Hi Chris:
There have been some enhancements to the Catalog Manager (CM) that now
allow you to create your own features and then associate them with a
product dynamically. In 4.0 the UI for creating and associating features
with products wasn't as "flexible" as it is now. So, what is going on is
that the current version of the Catalog Manager UI expects that when you
want to add variant features to a virtual product, those features must
already exist. Further, those features must exists as "selectable"
features. That is why you are getting that specific message. When you
use this "variants" tab to add features, the CM assumes these will be
"selectable" features. By selectable features, it assumes that the
product detail web page will create an HTML select box.
Ok, so what to do next? You have to 1) either create a new feature type
for your parts (for example, "engine") or use an existing demo feature,
2) associate the feature(s) with your virtual product (POR911-3.2-FL6)
3) and then use the variants tab to make the features selectable.
I did a write up of something similar (adding features to products where
those features were downloadable documents - for example, data sheets)
and it walks you through the Catalog Manager steps required to create
new features. It does a much better job of explaining each step
required. It is on the myOFBiz.com library members website
(http://www.myofbiz.com/mylibrary). "How to Add New Product Features"
under the Catalog Manager section.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Ruth
----------------------------------------------------
Find me on the web at http://www.myofbiz.com or Google keyword "myofbiz"
[email protected]
Christopher Snow wrote:
On trunk, I have noticed that although there is the error message, but
there is another message above the Add Variant Products box:
"*No selectable Features found . Please create some and try again."
*So it appears that r4 allows you to add variants without selectable
features while newer versions don't.
I can still manually add the product variant through the associations
screen on trunk, so as long as this doesn't get "fixed", I will use
this method. Is this ever likely to get fixed?
Many thanks in advance,
Chris
Christopher Snow wrote:
Hi Ruth/Scott,
This post is related to a post I did some time ago. My client is a
vehicle breaker that scraps vehicles, and sells the individual
components. When they scrap a vehicle, they keep the main components
such as the engine and later sell those items individually. Some of
the engines may be serialized and some may not.
For example, they may have scrapped 10 "Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera
series (1984–1989)" cars and have the following engines:
Porsche 911 3.2 liter horizontally opposed flat 6 cylinder engine
- non-serialized, QOH = 8, price £1,500 each
- serialized, QOH 2 :
- serial #12345, description "excellent condition", price £2,000
- serial #23456, description "doesn't start", price £500
From the trials that I have done with ofbiz r4.0, the stock
management aspect works great. Using the following steps:
- create a product of type virtual (e.g. POR911-3.2-FL6)
- create non-serialized stock for POR911-3.2-FL6 and add 8 units
- create a product of type variant (e.g. POR911-3.2-FL6-12345)
- select POR911-3.2-FL6 product, in variants tab, enter
POR911-3.2-FL6 and click "Add variant product"
- create a product of type variant (e.g. POR911-3.2-FL6-23456)
- select POR911-3.2-FL6 product, in variants tab, enter
POR911-3.2-FL6 and click "Add variant product"
- create serialized stock for POR911-3.2-FL6-12345 and
POR911-3.2-FL6-12345
- create serialized stock for POR911-3.2-FL6-12345 and
POR911-3.2-FL6-23456
At the moment they don't need ecommerce, they just need stock
management, but when they do need ecommerce, then I guess I will have
to write some custom pages to allow their customers to be able to see
the description and prices of individual stock items and choose the
item that best suits their requirements. Features don't seem to make
sense for this application, and I'm not sure where virtual/variant
products is the right way to go either. Perhaps I should model the
association purely as a product association of "equivalent or
substitute". However, one benefit of using virtual/variant is that in
the catalog inventory screens, it shows a nice summary of stock for
each variant.
However, when trying to add variants in various ofbiz versions, I get
the following result:
TRUNK: Error calling event:
org.ofbiz.webapp.event.EventHandlerException: Service invocation
error (null)
9.04: No selectable Features found . Please create some and try again.
4.0: All ok - no error
- create a product of type virtual (e.g. CS-VIRT1)
- create a product of type variant (e.g. CS-VAR1)
- select CS-VIRT1 product, in variants tab, enter CS-VAR1 and click
"Add variant product"
Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Chris
Ruth Hoffman wrote:
Hi Chris:
This is just my opinion, but yes you could do that, but be aware
that the ecommerce application makes some assumptions about virtual
and variant products. (For example, how to display HTML select boxes
that allow a site visitor to choose the variation of a virtual
product.)
At a minimum, the ecommerce application may not know how to handle
your products in terms of catalog listings, shopping cart displays
etc. I haven't looked at the code lately so I'm not sure what the
total impact would be.
What are you trying to do?
Regards,
Ruth
Chris Snow wrote:
Can a variant product be linked to a virtual product without using
features?
Many thanks in advance,
