Families
A family is the contract for a kind of product. It answers: which attributes apply here, which of them are mandatory, and mandatory for which channels.
Families are what keep a large catalog governable. You decide once per family rather than once per product, and every product in the family inherits the rule. A product without a family has no required attributes, so nothing about it can be measured: it shows no completeness, and its display name cannot be read from the family. Every product you intend to publish belongs in one.
Getting the granularity right
Split into separate families when the attribute set differs, and only then. A different marketing category is no reason.
- Hydraulic fittings and pneumatic fittings, needing the same technical fields:
one family, with a
mediumattribute. - Fittings and safety gloves: two families. Nothing about thread size applies to a glove.
Ten to fifty families is normal for a serious B2B catalog. Several hundred is a signal that categories have been modelled as families; see Categories for the difference.
Create a family
- Go to PIM › Data model › Families.
- Select New family.
- Enter a Code (permanent) and the Labels (i18n).
- Choose the Label attribute: the attribute used as the product's
display name. Usually
name. If you leave it empty, the tenant's default label attribute applies, which isnameunless an administrator changed it. - Choose the Image attribute: the asset attribute that provides the main image shown in lists and search results.
- Save.
Assign attributes to the family
This is the substance of the family.
- Open the family and go to Family attributes.
- Select Add attribute for each attribute that applies to this kind of product.
- For each one, set:
- Required: a product in this family is not complete without it.
- Required channels: required only for the channels you list. This is how you say "the long description is mandatory for the web shop but not for the punchout catalog".
- Sort: the order fields appear in on the editing screen.
A worked example
A family hydraulic_fitting:
| Attribute | Required | Required channels |
|---|---|---|
name | yes | all |
description | yes | web shop only |
short_description | yes | punchout only |
thread_size | yes | all |
material | yes | all |
pressure_rating | yes | all |
manufacturer | yes | all |
weight | yes | all |
datasheet | no | — |
application_notes | no | — |
A product here is complete for the punchout catalog with a short description and no long one, which is correct, because that is what a procurement system renders.
Changing a family later
| Change | What happens |
|---|---|
| Add an attribute to the family | Safe. The field appears on every product in the family. |
| Mark an attribute Required | The completeness of every product in the family is now measured against one more attribute. The stored figure is stale until you run Recompute completeness on the products; expect it to drop. That is the feature working. |
| Remove an attribute from the family | Values already stored on products are kept; the attribute stops applying. Re-add it and the data is still there. |
| Move a product to a different family (Assign family) | The product keeps the values for attributes both families share and hides the rest. Completeness is measured against the new family in the same step. |
| Change the Label attribute | Every product in the family is named from the new attribute. A product with no value there falls back to its SKU. |
| Delete the family | Products keep their values but lose the family. They have no required attributes and no completeness until you assign another one. |
Next
- Variants and family variants — for products that exist in several sizes.