Help! My fragments have Product References

[Mike Hughes]

This is odd. My Fragments have Product Reference numbers and this is now preventing me using a product reference for a product as the fragment already has it (and it can't be changed).

Background:

My product pages often have several version of the same product on them. In actinic they're organised as a section with:

- ACME Red Widgets Description (product)
- Separator (fragment)
- 2" ACME Red Widget (product)
- 3" ACME Red Widget (product)
- 4" ACME Red Widget (product)
- Product review content (fragment)

I've discovered that many of these fragments have product references assigned to them and there's no way of changing them. If I copy and paste the section, Actinic asks for a new product reference for the fragments, calling them products.

The problem I have is that actinic now won't let me use a product reference as it's already been assigned to a fragment.

To see what's happening I've exported the catalog to a csv file and can see that these fragments have a product reference number and even creating a new fragment does the same thing, assigning a sequential number.

The only real difference I can spot for the fragments is that they have a a 'product type' of 2 instead of 0 for normal products.

All this is on 9.0.5 JHZA.

So....

This seems to raise a few questions so any help you can give is appreciated:

- Should these fragments be assigned product references?
- If so, should the product reference be normal alphanumerical or should there be a prefix of some kind to tell actinic to ignore them?
- Why is Actinic doing this?
- Is there a known or recommended way to get out of this situation?

I've found a previous thread where Actinic was refusing to accept an unused product reference. I assume this was the same thing but apparently it went to actinic support and the solution isn't posted.

Also another thread about Actinic asking for a product ref for fragments but again no solution posted.

Any ideas?

Mike

PS. I've already compacted the database in case it's a database problem. Makes no difference.

[Duncan Rounding]

A fragment will have a reference - this is normal. You can manually change the reference in the database (or import) if you wish but backup first.

If you elect to enter your own product references rather than let Actinic auto number them then you can perhaps prefix all your numbers or similar if this is a problem. I've rarely seen this as an issue though.

[Mike Hughes]

Thanks Duncan

A fragment will have a reference - this is normal.

Good. At least this bit isn't broken.

You can manually change the reference in the database (or import) if you wish but backup first.

I was wondering about doing this but it's going to be a PITA as there'll be no warning of duplicates. It means I'll have to go through all my products, find the ones that are fragments and rename any which have got a number similar to the product references I use. All the while hoping that the number I'm using isn't one that's already been used.

Bugger!

Mike

[NormanRouxel]

Fragments use automatically generated numeric ID's - starting at 1. If you've using purely numeric references for new products then you will get the collisions you see.

If you're feeling brave (and backup first), you could go through the database, look in the Product table and add a prefix or suffix to every ProductReference where nProductType is 2.

[Mike Hughes]

Thanks guys,

I suspect that occasionally when adding new products I must have entered a product reference against a fragment by mistake (rather than letting it auto generate). After that Actinic will have kept compounding the problem by using those erroneous entries as the starting point for new fragments.

I've just manually altered 170 fragment product references. In the end I chose a free number range starting at 300 and assigned new numbers working up from there.

A sort in excel for type 2 products identified all the fragments that needed changing.

Everything seems OK now.

Thanks again.

Mike