Add and update product attributes for retail channels (Retail essentials)
Important
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This topic describes how to set up product attributes that can be applied to products that are offered in your stores. You can use product attributes to add merchandising details, such as rich text, images, and videos to the descriptions of products that you offer in your retail stores or in product catalogs. By adding merchandising details to products, you can provide the product information that your staff needs to better serve the customer. Product attributes can be applied to products even if they are not included in a retail product catalog.
You can add or modify product attributes for individual products, categories of products, or for all stores that are assigned to a selected category. You can also bulk edit product attributes by using Microsoft Excel. For more information about how to bulk edit product attributes by using Excel, see Bulk edit product attributes in a Retail catalog using Microsoft Excel (Retail essentials).
After you update the product attributes, you must publish your changes to upload the new data to your stores.
Prerequisites
Before you can maintain channel product attributes, you must first complete the following task:
- Set up attribute groups. For more information, see Set up retail attribute groups (Retail essentials).
Set up product attributes
Click Retail essentials > Channels > Retail stores. In the Retail stores list, open a retail store.
In the Stores form, on the Action Pane, on the Set up tab, click Store product attributes.
In the Channel product attributes form, click Edit.
In the left pane, select the store that you want to add product attributes to.
On the General FastTab, do the following:
Select the Inherit check box if you want the selected store to inherit attributes, attribute values, attribute metadata, and category hierarchy assignments from the parent store.
Warning
If you select this check box after you have assigned attribute groups or attribute metadata to the store, those values will be overridden and replaced with the attribute data from the parent store. You can manually re-enter any values that were overridden that still apply to the store.
Select the category hierarchy that applies to the store. This hierarchy is used to browse through products by category in the channel.
On the Attribute group FastTab, click Add to add the attribute groups that apply to the selected store. By assigning attribute groups to a selected store, you can quickly assign multiple attribute values to all products in the store at the same time. To view the attributes that are included in an attribute group, click View attributes.
On the Products FastTab, view the list of products that have been assorted to the selected store. You can also do the following:
Click Add to open the Add products form and add products to the selected store.
Click Attributes to view the attribute values that are assigned to a selected product.
Click Retail channels to view the retail channels that a product is assorted to.
To map attribute metadata for product attributes that are added to the store, click the Setup tab, and then click Set attribute metadata.
In the Set attribute metadata form, in the Category hierarchy field, select the category hierarchy that you want to set attribute metadata for, and then, in the left pane, select a category.
Select the options that indicate how the attributes for each category or channel product should behave. For example, you can select whether attributes are required, whether they can be used for search, and whether they can be used as a filter. To view the various metadata options for the product attributes, select the Include attribute check box.
To add attributes and attribute metadata to other stores in the organization hierarchy, repeat steps 4 through 10.
To maintain product attributes in bulk, in the Channel product attributes form, on the Internal organization tab, click Edit in Excel. For more information about how to bulk edit product attributes by using Excel, see Bulk edit product attributes in a Retail catalog using Microsoft Excel (Retail essentials).
Click Publish channel updates, and then complete the following procedure to send the attribute data to the stores.
Send updated product attributes to stores
Use this procedure to send the updated product attributes to stores. You must run the following scheduler jobs:
1070 (Channel configuration).
1150 (Catalog), if Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 is installed and a retail product catalog is assigned to the retail store.
To run scheduler jobs, follow these steps:
Click Retail essentials > Data synchronization > Distribution schedule.
In the left pane, in the Name column, select the job that you want to run. To run the job manually or in batch mode, do one of the following:
To manually run the scheduler job, on the menu bar at the top of the form, click Run now.
To run the scheduler job in batch mode, on the Scheduler jobs FastTab, verify that the Enabled check box is selected for the job, and then click Create batch job. In the form that is displayed, enter information about the batch job.