2022 Optimizely Product Information Management release notes

The following is a cumulative list of enhancements and major bug fixes in each Optimizely Product Information Management (PIM) release.

December 16, 2022

Enhancements

• Support for variant swatches and other newer variant configuration options.
  • Choose how each variant property should display on the site (previously, all variants used simple dropdowns for selecting child options).
  • Assign colors (color picker or enter hex code) or images to each property value for properties that use swatches.
• Reusable variant types can now be created and assigned to parents, rather than configuring variant properties for each parent product.
  • Variant Type section added within the Configure area of PIM
  • Changes to variant type configuration apply to all parents that use the same variant type (such as when changing the 'color' variant property to use swatches, all parents using the variant type will use the same swatch configuration).
• Support within the standard product import for variant assignments (previously done in standalone imports).
  • Assign a variant type to a product to convert it to a parent within the standard product import by mapping a column to 'variant type'.
  • Assign a parent product to a product to convert it to a child within the standard product import by mapping a column to 'parent product'.
• Simplified manual parent creation process.
  • Selecting children on the product list and creating a parent now uses a more streamlined wizard.
  • New option on the product detail page to convert standard products to parent products by selecting a variant type.

December 12, 2022

Enhancements

• Added the option to view 500 records per page on all list pages.
• Added an option to delete all archived products to the admin utilities flyout menu.
• Added support for webp images. Webp files that are imported will now be recognized as images and resized and display the same as other supported image file types.
• Improved the performance of validation of files for the update asset data import.
• Improved the performance of dynamic category rule evaluation to mitigate the risk of timeouts when publishing to commerce.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with asset imports where using the auto-assign feature along with the overwrite option would cause an import error.
• Fixed an issue where importing child products could cause them to be unassigned from their parents.
• Updated the sync setup job to clear languages from PIM if they have been deleted in commerce.
• Fixed an issue where adding a rule to a pre-existing dynamic category could result in products not displaying properly in the category's product list.
• Fixed an issue with the asset auto-assignment functionality where the partial matching logic was not always evaluated properly which could result in assets assigned to additional products.
• Fixed an issue with the externally hosted asset import where asset names with a capitalization mismatch could cause the import to stall.
• Fixed an issue where products could not be exported if the 'is parent' column was included in the export.
• Fixed an issue where changes to a property that clear the mapping would result in the previously selected mapping option being hidden until refreshing the page.
• Fixed an issue where changing the character length options for adhoc values would require remapping the property, even if the mapping was still valid with the new character length.

October 31, 2022

Enhancements

• Added a new option to disable management of related products within PIM. This can be used in cases where product relationships are managed in commerce or an integrated system. When disabled, the related products tab will not display on product records and the import options for related products will be hidden.
• Added the option to bulk delete assets by deleting the folder that contains the assets. Previously assets had to be moved or deleted prior to deleting the folder.
• Added the option to export product templates from the product template list page.
• Updated product exports with an option to export related product assignments.
• Updated product imports so products that do not have data changed will not have their status changed. This will reduce the time it takes to publish data to Commerce by excluding products that do not have any updated data.
• Updated the max character length of product titles to 2048 characters.
• Updated the translations dashboard widget to improve performance and clarity of the data presented.
• Updated processing of images so there is 1 job per upload, rather than 1 per image.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue for Commerce Connect where the percent complete was not recalculated for products that had categories assigned by import.
• Fixed an issue where CSV files were not loading properly during product import.
• Fixed an issue where the external asset import could create duplicate folders when importing to new folders that were defined within the import file.
• Fixed an issue where the externally hosted asset import would throw a validation error when updating existing assets.
• Fixed an issue where the update asset data import would throw a validation error when trying to update assets that were uncategorized.
• Fixed an issue where unassigning assets could sometimes result in them being removed from their folder or losing some metadata.
• Fixed an issue where using product restore on a parent product could clear the assigned variant properties.
• Fixed the "Enable auto-submission of products for approval" setting. If this is enabled and products are saved with all required data, they will automatically be updated to "Submitted for Approval" rather than "Ready for Approval."

October 5, 2022

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where using product restore on a parent product could clear assigned variant properties.
• Fixed an issue where CSV files were not loading properly during product import.

August 30, 2022

Enhancements

• Added a dashboard widget for multi-language implementations that includes information on how many products, assets, categories and properties require translation for a selected language.
• Added an option to generate property and product template import files from a set of product data. This functionality is accessible within the import dropdown on the property list page.
• Improved performance of the category import.
• Improved performance of bulk product approvals.
• Limited the property options for auto-assigning assets to those that use the text field property type. This eliminates clutter by hiding irrelevant properties.
• Updated the asset drawer for improved usability. All assets will be exposed and filterable by name by default, and the UI has been updated and simplified to make it easier to assign and unassign assets.
• Updated the bulk edit process on the product list to improve usability. The bulk edit now uses a side panel that automatically displays properties that can be edited for all selected products.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where exported category data could not be reimported in some cases.
• Fixed an issue where the external asset import could create duplicate folders when importing to new folders that were defined within the import file.

July 22, 2022

Enhancements

• Added a "Restore Defaults" option to the column selector to easily revert to displaying the common system properties as columns.
• Changes to variant definitions will now automatically update child products with a status of published to approved. This ensures changes to variants are reflected in Commerce the next time data is published from PIM.
• Improved performance of the externally hosted asset import.
• Improved performance of the related product assignment import.
• Improved the way dynamic categories are evaluated when publishing to Commerce to prevent integration timeouts when there are many dynamic categories.
• Updated product exports to use the property display names instead of property names as column headers for better legibility.
• Updated the category attribute page to make it easier to adjust sort orders by exposing the sort order field, adding pagination, and updating the UI for consistency with other areas of PIM.
• Updated the product completeness logic for Commerce Connect to require category assignments.
• Updated the product detail page when multiple languages are enabled to have warnings and visual indicators for missing translations.
• Updated the property import to enable defining attribute options for properties mapped as attributes.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where pagination was hidden at the bottom of the property values and category attributes pages.
• Fixed an issue where decimal values edited on the product detail page were not saved unless you clicked outside the control before saving.

June 14, 2022

Enhancements

• Updated the property import to remove the wizard and standardize the import process and validation to match other import types.
• Updated the property and product template import templates to use a multi-sheet format for easier definition of data. Imports are backwards compatible so files with the old single-sheet format can still be imported. See Import and export properties for more information.

June 10, 2022

Enhancements

• Added the ability to duplicate a product on the product detail page. Duplicated products will retain the same data and assignments as the original product.
• Improved column selector usability by increasing the size and making it easier to find selected and system properties.

Bug Fixes

• Updated the import field selector to fix an issue where the available and selected fields sections would collapse after adding or removing fields.
• Fixed an issue with product imports where mapping a static value as the product template resulted in a validation error.
• Fixed an issue where categories with / in their name would be exported as multiple categories.
• Fixed an issue where the category hierarchy could not be fully expanded when there were thousands of categories.
• Fixed an issue where category imports sometimes stalled when importing categories with names that include letters outside the standard Latin alphabet.
• Fixed an issue where externally hosted asset imports could stall with extremely large files.

May 26, 2022

Enhancements

• Improved the performance of asset to product assignment imports.
• Restricted archived asset editing and added the option to restore archived assets from the asset detail page.
• Updated the product translation export options to allow for easy export of products missing translations.
• Added the ability to drag/drop upload images directly on the product images tab. These images will be automatically resized, assigned to the product and added to the uncategorized assets folder.
• Added a property quick filter on product detail pages to easily find specific properties.
• Updated the tree view component used for managing the hierarchy of assets, categories and templates to improve performance and usability.
• Updated the product counts on the dashboard to exclude archived products, except in the Total Product and Archived counts.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where certain import options were not retained when saving an import template.
• Fixed an issue where clicking white space in the primary column of the product list, category list and asset list would open the detail page. Now only clicking on the product number, category name, or asset name will open the detail page.
• Fixed an issue where products could be approved and published when missing data for secondary languages configured to require translations.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes an exported file would be cleared before closing the export window, causing the download link to fail.
• Fixed an issue where assets could not be moved into other folders via drag/drop.

April 25, 2022

Enhancements

• Added additional language configuration options to settings that allow you to require content for multiple languages before publishing. Products will be considered incomplete if they are missing data for these languages, depending on the configuration.
• Updated the product detail page to display property descriptions as tooltips. Use this to add instructions on how to fill out the data or information on how the data is used for your team.
• Updated the property detail to allow selecting a language to enter translations of the display name and property values.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a rare performance issue where product editing could cause excessive database calls leading to slow database responses and occasional timeouts.
• Fixed an issue where animated gifs would lose their animation when processed and resized during upload.
• Fixed an issue where column reordering was not working on the product, category, property and other list pages.
• Fixed an issue where editing asset or template folder names to change their case would cause an error for duplicate folder name.
• Fixed an issue where large number of property values could cause a timeout when loading properties on the property list.
• Fixed an issue where product list filtering did not work for content in secondary languages.
• Fixed an issue where products that were published would be flagged for republishing unnecessarily.
• Fixed an issue where sorting and searching for categories, product templates, assets or properties with an "&" symbol would fail with a generic error.
• Fixed an issue where valid values would fail property level regex validation during import.
• Updated the "Update Asset Data" import to only require columns marked required to reduce import errors for column header mismatches.
• Fixed an issue where a property list filter would appear when not applied after navigating away from a property list with a filter applied.

March 11, 2022

Enhancements

• Performance
  • Added compression to .NET requests to improve page load times throughout the application.
  • Fixed an issue where assigning assets to products caused duplicate unnecessary database connections, which occasionally made the database slow or unresponsive.
  • Improved performance of importing product to category assignments.
  • Improved performance of exporting product data for translations.
• Other enhancements
  • Added support for 360 degree product images. The asset import and creation process has a new asset type of 360 degree images. These images can be assigned to products like normal images and, with configuration in Commerce, will display on your website as rotatable images. Configured Commerce must be updated to version 5.1.2203 for integration to properly handle 360 degree images.
  • Added support for asset display names. Asset display names do not need to be unique, and if one is provided, this value will be used instead of the asset name for downloadable documents on your website. Configured Commerce must be updated to version 5.1.2203 for integration to pass the display name to Commerce.
  • Added tooltips throughout the application to clarify features and functionality.
  • Restricted the permission to delete category trees to users with the admin role.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where navigating away from the asset list while a set of assets were being imported would cause the imports to stall.
• Fixed an issue where parent products created manually did not have default values set for properties.
• Fixed an issue where the pagination options on the asset list would be hidden when assets are selected.

January 28, 2022

Enhancements

• Updated the help link to direct to PIM documentation.
• Updated icons, buttons and styling throughout the application for improved consistency and usability.
• Added the option to filter for properties flagged as multi-language on the property list page.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where changes to variant property order were not passed to Commerce via integration.
• Fixed an issue where changes to variant configurations did not require parent products to be republished, which resulted in the changes not being reflected Commerce.
• Fixed an issue where applying a category filter for a large number of categories resulted in an error.

January 18, 2022

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where publishing jobs could fail in Configured Commerce when a property was deleted in PIM.