Is there inventory control for attributes ?

[cas]

Hi Milbo,

I got the simple Custom Field attribute to work, but I have thousands of products and dozens of repeating attributes for each product, so is there a way to define all the values for a Custom Field outside of the product, and then just attach the Customer Field & its set of values to the product as a group?  For example, in osCommerce before I enter any products, I first define the Options (ie, Color) and then for each Option I define its set of Option Values (ie, Red, White, Blue).  Then I go into the product and just select the Options & Option Values I want for that product, and then enter a price adjustment (+ -) for that specific Option if needed.  This makes entering products with lots of repeated attributes very easy and very fast.  If I have to enter every attribute over and over again inside each product, it will take forever and make ongoing maintenance a nightmare when attributes change and I have to go into every product to change them, rather than just changing the attribute once outside of the product and it automatically is changed for all the products.  I know I could clone a product once I have it all the attributes defined in it, but that won't help with the ongoing maintenance when an attribute changes.  I would still have to go into every product to change it.    Is it possible with VM to define the attributes and its values outside the product, and then just attach them as I can do in osCommerce?   

Also, when defining Custom Fields, I see there is an option to pick "Is a list?".   But then how do I put the values in that list?   

And finally, I see I can define a Custom Field as an Image, but then how do I upload and attach an image to a Custom Field attribute?  The only image in the drop-down selection in the Product/Custom Field is the product image.  I need to have a unique image for each attribute.  Also, these attributes with images need to be related in a group so the website shows the images with a single selection radio button?   Also, these image attributes needs to have a price adjustment (+ -) for each attribute.  is this possible?   

I know you guys are working hard, so thanks for all the effort.  I just hope the attribute entry and ongoing maintenance of attributes can be improved in v2 for large sites.     

Thanks,
Chuck

[Studio 42]

Hi Cas,

You can give a parent to the custom fields (see eg. group of fields in the sample datas).
then you have to add the parent to have all your custom fields setted in one time with the defaut value.
Only the price is to change.

You can set this to add in one time priced customfield and cusmtomfield with no price.

TO add images for your customfields variants simple add it in product folder and synchronize it in Media menu.
all your missing image are added in one time.

The price can be set by images

The best way to setup fast your product is to use the Clone product for similar products, because all the setting from this product are in the new one(and customfields to).
Clone , edit the new one and set your change save. This is very fast for  product with only some changes.

[newtybar]

I'm so confused...is there any way to get a step by step video up?

I'm by no means tech challenged...this just seems very unintuitive to me.

[Milbo]

Will follow, but when we are ready with it. It is also interesting for us to know that it is not self explaning. We are on it. But we already explained it somewhere in the vm2 board.

[p.barg]

Hi all,

well, I've taken some time to play around with Virtuemart 2 and I really like
many of the new features. Unfortunately, I'm not happy with the realisation
of variants (formerly called child products). I may have obverlooked or misunderstood
some of the features (yes, we definitely need a doku here!), but these are my first
impressions:

Let's take the T-Shirt example with size and color variations and stock control.

1. Backend:
As others have pointed out, the creation of products, child products (on 2 levels here) and establishing the
relations (size, color) in the parent products is very time consuming (more than it used to be in VM 1.1),
even if you use the clone function. If you have e.g. 5 sizes and 5 colors you end up with 31 (max.) different products
for 1 T-Shirt (including parents and children). If your shop contains e.g. 100 T-Shirts (which is not much for a realistic shop),
there might be as many as 3100 products (for T-Shirts). Apart from the time-consuming input it is hard
to find the products in the backend then, as they are all on the same level. There should be at least a sort of
tree representation instead of a flat list.
But, what's more important for me is the frontend, that is what the shoppers see:

2. Frontend
-  Parent products can be added to the shopping cart: If the shopper finds a T-Shirt he would like to bye,
he might try to buy the parent product (which was not possible in VM 1.1). But what's the result of
bying a T-Shirt without color and size? There might be other products where it makes sense to bye parent
products, but I would like to have a choice in the backend for that.
- no drop-down lists for variants: I didn't find a possibility to present the child products as drop-down lists
(which are most common for attributes like size), only as links (how can you get rid of the image btw?).
So, if the customer detects the size variants he has to click on a link and a new page opens (or did I miss the AJAX?).
- shopper doesn't see what variants there are: Before he clicks on a size-variant, the shopper is not even aware that there
are any different colors for this T-shirt and again he has to click to finally reach the right T-Shirt.
- two many clicks: As many investigations show, the more a user has to click the more likely it is that he
aborts the process...
- stock of parents seems to be independant of the stock of the children (btw, although not enabled by me,
products that are out of stock are shown and can be added to the cart; also, stock is not reduced after sale)

So, as I have said before, I may have missed or misunderstood various things, but I really hope, that some
of the my points will be of some interest for the developpers.

Best regards

Petra

[Studio 42]

HI barg,

We are working hard to change the render in BE and FE(but you can use a different render/template as default with some php knowledges).
We try always to simplify this, but it's so flexible/extandable that we must include some complex settings.

But we read all your posts and try to do it Better

Greets,

Patrick

[cas]

Hi Guys,

I made some progress based on your feedback.  Thanks! 
Here is what I did and what still needs to be answered:

I setup a parent Custom Field called Color and added 3 children Custom Fields called Red, White & Blue as Image type.  My first question is what type should I select for the parent Color?  It does not need an image since it's just the parent of Custom Fields that will have images.  It should only be used as the group title/heading above the 3 children Custom Fields red, white & blue which will have images attached.   Second question is once I add the Color custom field with the children to the product, do I remove the Color custom Field and just leave the red, white & blue custom fields, or does the parent Color need to stay in the product?   If I leave Color in the product it shows up on the website as a drop down with no items and doesn't make sense. 

To continue, I then uploaded the Red, White & Blue images into the Product folder on the host server with Filezilla, and then Synchronized the images in VM.  Third question is there a way to add the Custom Field images within VM or do I need to add them outside VM?  I then went into the Product and into the Custom Fields and added Color custom field to the product, and the Red, White & Blue custom fields were added automatically.  Since I already Synchronized the images, the images where now in the drop-down for each Custom Field, so I picked the appropriate image and adjusted the price as needed.  So far so good.

On the website the red, white & blue Custom Field images are displayed, but then I realized the images are not related within the group Color, and all the images have the radio button selected.  The website needs to show these images within the parent group Color, and with a single selection radio button within this group Color, so the customer can select which color they want to buy. 

How do I make this work properly? 

My final question is a suggestion... can you add to the admin Configuration/Shopfront/Media Files Settings... a separate folder image location for Custom Field images?  Call it the Custom Field Media Path.  Currently Custom Field images are included in the same Product Media Path.  For larger websites, it would be great to have a separate folder to hold the Custom Field images.  This will make the long-term maintenance easier to manage.

Thanks,
Chuck

[cas]

Hi Electrocity and Milbo,

Any help on my Custom Field post above?  I have a deadline and need to get the Custom Fields working.  Your help is much appreciated. 

Thanks,
Chuck

[Milbo]

we are working on it. I think we will release tomorrow or friday. The last problem is afaik the custom fields.

[cristi]

Cas, I have a similar situation with yours. I sell custom fabric shades. Each shade have many attributes, width, length, border, fabrics and more. I was able to configurate it before in version 1.1... using "custom field hack" ( you can find it on the forum). In fact I have 5 stores all using this hack. It's easy to use and best of all  its FAST to configurate attributes.
I hope this help!

I played with vm2 for the past few days as I need to make a new site and I found it nicer as previews versions, until you get to the attribute part. At the moment it don't make sence to me considering the fact that I have about 50 products with about 400 fabrics each + 3-8 extra attributes. I'll play with it more in the next few days but please let me know if you have any progress on your side and what steps did you follow.

[cas]

Hi Cristi,

Yes, I use the Custom Attributes Extension hack for my older sites.   But now I'm building a new site and really want to use the newer version so I don't have to convert anything down the road.   According to Milbo they are releasing a new version with Custom Field updates any day now.  I really hope it works.  I like the new version of Joomla and VM2 much better.  I'll post my findings when the new version is released.

Regards,
Chuck

[cas]

Hi Guys,

I made some progress based on your feedback.  Thanks! 
Here is what I did and what still needs to be answered:

I setup a parent Custom Field called Color and added 3 children Custom Fields called Red, White & Blue as Image type.  My first question is what type should I select for the parent Color?  It does not need an image since it's just the parent of Custom Fields that will have images.  It should only be used as the group title/heading above the 3 children Custom Fields red, white & blue which will have images attached.   Second question is once I add the Color custom field with the children to the product, do I remove the Color custom Field and just leave the red, white & blue custom fields, or does the parent Color need to stay in the product?   If I leave Color in the product it shows up on the website as a drop down with no items and doesn't make sense. 

To continue, I then uploaded the Red, White & Blue images into the Product folder on the host server with Filezilla, and then Synchronized the images in VM.  Third question is there a way to add the Custom Field images within VM or do I need to add them outside VM?  I then went into the Product and into the Custom Fields and added Color custom field to the product, and the Red, White & Blue custom fields were added automatically.  Since I already Synchronized the images, the images where now in the drop-down for each Custom Field, so I picked the appropriate image and adjusted the price as needed.  So far so good.

On the website the red, white & blue Custom Field images are displayed, but then I realized the images are not related within the group Color, and all the images have the radio button selected.  The website needs to show these images within the parent group Color, and with a single selection radio button within this group Color, so the customer can select which color they want to buy. 

How do I make this work properly? 

My final question is a suggestion... can you add to the admin Configuration/Shopfront/Media Files Settings... a separate folder image location for Custom Field images?  Call it the Custom Field Media Path.  Currently Custom Field images are included in the same Product Media Path.  For larger websites, it would be great to have a separate folder to hold the Custom Field images.  This will make the long-term maintenance easier to manage.

Thanks,
Chuck

I just updated to the new version H, but all the items I pointed out above are still not working.   Can you help me by answering the questions above?

Also, when I add a Custom Field to the product that is of type image, where can I enter the name/description for this custom field in the product?   Without a name/description, when the product is added to shopping cart, how do I know which custom field the user picked?  In the cart it just shows the the Custom Field type name, ie Color, and then it shows the item number they picked, ie #7.  But how do I or the customer know that #7 is the color Red that they picked?   Please add another text field to the Custom Fields of type image when adding to products to allow us to enter a name/description that carries forward into the cart and the order.

Thanks,
Chuck 

[Milbo]

A start for a manual http://dev.virtuemart.net/projects/virtuemart/wiki/Hints_for_the_use_of_the_product_customfields

not finished, but may show new ideas

[cas]

Hi Milbo,

Glad to see a manual is underway.  In the meantime, can you please help me by answering my questions in my post above.  I have a deadline to deliver and really need your help. 

One of the most important questions is how to add a Name/Description to an image-type Custom Field when adding it to the product.  It only has the ability to add the image and a price adjustment.  We need to be able to add a Name/Description that goes along with this image.  Otherwise when the customer adds the product to the shopping cart, it only shows the ID, so does the customer confirm they selected the correct item.  Also, how do we know easily which custom field they selected?  Do we need to go back to the admin to figure out that image ID #7 is really the Red color?  Hopefully you can see that we need to be able to label the custom fields with a name/description when adding it to the product.   

Thanks for your help.
Chuck     

[cas]

Hi Guys,

Any answer to the question about how to name a Custom Field of type Image when adding it to a product?  This is the last critical item keeping me from moving forward on my project, so please let me know if there is a way to do it in version H, or if a Name field will be added in the next release.     

Thanks,
Chuck