to, you will see that you can define whether to show extended info, what to call the page, what size and image you want etc.

(always take a backup/snapshot before doimg anything unusual.....)

[Mike Hughes]

You should be able to set this in the database.

At it's simplest, a database editor would allow you to run down the list of products ticking the box.

Or you could write a query to do it if you use access and are familiar with it.

Or you could commission someone like Fergus to write a little vbs script to do it.

Mike

Or, as Mark suggests, export your products to a file, strip out everything other than the product reference and the extended info setting, change the 0s to 1s and import back in again (I think as an 'update' but I can never remember as I rarely use this).

[Duncan Rounding]

You can do this with a flat file import update as long as auto generated product reference is not enabled in business settings.

Backup.

Create a file in Excel with the first column containing the Product Reference, the second column containing -1 and the third column the popup page name. Include headers as per the attached image. Save a csv file.

Then go to Import, browse for your csv file and map the fields:
Product Reference to Product Reference
bGeneratePopupPage to Generate Popup Page
sExtendedInfoPage to Extended Info Page Name

[Mark H]

"the second column containing -1"

We use 1 for show popup and 0 for don't. Do both -1 and 1 work?

[Duncan Rounding]

When an extended info page is checked a -1 appears in the bGeneratePopupPage field.

It might be a case of 0 for not to use it and anything else to use it - never tried anything other than -1.

[bentleybloke]

There is another way... although somewhat complicated if you don't understand layouts and selectors.

The creation of the Extended Info window relies on the selector ExtendedInfoPageDesign

Ordinarily, this is found in the Standard Extended Information Links Layout.

If every one of your products is going to have an ext info page, you could move this to the product image layout (like I have). This circumvents the check boxes on the Extended Info panel at the product which allow you to display by text link, clicky image or ext info button.

In order for it to work, you will also have to make the ProductName in your product layout into a link to the extended information page. Using something like:

<H3 class="productName"><a href="<actinic:variable name="ExtendedInfoPageName" />"><actinic:variable name="ProductName" /></a></H3>

[Mike Hughes]

Jonathan, That sounds like a nice solution. Does this force the creation of the extended info page or just create the link?

I guess I don't know enough to understand how the ExtendedInfoPageDesign selector works.

Mike

[leehack]

You can just remove the Blockif testing to see if it has been checkboxed or not also. IsPopUpGenerated or something like that is the condition.

[bentleybloke]

The method creates an ext info page for every product.

I can't remember why (Actinic needs a design notes facility), but I ended up doing away with the Standard Extended Information Links layout. Possibly because it didn't work just removing the block or caused some other problem. Hence the move of the selector to a layout which is always used in a product and the creation of the link using the product name.