Variants explained

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jhollender
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Re: Variants explained

Post by jhollender » Thu Apr 03, 2014 11:28 am

Yeah, I just don't think that AC will be able to handle millions, if not billions, of possible combinations of choices.

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Re: Variants explained

Post by AbleMods » Thu Apr 03, 2014 11:56 am

Able can handle the variants. But the Able UI isn't well suited to managing it well in situations like yours. Few applications can.

I've got a t-shirt client that has over 8,000,000 variant records. The system runs extremely well.

But it requires extensive custom programming on the backend to effectively manage that much variant data. The standard Able UI just isn't well suited. Not a slam on Able at all. Impossible to build one UI that fits all scenarios.

Essentially a system was built where (hidden) product master records are used to create the master variant grid. Then custom programming replicates that variant matrix to the rest of the products within the same product group. Their catalog is broken up into about 30 different product groupings for easy management.

That way you're only building one variant matrix per product group. Replication for a single group can easily take a couple of hours - each product winds up with 7,000 variant records. But it's vastly more efficient than doing it by hand and the matrix itself doesn't change all that often.

Took quite a bit of time to structure everything. But once it was done, it has worked elegant for several years now.
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Re: Variants explained

Post by janice » Thu Apr 03, 2014 2:26 pm

From months of trying to get it to work, variants do not work when trying to have people customize a product and have it dynamically change the price. The best way to do it is to create kits, so also you can use these same features on multiple products and when it comes time to change the price you just change the kits and all products pricing changes. We tried the variant route and finally I spoke with Mike at AC and he told me it was never made for this type of application. Judy at Web2Market created a solution for me. You can check out my Build-a-Cake to see how it works. http://www.3brothersbakery.com/Build-a-Cake-C5.aspx I will tell you that building each product is a pain, but it works for the customer and us, which in the end, is most important. Good luck, Janice

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Re: Variants explained

Post by jhollender » Thu Apr 03, 2014 3:01 pm

janice wrote:From months of trying to get it to work, variants do not work when trying to have people customize a product and have it dynamically change the price. The best way to do it is to create kits, so also you can use these same features on multiple products and when it comes time to change the price you just change the kits and all products pricing changes. We tried the variant route and finally I spoke with Mike at AC and he told me it was never made for this type of application. Judy at Web2Market created a solution for me. You can check out my Build-a-Cake to see how it works. http://www.3brothersbakery.com/Build-a-Cake-C5.aspx I will tell you that building each product is a pain, but it works for the customer and us, which in the end, is most important. Good luck, Janice
So every option that you have listed is really a product that gets included in the kitting? For example, "White Buttercream Frosting" is a product that you just have set to hidden?

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Re: Variants explained

Post by jmestep » Mon Apr 07, 2014 4:42 am

If I remember correctly, Janice ran into a problem with copying products that had variants with price changes. There was a Able bug in her version that dropped the price modifiers when copying the product in the admin. Mike at Able suggested re-usable kits which I had done in Able 5, but they weren't strictly reusable as they had been in Able 5, so when I got into coding on Janice's site, it ended up being quite a bit more complex.
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jhollender
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Re: Variants explained

Post by jhollender » Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:07 pm

jmestep wrote:If I remember correctly, Janice ran into a problem with copying products that had variants with price changes. There was a Able bug in her version that dropped the price modifiers when copying the product in the admin. Mike at Able suggested re-usable kits which I had done in Able 5, but they weren't strictly reusable as they had been in Able 5, so when I got into coding on Janice's site, it ended up being quite a bit more complex.
Do you remember if the products are set up as kit products or are they all entered as variants?

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Re: Variants explained

Post by jmestep » Tue Apr 08, 2014 5:06 am

She originally had them set up as variants, but after she talked with Mike, we switched to kits because of the bug with copying products. Mike had said I "invented" reusable kits in Able 5, which I had forgotten about. I knew I had old code for that I could look at and pattern Gold after, and the display on the product page was fine, but adding to the cart didn't work. I ended up spending 35 hours to get it all to work. But yes, things like the frosting are all kit products.
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