Configuring StructPIM
StructPIM is highly configurable and can be configured to manage almost any kind of product data. This article explains how to get started configuring your instance of StructPIM and introduces the concepts you need to be familiar with
Setting up your product structure
There are generally two ways of controlling the attributes available to a user on a product sheet - Product Configurations and category defined attributes. This means that attributes available on a product is the sum of attributes on the product configuration chosen for that product and the attributes defined for the category the product is placed within.
The primary configuration of StructPIM concerns the setup of product structures to match a clients' products. This is done in StructPIM by creating Product Configurations, with attributes defining which values an editor can enter on a product.
Before you get started, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with some of the concepts used in StructPIM described in the glossary below
Product configurations are used to define structures of products. A product is associated to one product configuration, which thus defines the data model for that product
Products in StructPIM are a representation of a product model. A product may have variants in some cases and in other cases it does not (ie. there is only one variant of the product).
Variants are associated to products and inherits information from products. Each variant has one or more defining attributes used to distinguish one variant from another (ie. different color, size etc).
Product types are used to control defining attributes for variants of a product. A product configuration can have one or more product types, which each define the defining attributes for that product type. A product using a product configuration with more than one product type needs a specification of the exact product type in order to know the defining attributes for its variants.
Defining attributes is a term used for the attributes which separate two variants of the same product. For clothes, the defining attributes will be the color and size. For a table top, the defining attributes will be length, width and thickness and so forth. Defining attributes can sometimes be thought of as the choices a customer needs to make on a webshop product page in order to select the variant she wants to add to her basket.
Attributes are at the core of StructPIM and describes the different data types usable in the system. An attribute corresponds to an input field in the PIM system and the type and setup of an attribute defines how that input field should look and work.
Different attribute types in StructPIM:
- Number: Used to represent a single number
- Area: Used to represent an area defined by a width and length
- Volume: Used to represent a volume defined by a width, length and height
- Range: Used to represent a range defined by a from and to value
- Yes/No: Used to represent a checkbox
- Text: Used to represent a free text field
- Date: Used to represent a date (and if selected a time)
- Content: Used to represent an Umbraco content selector
- ProductReference: Used to represent a selector for products, variants and/or product groups
- AttributeSelector: Used to represent a selector of other attributes in the system
- Image [Deprecated]: Used to represent a selector of a single media asset
- Media: Used to represent a (single or multi) media asset selector
- Calculation: Used to represent an attribute value which is calculated based on values of other attributes
- FixedList: Used to represent a dropdown, with options from a specified Global list
- Complex: Used to represent an attribute which consist of one or more sub attributes which may be of any attribute type
Attribute groups are used to group attributes into logic groupings
Product hierarchies are used to organize products in different category structures. StructPIM supports as many product hierarchies as needed, and products can be placed within all hierarchies
A product group or category is a node in a product hierarchy. Categories can be nested as deep as needed, and products can be placed in as many categories as needed. One primary product group is always defined for a product.
Collections are dynamic groups defined by a search. Products or variants are placed in a collection if they match the search criteria of that collection.
Background tasks are used to execute tasks in StructPIM, which might take a while due to the complexity of the task or the amount of data that needs processing.
Export templates are predefined templates for export formats, which allows a user to define a set of attributes and an export format. Later, users can use these templates for exporting products or variants
Variant generation templates are used to define a range of variants to generate, based on defining attributes. Say you create a new product and need to generate variants with the colors red, green, blue, black, white and sizes XS, S, M, L, XL and XXL. In total this is 5 colors x 6 sizes = 30 variants. Instead of having to create all 30 variants manually, a variant generation template can be defined to create all 30 variants for a product in one process
StructPIM supports setting up a dynamic dashboards, which show the result of one or more predefined searches. The results may be presented as a single number, a pie chart or a line chart.
Measuring points is the term used for saved searches which are used on the dashboard. Hence, you need to define measuring points in order to show these on the dashboard afterwards.