If you have a lot of variants of a product, you can manage all the information from one base product. This way you can keep the common information for all variants updated on one base product and eliminate manual work on keeping variants up to date.
How to create variants of a base product?
There are two ways to create variants.
If you have created a base product and want to make a variant?
Go to the overview tab of the base product.
Click the blue button "Create Variant" in the bottom.
You can now choose a name for the variant and select what attributes to be transferred.
If you already have created a variant and want to link to an existing base product?
Go to the overview of the variant.
Click the blue button "Convert to Variant" on the right.
You can now search for existing products and connect them.
When selected you have to choose if you want to transfer data. If yes, you can select specific attributes if needed.
When created and linked you can always find variants and base products on the overview page of the given product.
How to convert multiple existing products to variants?
If you already have created products and want an easy way to convert many products to variants of a product?
Select multiple products on the product list (use the check mark).
Press the "Actions" button and choose "Convert to Variant".
Now search and find the product you want the new variants to be connected to.
Press "Connect Selected".
When selected you have to choose if you want to transfer data. If yes, you can select specific attributes if needed.
When created and linked you can always find variants and base products on the overview page of the given product.
A variant is out of sync, what to do?
On the overview page on a base product you find a list of all variants. Here you also find a status of whether it is synced or not.
Click on the sync button and you can select or deselect if any of the attributes should not be in sync. A rule of thump is to keep all base product information in sync (like product ID, Country of Origin etc.) and keep any variant specific information out of sync (like color, size, material etc.).
New data on the base product needs to be transferred to the variants?
If you have added one or more new fields to a base product and want these fields to be synchronized with the variants, follow these steps:
Go to the base product's "Overview" page.
Click on "Transfer to all variants" and select which data points you want to transfer to the variants.
If you only want to transfer the new information to a single variant, follow these steps:
Go to the base product's "Overview" page.
In the list of product variants, find the specific variant and click "Transfer to". Then choose which data points you want to transfer.