Virtual Products | Virtual Aspects & Options
This article assumes a certain level of knowledge regarding Virtual product creation, please ensure that you are familiar with either our academy course for retailers or our knowledge base articles on Virtual product creation.
Overview
This article is specifically written for designers and retailers that are working with Supplier Blanks to create Virtual products.
A Blank contains the base parameters (such as the Print specification and Preview images) that will be inherited by any Virtual products that are created from it.
Virtual Aspect Options which are highlighted in this article, offer a degree of control over which Aspect options are selectable by the end-user.
A good example is a T-shirt. The Supplier Blank may be available in a range of 30 colours but as a retailer or designer, you may have several different requirements depending on the products that you wish to bring to market eg:
- A superhero design that you only wish to sell in a subset of the overall colour range
- A design based around a football team's club crest that you only wish to sell in a single colour
Virtual Aspect Options will allow you achieve both of these things using a single Supplier Blank.
The Technical Bit
Supplier's configure their Blank products with all necessary Aspects and Aspect options that are available for that Product Blank.
An Aspect is a view of a product eg: Front, Back, Left, Right
An Aspect Option is a selection that can be made relating to the product itself. This is typically a colour, pattern or design ie: A T-shirt in multiple colourways
In the Blank and Virtual product workflow, Virtual products inherit their Aspects and Aspect Options from the Blank product. This is because a single Blank product can be used to create hundreds of Virtual products from.
For more information on Aspects and Aspect Options, useful articles to reference can be found below:
It is important to remember that the Supplier of the Blank controls the overall Aspect option range that is available on the Blank.
For example, if you require an additional colour that is not initially available on the Product Blank then you would need to contact the Supplier and find out if they could accommodate your request.
If so, it would be the Supplier's responsibility to update the Blank product accordingly, or arrange for the creation of a custom version of the Product Blank to your specific requirements. Once the new Product Blank is ready, the Supplier should notify you of its Product ID and the category that it resides in so that you can access it in the Platform and use it to start creating Virtual products from.
The steps below will describe how you can disable specific Aspect options on the Virtual product once it has been created thus tailoring it to your exact requirements.
Usage
1. Use one of the routines in the Platform to create a Virtual product with your design.
2. Edit the Preview specification and you will notice that there are two settings available; Virtual Enabled and Virtual Default (shown in the image below as 1 and 2 respectively).
Virtual Enabled
Virtual Enabled toggles whether that option is visible in the app. Simply disable any colour(s) that you do not wish to be available to the end user and click on Save Product to confirm the changes.
Virtual Default
This determines which colour will load by default in the app. Note that only a single option can be the default. Simply select the colour here and click Save Product to confirm the changes.
3. Disable the Aspect options that you do not wish to be visible in the App
4. Repeat for all Aspects (if there are multiple views of the product)
5. Print Test to check the result
That's it!
A simple toggle and yet it unlocks a huge degree of flexibility when creating Virtual products.
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