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Product Group Management on Zentail
Product Group Management on Zentail

Learn how to create, edit, split and do more advanced actions on product groups in Zentail

Juliet Bishop avatar
Written by Juliet Bishop
Updated over a week ago

What is a product group?

A product group in Zentail is a set of products that are the same except for one or more pivot attributes. For example, a set of T-Shirts that have the same design but are available in different sizes and colors. For the group of T-Shirts, we say this group pivots on Size and Color.

Product groups in Zentail can be sent to sales channels as variation listing. Each channel has a different name for this concept, see the table below:

How to create product groups

Please refer to this article for more on this: How to Create and Manage Product Groups

Glossary of Grouping Terms in Zentail

There are some terms that are helpful to know when talking about groups in Zentail.

Term

Definition

Notes

Group

A collection of SKUs in Zentail

SKUs need to be grouped in Zentail in order to send to a channel as a variation listing

Pivot Attributes

A collection of one or more attributes that define the main way each SKU in a group is unique, for example size and/or color. We say a group "varies" by their pivot attributes

Some channels have limited attributes that are valid to vary by, and this could change per product type.

All SKUs in a group must have a unique value for each combination of pivot attributes, otherwise you will get a "duplicate variant error"

Master SKU

This is a SKU in Zentail that defines the collection of SKUs. All SKUs in a group have the same Master SKU

The Master SKU is one of the SKUs in the group, and is a sellable SKU.

You must use the Master SKU column when adding or removing a SKU from a group via import

Group Label

This is another way of seeing the group relationship in Zentail

The group label is not what you use to add SKUs to a group or remove SKUs from a group.

It is generally autogenerated from the Master SKU in the format "GROUP_<Master SKU>"

It can be sent to channels. You can change this value in import, QuickEdit or Bulk Actions via the Group Label field.

How grouping information is sent to channels

Channel

Channel grouping attribute

Attribute in Zentail

Override

Note

Amazon

Parent SKU

Group Label

Amazon Parent SKU Override

Default sent as "Group_<Master SKU>+P+"

Walmart

Variant Group ID

Product ID of Master SKU

N/A

Currently uneditable, might change with omnispec

Target

VAP

Group Label

N/A

eBay

Listing SKU

Group ID

N/A

This is a long alpha-numeric string not available to see on the UI

Shopify

Product SKU

Master SKU

N/A

Sent as "Master SKU--listing"

BigCommerce

Product SKU

Master SKU

N/A

Sent as "Master SKU--listing"

How to manage specific variant overrides, title, bullet points

The ability to have unique values for bullet points, description, etc depends on the channel. Also the ability to override the different values varies by the channel as well. See the tables below for more information.

Title, Variant Title

Channel

Zentail Attribute

Channel Attribute

Override Attribute

Notes

Amazon

Title

item_name.value (on parent SKU)

N/A

This is the parent title, it will always use the title or override on the Master SKU

Amazon

Variant Title

item_name.value

Amazon Title Override

This is the child title

Walmart

Variant Title

Product Name

Walmart Title Override

There is no parent title, only children titles

Target

Title

Parent Title

Target Plus Parent Title Override

This is the VAP title

Target

Title

Product Name

Target Plus Product Name Override

This is the VAP title

Target

Variant Title

Product Title

Target Plus Product Title Override

This is the VC/child title

eBay

Title

Title

eBay Title Override

There is no child titles, only a parent title

Shopify

Title

Title

Shopify Title Override

This is the parent title, the variant titles will always have the pivot attributes added to the end*

BigCommerce

Title

Title

BigCommerce Title Override

This is the parent title, the variant titles will always have the pivot attributes added to the end*

*see section on our Listing Splits feature for more information

Description

Channel

Zentail Attribute

Channel Attribute

Override Attribute

Notes

Amazon

Description

Description

Amazon Description Override

This will override the variant descriptions, parent description uses the Master SKU description override

Walmart

Description

Description

Walmart Description Override

Only variant descriptions

Target

Description

Description

Target Description Override

Can only override variant descriptions

eBay

Description

Description

eBay Description Override

Cannot have unique descriptions per variant

Shopify

Description

Description

Shopify Description Override

Cannot have unique descriptions per variant*

BigCommerce

Description

Description

BigCommerce Description Override

Cannot have unique descriptions per variant*

*see section on our Listing Splits feature for more information

Bullet Points

Channel

Zentail Attribute

Channel Attribute

Override Attribute

Notes

Amazon

Bullet Point1, Bullet Point2, etc

Bullet Points

Bullet Override 1 / Amazon Bullet Points Value Override

Cannot override group bullet points separately, only variant bullet points, unclear if Bullet Override 1 is available in QE/import? Unclear how to properly set Bullet Points Value Override for new stuff, maybe old stuff works for new stuff

Walmart

Bullet Point1, Bullet Point2, etc to Bullet Point5

Key Features

Bullet Override 1 / unsure

Only variant bullet points, unclear if Bullet Override 1 is available in QE/import? Unclear how to properly set Key Features Override for new stuff, maybe old stuff works for new stuff

Target

Bullet Point1, Bullet Point2, etc

Bullet Feature 1, Bullet Feature 2, etc to Bullet Feature 15

Target Plus Bullet Feature 1 Override, etc to 15

Cannot be unique per child, if you want to add more than 5 bullet points use overrides

eBay

Bullet Point1, Bullet Point2, etc

Description

N/A

Bullet points are added to the description and cannot be unique per variant

Shopify

Bullet Point1, Bullet Point2, etc

Description

N/A

Bullet points are added to the description and cannot be unique per variant*

BigCommerce

Bullet Point1, Bullet Point2, etc

Description

N/A

Bullet points are added to the description and cannot be unique per variant*

How to manage swatch images

some things important to know

  • You cannot set Target swatch attributes, Target automatically sets them and you need to open a case with Target to change them

  • Zentail automatically creates a swatch image from the primary image for each variant

Adding and removing shared attributes

When you have a product group there are two levels of attributes, the shared listing quality attributes which are the set of attributes that are the same for all the SKUs in the group, and the variant listing quality attributes which are unique per SKU in the group.

When you add a pivot attribute to a group, Zentail will automatically detect similar listing quality attributes to that pivot attribute and remove those from the shared listing quality attributes. For instance if a set of tables is varying by size then Zentail will allow the display length to be set uniquely on each variant. However sometimes there are additional attributes you want to set uniquely on each variant that are not automatically added to the variant listing quality attributes.

In order to remove an attribute from the "Share Attributes" set you can use the "Remove Shared Attribute" column in an import, QuickEdit or Bulk Actions. You will need to use the backend field value. The easiest way to get this is in the advanced filter option in QuickEdit or import click the "Insert Field Name" button, search for your attribute, select it and then the field value will be added to the formula. See the example for "Active Ingredients"

Generally the pattern is the attribute is all lower case and has "_" instead of spaces.

When doing this in Bulk Actions make sure to wrap the attribute in quotes, e.g. "active_ingredients" with the quotes.

If you want to remove multiple attributes from the shared set at a time, use multiple columns of "Remove Shared Attribute", do not comma separate the attributes in the same column.

Listing splits - what they are and how to set them

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