Manage product templates

  • Updated

Use product templates in Optimizely Product Information Management (PIM) to define the major data elements required or recommended for products within a family of products. This helps enforce data governance before publishing products to your website.

For example, you may create a Faucet product template containing essential data elements for that product type, such as finish and handle type. You can set which data is required, recommended, or optional. Organize product templates into folders for quick categorization and easy access. 

Your customers will not see product templates because they are an organizational tool for you to use within the PIM.

Best practices

Consider what inventory of data you want to collect for a group of similar products. For example, you might set up your product templates under a folder structure of Power Tools with a folder for Saws, which contains templates for Circular Saws and Table Saws. Creating templates that mirror your categories lets you use dynamic category rules to automate product-to-category assignments.

PIM includes a starter template by default for you to use as a starting point for other templates. The property groups and properties on the starter template are automatically included when creating a template. Update your starter template to include all product data in any template (like brand, product line, and manufacturer number) so that you do not need to add them to each template.

Because the template defines what properties to include for each product, you must assign a template to a product before it is editable. You can assign a product template to products from the product list, the product detail tab, or during an import.

Product Templates list page

Use the Product Templates List page to search for, filter, and select templates for editing, assigning properties, and assigning to categories. This page lists product template folders and their product templates in alphabetical order.

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You can sort data by clicking column headers and edit individual templates by clicking on the name.

Product template folder navigation

  • Type or click add filter – Enter a partial or full product template name to narrow the results.
  • Expand all and Collapse all – Click to expand or collapse the entire product template tree.
  • Select folder – Select a folder in the product template tree to apply a parent folder filter. All child product templates of the parent folder display in the product templates list results.
  • Organize folders – Drag and drop product templates between various template folders.

Product template list navigation

  • Editing – Click an individual product template record to view and edit its assigned properties.
  • Search by name – Enter a partial or full product template name to narrow the results across all product template folders.
  • Pagination – Go to other pages using the pagination controls under the list. By default, 25 products display in the list with options to view 50 or 100 per page.

    Product-templates-nav.png

Add a product template folder

  1. Click Data Setup.
  2. Select the Product Templates tab.
  3. Click the Add Product Template Folder icon in the left panel to add a product template folder.  
    create-product-template.png
  4. Enter a title for your template folder and click Save.

Example of using a product template

Before you imports products, you need to create product templates using the property groups and properties you created to determine what information is required for similar products.

  1. Go to Data Setup > Product Templates to create a Plumbing folder and a Faucet subfolder.
  2. Edit the Starter Template to add the Dimension and Brands property groups, because these should be in every product template.
  3. Create a Kitchen product template, which already includes the Starter Template property groups by default.
  4. Add the Common Attributes property group into the template and save it.
  5. Also create a Bathroom product template that includes the Common Attributes property group.
  6. Remove the Pull-out Sprayer property that does not apply to bathroom faucets and save the template.

Delete a product template folder

  1. Hover over the folder and click the Delete icon. If you have any child folders or templates within the folder, these items must be moved or deleted before deleting the top-level folder.
  2. Verify the folder is deleted.

Organize product templates with Optimizely Commerce