Optimizely Product Information Management (PIM) includes template-specific property values. For properties that use a list of values, this allows users to select which values are valid for a particular template. This makes the creation and management of properties simpler while giving flexibility in enforcing data governance with product templates.
Template specific property values in action
Create properties
When defining properties with a list of values, you should consider which ones are shared by multiple types of products. Product templates for nails and kitchen cabinets may share properties for brand, finish, and material that have different values needed for governance. They will have other properties like length, height, width, depth, and style that are likely to be shared by other product templates but have specific values for template level governance.
Nails may have properties like head type and shank type that are specific to nails and not used by other product templates. Likewise, kitchen cabinets may have properties like Number of Shelves and Number of Doors that have the same values for all templates with the property.
When the PIM is integrated with Optimizely Customized Commerce, the PIM will only allow you to add properties which are mappable to an attribute in the assigned Customized Commerce product class. If you cannot add a property, you can either select a different product class or have developers add that property to the product class in Customized Commerce.
After deciding which properties require template-specific values, you can use the property import spreadsheet to import the properties. You will include the superset of values for the shared properties and set them to use template specific values. For properties that do not require template-specific values, you can leave this column blank.
After the properties are imported, the Values tab has template-specific values enabled and lists the values for all products.
Configure templates
Templates can be manually created or created from an import after creating the properties.
To import templates, download the template with sample data. For each template, define the folder, name, whether products using the template require an image, whether to include the properties from the starter template, and all properties on the template.
When defining the properties, enter the property name (not display name) and its requirement level. For properties using template-specific values, you can define which values are used by this template in the import, or you can import them without the values defined and configure values after the templates are created.
The nails template example adds the brand, length, finish, material, collated, head type, and shank type properties. The brand, length, finish, and material properties have a valid list of values specific to nails. Head type and shank type will not use template-specific values.
After the templates are imported, open the template and ensure the values you defined in the import will be selected for any properties that use template-specific values. If you did not define the list of values when importing the templates, you can click Edit Values and select the appropriate values.
Enforce template-specific values
After creating the templates, you can assign products and view that only the values selected for properties with template specific values enabled are valid. When importing data for products, only the values selected for the property’s template will be valid. When editing the product within the application, you will only see the options selected for the template.
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