Creating a product

Creating Products manually would not be considered the standard procedure, as this is normally handled via an integration job. However, it is possible from time to time, that a small number of products would need to be added temporarily. Keep in mind, if your Products are added via standard integration job, any manually added products will be overwritten during the next run of the integration job. Additionally, adding Products manually is time consuming due to the number of options that are available under Products: images, documents, a description, attributes, cross sells, and so on.

Prior to creating a Product, it is important to understand the underlying relationship between Categories, Websites and Products. Products are assigned to Categories, Categories are assigned to Websites, and Websites then use these Categories to display the Products that are configured for the respective website. Because of this construct, all Products are required to have at least one Category assigned to them in order to be displayed on the website.

To reiterate what was stated above, in order for a Product to appear on a website, it must be assigned to a Category.

Creating a product

  1. Go to Admin Console > Catalog > Products.
  2. Click Add Product .
  3. Enter in the following fields with the appropriate information: Product Number, Product Title, URL Segment, Activation Date, and Basic List Price.
  4. Click Save to accept changes. Once these fields have been saved the other finger tabs will be available to edit. 

     If you include HTML entity codes in the product title (a.k.a. the short description), for example for trademark and registration symbols, these will be decoded on import. Also, product segment URLs allow for the following special characters:

    • a-z
    • A-Z
    • 0-9
    • - _ ( ) /
    • Any other characters used are automatically converted to dashes

Adding an image to the product

  1. Go to Admin Console > Catalog > Products.
  2. Click Edit of the desired product.
  3. Select the Images finger tab.
  4. There are three image fields, each tied to a different location within the website:
    • Small Image: this image is displayed within the autocomplete visual search.
    • Medium Image: this image is displayed on the search results page.
    • Large Image: this image is displayed on the Product Detail page.

      The same image can be used for all three fields, as the image will automatically render to the correct size. The purpose of the three fields is to provide a level of customization, if needed.

  5. Click Browse.
  6. Select the desired image.

    Images must first be uploaded to the Admin Console before they can be selected. See the Uploading and Assigning Images article for more instructions.

  7. Click Save to accept changes.

Assigning product to category

  1. Go to Admin Console > Catalog > Products.
  2. Click Edit of the desired product.
  3. Select the Categories finger tab.
  4. Click Assign Categories.
  5. Select the desired Category.
  6. Click Assign.
  7. Click Save to accept changes.

Adding related files to a product

  1. Go to Admin Console > Catalog > Products.
  2. Click Edit of the desired product.
  3. Select the Documents finger tab.
  4. Click Add Documents.
  5. Populate the fields.

    The Name and Document Type are displayed on the Product Detail page.

  6. Click Browse.
  7. If the file is not already stored in the file management system (Media Manager), click Upload and add it.
  8. Double click the desired file. The file will be provided as a link on the Product Detail page.