Salesforce B2C Commerce 24.7 > Merchandising Your Site > Catalogs, Categories, and Products > Products > Product Variation Types > Product Variation Scenarios

Base Products for Scenarios

The Base Product and Variation Group Scenarios and Base Product and Variation Product Scenarios topics both use the products described here.

Scenario Product Overview

For the sake of simplicity, the following scenarios don’t use SiteGenesis data. To follow along with the scenarios, you must create these products.

These scenarios make the following assumptions:
  • The product is a T-shirt that is available in different colors and sizes. The table lists the SKUs for the shirts, based on size and color.
      Navy Green Amber Sky
    S TS-1 TS-4 TS-7 TS-10
    M TS-2 TS-5 TS-8 TS-11
    L TS-3 TS-6 TS-9 TS-12
  • The functionality described is based on the SiteGenesis application. Your application can behave differently, depending on the templates you have developed.
  • The images and catalog are stored in Business Manager.
  • On the Catalog page Image Settings tab for the apparel-catalog, set the Variation Attribute ID to color.

Create a Custom Product Property

You can use other properties to group variation products.

  1. Select Administration > Site Development > System Object Types.
  2. Click the Product system object.
  3. Click the Attribute Definitions tab.
  4. Click New.
  5. On the Object Type 'Product' - Attribute Definition Details page, enter:
    • ID: bucketColor
    • Display Name: Bucket Color
    • Help Text: Bucket color
    • Value Type: String
    • Localizable/Site-Specific: No
  6. Click Apply.
  7. Click <<Back.
  8. Click the Attribute Grouping tab.
  9. For the Presentation Attributes group, click Edit.
  10. Click the ellipsis (...), select the bucketColor attribute, and click Select.
  11. Click <<Back.
  12. On the Attribute Grouping tab, the Presentation Attributes page shows five attributes.

To Create the Base Product:

  1. Select site > Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Products.

  2. On the Simple Product Search page, click New.
  3. On the Product page General tab, enter the following values and click Apply:
    Field Value
    ID TS
    Catalog apparel-catalog
    Tax Class Standard
    Online Yes
    Searchable Yes
    Name T-shirt
  4. Click the Categories tab and click Edit Categories.
  5. Expand womens > womens-clothing, select womens-clothing-tops, and click Apply.
  6. Click the Inventory tab and for the Inventory (assigned to SiteGenesis) list, click Create.
  7. Select Perpetual.
  8. Set the Allocation to 100 and click Create.
  9. Click Back.

To Create the Variation Products:

  1. Click the Product page Variations tab for the T-shirt product.
  2. Under Add Shared Variation Attribute,for ID, click New.
    Note: Clicking Add doesn't perform the same action.
  3. Enter the following values:
    Field Value
    Attribute Definition ID: color
    Name: (Don't enter any text. The text is provided automatically once you click Apply.)
    Custom ID: color
    Custom Display Name: color
    Slicing Attribute No (deselected)
  4. Click Apply. The Defined Variation Values for color section opens.
  5. In the Defined Variation Values for color section, enter the following values and click Apply after entering each value.
    Value Display Value Description
    navy Navy Navy Blue
    green Hemlock Hemlock Green
    amber Amber Burnt Amber
    sky Sky Sky Blue
  6. To return to the Product page Variations tab, click <<Back .
  7. Under =Add Shared Variation Attribute, for ID, click New.
    Note: Clicking Add doesn't perform the same action.
  8. Enter the following values and click Apply:
    Field Value
    Attribute Definition ID: size
    Name: (Don't enter any text. The text is provided automatically once you click Apply.)
    Custom ID: clothingSize
    Custom Display Name: size
    Slicing Attribute No (deselected)
  9. In the Defined Variation Values for clothingSize section, enter the following values and click Apply after entering each value.
    Value Display Value Description
    S Small Small
    M Medium Medium
    L Large Large
  10. To return to the Product page Variations tab, click <<Back .
  11. Under Add Shared Variation Attribute, for ID, click New.
    Note: Clicking Add doesn't perform the same action.
  12. Enter the following values:
    Field Value
    Attribute Definition ID: bucketColor
    Name: (Don't enter any text. The text is provided automatically once you click Apply.)
    Custom ID: bucketColor
    Custom Display Name: Bucket Color
    Slicing Attribute No (deselected)
  13. Click Apply. The Defined Variation Values for color section opens.
  14. In the Defined Variation Values for color section, enter the following values and click Apply after entering each value.
    Value Display Value Description
    Blue Blue Blue
    Green Green Green
    Orange Orange Orange
  15. To return to the Variations tab, click <<Back.
  16. On the Product page Variations tab, in the Variation Products section, click Add to automatically create a variation product. Configure the following products:
    ID color size bucketColor
    TS-1 navy (Navy) S (Small) Blue
    TS-2 navy (Navy) M (Medium) Blue
    TS-3 navy (Navy) L (Large) Blue
    TS-4 green (Hemlock) S (Small) Green
    TS-5 green (Hemlock) M (Medium) Green
    TS-6 green (Hemlock) L (Large) Green
    TS-7 amber (Amber) S (Small) Orange
    TS-8 amber (Amber) M (Medium) Orange
    TS-9 amber (Amber) L (Large) Orange
    TS-10 sky (Sky) S (Small) Blue
    TS-11 sky (Sky) M (Medium) Blue
    TS-12 sky (Sky) L (Large) Blue
  17. Click the ID link in list of variation products (such as TS-1) to navigate to the Variations tab for the variation product.

    For each variation product:

    1. Click the Inventory tab and for the Inventory (assigned to SiteGenesis) list, click Create.
    2. In the New Record page General tab, configure the following values:
      Field Value
      Perpetual Yes (selected)
      Allocation 100
    3. Click Create.
  18. To return to the Product page, click the Products link in the breadcrumb at the top of the page.
  19. Search on TS-. All the variation products are returned as results.
  20. Click the box to the left of each variation product and click Edit Selected.
  21. Make sure Update/Delete Product Attributes is selected and click Next

  22. On the Step 2: Update/Delete Product Attributes page, click Select attributes. Select and configure the following attributes:

    Field Update Value
    Searchable Default Yes
    Online Default Yes
  23. Click Finish: Go to Batch Process.
  24. Click Refresh until you see the completed batch process with a status of Success.
  25. Select site > Merchant Tools > Search > Search Indexes page, then select all the indexes and click Rebuild to rebuild the index.
    Note: It's important to rebuild the availability index, or the products do not appear on the storefront.

To Create Variation Groups:

  1. Click the Product page Variations tab for the T-shirt product.
  2. In the Variation Group section, click Add. Review any warnings and click OK. The page reloads and an empty variation group with the ID TS-13 is added.
  3. Configure variation groups based on Bucket Color:
    ID color size Bucket Color
    TS-13 -None- -None- Blue (Blue)
    TS-14 -None- -None- Green (Green)
    TS-15 -None- -None- Orange (Orange)

  4. Configure variation groups based on size:

    ID color size Bucket Color
    TS-16 -None- S (Small) -None-
    TS-17 -None- M( Medium) -None-
    TS-18 -None- L (large) -None-

  5. Configure variation groups based on other combinations:

    ID color size Bucket Color
    TS-19 -None- S (Small) Blue (Blue)
    TS-20 navy (Navy) M( Medium) -None-
    TS-21 sky (Sky) M( Medium) -None-
  6. Click Apply.
  7. For each variation group: click the variation group, click Lock, click the General tab, enter the following values, and click Apply:
    Field Value
    Searchable Yes (default and SiteGenesis)
    Online Yes (default and SiteGenesis)

To Assign Images to Products

Download the images from the Code Example repository or use your own images. Images must be 195 x 195 pixels and have the following names:

To Add Images to Products:

  1. Select site > Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Products.
  2. Click the By ID tab.
  3. Search for TS.
  4. To edit the product, on the Product page General tab for the T-shirt product, click Lock.
  5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Edit button in the Images section.

To Upload Images:

  1. In the File Browser pane, right-click the large folder icon and select Add.
  2. Navigate to the following images and click Upload:
    • tshirt_amber.jpg
    • tshirt_hemlock.jpg
    • tshirt_navy.jpg
    • tshirt_sky.jpg
  3. The medium variations use the same image as large variations and so don't need anything to be uploaded.
  4. In the File Browser pane, right-click the small folder icon and select Add.
  5. Navigate to the following images and click Upload:
    • tshirt_amber_small.jpg
    • tshirt_hemlock_small.jpg
    • tshirt_navy_small.jpg
    • tshirt_sky_small.jpg
  6. In the File Browser pane, right-click the swatch folder icon and select Add.
  7. Navigate to the following images and click Upload:
    • amber_swatch.jpg
    • hemlock_swatch.jpg
    • navy_swatch.jpg
    • sky_swatch.jpg

To assign images to the Base Product:

You can find the image to assign in the File Browser search and drag it over the empty icon for the view type. You can also click the empty icon to replace and type the path in the Path field.

  1. To add images for each view type, click base product in the Image Manager window.
  2. To enter the path for the image, click the empty icon for the view type. You can also use the File Browser to find images you have uploaded and drag them onto the empty icon.
    • Enter large/tshirt_amber.jpg in the Path for the view type 'large'
    • Enter medium/tshirt_amber.jpg in the Path for the view type 'medium'
    • Enter small/tshirt_amber_small.jpg in the Path> for the view type 'small'
    • Enter swatch/amber.jpg in the Path for the view type 'swatch'

To assign images to variation Products:

You can find the images to assign in the File Browser. Search and drag the image over the empty icon for the view type or click the empty icon to replace and type the path in the Path field.

  1. To add images for the variations under the view type 'large', click each variation in the Image Manager window.
    • Enter large/tshirt_amber.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'navy'.
    • Enter large/tshirt_hemlock.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'hemlock'.
    • Enter large/tshirt_navy.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'amber'.
    • Enter large/tshirt_sky.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'sky'.
  2. Repeat Step 1 for view type 'medium'. Use the same images as the large view type.
  3. To add images for the variations under the view type 'small', click each variation in the Image Manager window.
    • Enter small/tshirt_amber_small.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'amber'.
    • Enter small/tshirt_hemlock_small.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'hemlock'.
    • Enter small/tshirt_navy_small.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'navy'.
    • Enter small/tshirt_sky_small.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'sky'.
  4. On the Images window (only accessible when a product is locked), select a product variation in the Image Manager pane.
  5. To add images for the variations under the view type 'swatch', click each variation in the Image Manager window.
    • Enter swatch/amber_swatch.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'navy under the view type 'swatch'.
    • Enter swatch/hemlock_swatch.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'hemlock under the view type 'swatch'.
    • Enter swatch/navy_swatch.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'amber' under the view type 'swatch'.
    • Enter swatch/sky_swatch.jpg in the Path for the variation value 'sky' under the view type 'swatch'.
Note: If you add the swatch to the base product, instead of adding swatches to the variation products, it's shown once for every variation type. Therefore, you see multiple identical swatches in the storefront.

To Assign Images to Variation Groups:

  1. In the Image Manager window, click the Edit button.
  2. In the Variation Attributes window, in the Attributes list, select bucketColor.
  3. Check the box for each variation group you have created. For example, bucketColor='Orange'.
  4. Click OK.
  5. In the Image Manager window, click bucketColor='Orange'.
    • Enter large/tshirt_amber.jpg in the Path for the view type 'large'.
    • Enter large/tshirt_amber.jpg in the Path for the view type 'medium'
    • Enter small/tshirt_amber_small.jpg in the Path for the view type 'small'
    • Enter swatch/amber_swatch.jpg in the Path for the view type 'swatch'
  6. In the Image Manager window, click bucketColor='Green'.
    • Enter large/tshirt_hemlock.jpg in the Path for the view type 'large'
    • Enter large/tshirt_hemlock.jpg in the Path for the view type 'medium'
    • Enter small/tshirt_hemlock_small.jpg in the Path for the view type 'small'
    • Enter swatch/hemlock_swatch.jpg in the Path for the view type 'swatch'
  7. In the Image Manager window, under color='Navy'click bucketColor='Blue'.
    • Enter large/tshirt_navy.jpg in the Path for the view type 'large'
    • Enter large/tshirt_navy.jpg in the Path for the view type 'medium'
    • Enter small/tshirt_navy_small.jpg in the Path for the view type 'small'
    • Enter swatch/navy_swatch.jpg in the Path for the view type 'swatch'
  8. In the Image Manager window, under color='Sky'click bucketColor='Blue'.
    • Enter large/tshirt_sky.jpg in the Path for the view type 'large'
    • Enter large/tshirt_sky.jpg in the Path for the view type 'medium'
    • Enter small/tshirt_sky_small.jpg in the Path for the view type 'small'
    • Enter swatch/sky_swatch.jpg in the Path for the view type 'swatch'
Related concepts
Scenario 1
Scenario 2
Scenario 3
Scenario 4
Scenario 5

Infocenter Retirement: On June 30, 2023, the Infocenter was retired, and documentation currently hosted on the Infocenter will be published to Salesforce Help, Commerce Cloud Developer Center, and Salesforce B2C Commerce Developer Documentation Resources. For more information, see the release note.