Inventory Kit Builder?

[lea-ann]

Hi: Wondering if there is something special to fill in to be able to use this feature? I'm playing with PR 6, Miva 5.5 -- thanks! Lea-Ann

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

You have to switch to the Beta stream and update to Beta 7, have you done that?

[lea-ann]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Hi Rick: in Domain Settings, Upgrade, it is set to beta update at every log in. When I click the upgrade, it is up-to-date. Under Inventory Variants, I can edit the default variant and add parts, but I get no options to use the Kit Builder. Thanks for your help. Lea-Ann
P.S. Love your utube videos.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Ok, so I had to go do a little playing and now I understand how to explain this feature:

The Inventory Kit Builder is for when you would like to track many individual parts inventory and allow them to be properly deducted from various master products.

For example, you're offering a Build Your Own Computer Kit which has multiple pieces that make up the Kit, such as Motherboard, CPU, Monitor, Video Card, Printer, Keyboard, Mouse, Case, etc...

Instead of having to segment those parts out of inventory just for this product, you can track all of the discrete pieces as individual "parts".

First, make sure all of your parts are entered as Products in the admin, if you don't want to sell a part as an individual product just uncheck the Active box on the main screen of the product.

Second, turn on Inventory for those parts and update the inventory levels to reflect your parts on hand.

Third, build your kit as a unique Active Product (here's my test kit: http://store.yellowtee.com/P-Computer.html) and create Attributes for all of the options within the Kit (in this case CPU, Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse) and make sure you check the I inventory flag on the attributes when you're setting them up.

Fourth, once your attributes are setup, go to the Inventory Kit Builder Tab and associate each attribute with the Part(s) and Quantity(s) for each choice. For example, I have a product called P42 that is inactive but keeping my inventory on my Pentium 4 CPU's in my test kit, and I click on the Attribute Code on the Inventory Kit Builder Page and associate 1 P42 Product to that attribute. This way when someone chooses that attribute and adds it to their cart, it will remove 1 P42 from inventory. If I had set it to 5 P42's (say I'm selling cases of them) it would deduct appropriately. In addition you can add multiple parts to an attribute.

Fifth, on the Inventory Kit Builder page once you've associated all of your parts, click the Generate Variants button.

Finally if any combinations of Variants aren't allowed together (for example no Pentium 4's with 30" monitors) then you can go to the Inventory Variants screen and delete those combinations you don't allow. This will remove those choices from the Master Product.

[Keitho]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Rick,

Not sure if this has been asked before but do you have to turn on inventory in order to use the Kit Builder? We don't use the inventory feature but really need kit functionality.

I'm looking for a simple way to allow my customers to price up a kit and see the total cost, whether they "add to basket" or not. Using standard attributes you have to "add to basket" to see the item total (at least in 4.xx) and editing them is a hassle.

Thanks!

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Keith,

I'd have to do some testing to see what would happen if you turned Inventory off, but it wouldn't be an issue to set it up with Inventory on and essentially provide yourself unlimited inventory by not hiding out of stock items and not displaying the inventory count.

[Keitho]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Thanks Rick, I'll give it a try. In your test store I noticed that it doesn't give a total until the item is placed in the basket. Is that right? I thought it would be dynamic and change as options are chosen.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

That's a configuration setting, you can do it either way. In my test I wasn't worrying about the price of that package, just building a quick "tutorial" for it.

In order for the price to dynamically change, when you Auto-Generate the Variants make sure you choose the option for setting the price by the Inventory Product and not the sum of the attributes.

[Keitho]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Rick,

The Kit Builder appears to work correctly and creates a bunch of variants. When I make the selections there is no change to the item price until it is added to the basket. It looks like I'm just using regular attributes.

Once I turn on inventory it places a message on the item page saying "0 available for immediate delivery." Since we don't track inventory, how do I hide that?

Yes, I am on Beta 7.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

When you did Auto-Generate did you set the price to the Inventory Product and not the Sum of the Attributes?

Are you using the new CSS UI or did you upgrade an existing store?

[Keitho]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Tried it both ways, actually. No difference.

Wolfpaw converted our 4.18 store and I have been playing with it as a test bed.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Actually there's a huge difference.

It will NEVER work if you use the Sum of the Attributes option as it's not supposed to.

If you do the Inventory Product choice, then you have to go through and edit your templates to make it work, since we no longer make template changes to your look and feel automatically.

If you check out YouTube channel there's a video on how to make all of that work, but essentially you have to configure the AttributeMachine Javascript to work and you have to add the price span to your template code to control the price.

Take a look at the videos and instructions on Setting Up Inventory At The Attribute Level and follow those instructions, if you get stuck, let me know where you're stuck.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Oh and take a look at your Template Code and the message options you have set for your inventory setup, you can disable the part that shows how many are in stock.

[Keitho]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

Rick,

Bear with me, I'm still a neophyte on 5.5 and never messed with templates in 4.18.

That said, this is getting way more complicated than I need. I may have up to 8 attributes in a "kit" and if I understand things right, I need to create a price for each potential combination. Is this necessary because of the inventory tracking angle? How do we get back to my basic need, dynamically showing the total product price before having to put the item in the basket. Phosphormedia had a good module to do that in 4.XX and that's what I was hoping to see in Wombat. If all I need to do now is configure the AttributeMachine Javascript I can figure that out.

Keith

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Inventory Kit Builder?

That said, this is getting way more complicated than I need. I may have up to 8 attributes in a "kit" and if I understand things right, I need to create a price for each potential combination.

In our implementation that's the only way to do it. If you just want to do it the "old fashioned way" where your "Kit" is the sum of it's attribute choices and that product dynamically updates on the PROD screen, I think Phospher Media has a module for it.

We had a very good reason for not doing that in our methodology and for the life of me I can't recall it this morning and it'll probably pop into my head mid conference this week :)

If I recall I'll post it and regardless we'll pay attention to the feedback we're getting on this feature.