Hello, this is Franck from Sitolog. I'm going to talk to you today about accessories in
Merlin. So, in Merlin, we have at least three ways to manage accessories. The first
is via the accessories tab, which we'll spend most of the time on in this
tutorial. The second way is at the top table, the product table. We'll see that
we can copy accessories from one product to other products. And finally, as usual,
I'll also show you in the import section here how to import accessories
at the same time as you import or update products. So the first part,
the accessories tab. So, as a preface, I'd like to remind you that an accessory
is not the same thing as a pack. A product pack is when you sell two or three
or more products at the same time. So it's actually a product pack, it's the same product,
a single product that groups other products that are sold together, therefore in a pack. An
accessory is different. An accessory is another product that appears, that is offered for
sale on the page of another product, what we call the product per year. So, let's suppose that
you sell for example this dress here, this printed dress, well you can choose to
sell at the same time as this printed dress an outlet belt. And so, you are not going to force it
to be sold, you are going to offer it for sale on the product page and the buyer can
possibly choose to add it to their cart if they want. So, that's what an accessory is.
So in this accessories tab, you actually find more or less the same structure
as in the main window. So in the main window, we have a navigation by category
then a table to display the products. Well, in the accessories, it's the same,
we have a navigation here of the different categories and another table which
also allows you to display the products. So it's basically the same data as above,
except that the two tables, finally the two parts, are independent. We can navigate,
so we can choose a category. Here, for example, I can choose to display men's products
and I can choose at the bottom to display women's products or another category. So we
are really out of sync. And if I display the products here in this table of this category,
they are not the same as those above if we are not in the
same branch. So for this training, I deliberately created two new categories.
You see here that I called home accessory in which I created two products,
a belt and a glove, a pair of gloves. And the same in women's accessory, I also created
a belt and a pair of gloves for women. So what I'm going to do is show you
how, for example, to associate an accessory product with various products. So here, for example, I am
in the women's category, I have all my products from the women's category recursively. I
will select, for example, the different dresses and I will associate the belt with them, uh,
put online for women. So at the top, I choose my products and at the bottom,
I navigate to my category or categories that contain my accessories. So I'm going to remove
the recursive mode that we have here. I'm going to click on women's accessories and I'm going to display my products.
So here what it displays is the content, we agree, of women's accessories. If
you don't have anything displayed, remember to check if you don't have a prefilter. So if
another prefilter here is displayed in orange, that means a prefilter is activated. And in particular,
by default, normally this prefilter is checked. The one that only lists the products
here that are already declared as accessories for the products at the top. That is to say, with this
prefilter checked, if I refresh here, I no longer have anything displayed. This is normal,
it only displays the women's accessories products that are already
declared as accessories for my dresses. And for the moment, I still have none.
So remember to uncheck this filter and refresh if you have this problem. So I have two
products displayed. To declare them accessories for my dresses, just
select them. So for now, I'm going to take only one. I'm going to take
women's belt. And so click on the accessory button here like this. To do the opposite,
so to remove it from the list of accessories for my products, you have an unlinked button.
Another method, you have a column here called B is accessory of the selected A.
So, A and B, what are they? So the table of products A is the one at the top. The table of
products B is the one at the bottom. So when we say B is accessory of the selected A and
we check here, it means that the products on which I act here, my table B, have become
accessories of my products selected at the top in table A. So here, I did it for a
single product, but as usual, we can do it for a selection of different products. So
here, I take two. I take, let's say three products at the top. And if I click here,
well, I added leather gloves as an accessory to these three other products. So,
as with the other tables that contain columns with checkboxes like that, we have a
color code. Look, if I select more products, by these three, it tells me here in
blue that the three products have the women's belt item as an accessory, but that the
pair of women's leather gloves is only an accessory to some of these products, not all. So, I
don't know which ones. If I want to know which ones, I would have to select them one by one or
one after the other. And here, we see that it's the printed summer dress that actually has
the leather gang product as an accessory. The other two don't have it. So this color here tells me that
some products are not associated. And that allows you to make corrections, eh. If, for
example, you wanted G cuirf to always be an accessory for these three products, you
see this orange color, it's a sign that at least one of the products here is not associated.
And to correct this, well, I just have to either double-click in the table, or again
work on these two buttons to associate or disassociate. So, we can
also work in the other direction, do what we call upward associations. That is to say,
we can here, you see, you have a column that works the opposite of this one. It's
the selected A's that are accessories for the B's. So basically, we can define for the products that
are listed here accessories chosen from the table above. So we work
in reverse. So what's the point of doing this? I'll show you with an example.
Let's suppose that you sell computers and computer mice. At some point,
you have a new mouse that comes into your stock, a new item. Well, you
would like this new mouse to be an accessory for the same PCs, the same computers as another
model that was already in your catalog. Well, in this case, you will choose
your old mouse and your new mouse at the top. You will display the products that are
parents of the old mouse at the bottom and you will declare them by year of the new mouse. We
will do it together, for example, with one with dresses and a new belt. Look.
So here, we agree that this belt here is an accessory for these three dresses. Well,
I have a new belt that is included in my catalog. So, I go to women's accessories.
Here, I see my belt here and I have a new one. So, I will create a new one.
I could also duplicate it, but we will do it like this. I will call this belt
women's belt. I will call it two.
Ah, I think I have, I created three. It doesn't matter. I close. I refresh. So I
actually added three women's belts. Good. Well, I would like these three women's belts,
these three if here, to have as parent products the same parent products as women's belts. So
Basically, that women's belt is an accessory of the same products as those that
already existed. In this case, I select my three products plus the old one.
There you go. And this time at the bottom, I don't display the women's accessory category, but I'm going
to search in all these categories for those that contain products for which women's belt is
accessory 2. So basically, and I don't know where they are. So at that point, I'm going
to choose everything, I'm going to select everything, but here I'm going to filter. I'm going to ask it to show me
only the products here, only those with A products as accessories. So I check this
filter, I select all my categories in recursive mode. So it shows me all the products
that are actually parents of at least one of the products above. In fact, they are parents,
not of all of them, but only for the moment of women's belt. All I have to do is select
all my lines and this time either check twice here, or use well,
you see these two buttons here which work in reverse of the first two. So for example, if I
click on parent, my four, sorry, my five dresses here will become parents of my four
belts. So basically, my four belts will be accessories for my five dresses. There you go,
I click on parent, I add, and that's it. So this is a method for working backwards
when you're restocking new products, basically new accessories. So
Merlin goes even further. It also allows you to work by entire category. For example,
let's say I go to the women's categories up there, more precisely, I take
all the dresses. So I take all the dresses in recursive mode, and I would like
all these dresses to have as accessories all the accessories in the women's accessories category here
. So I go to my accessories tab, in my second tree,
I select my women's accessories category here. There you go. Stretch it a little. And this time,
I'm going to use these two buttons. You see, with the chain, which means association as
an accessory, or the scissors to ungroup. In fact, it's the same buttons as
these first two. Except that here, we're going to act on all the categories selected here. So, as
I was telling you, I take all my products here, all my dresses and I would like them to have
as accessories all the products that are in women's accessories. I click on this
association button here, I confirm and it's done. So, we're going to check that this time.
So I'm going to ask it to display all the products here that are not parents but that
are actually accessories of something. And I refresh. And there I find all the products
that were in women's accessories. We can see clearly thanks to this column here which
indicates to me that they are all accessories of all my products selected above. So, sometimes
despite using this filter here which lists only the products that are already accessories,
we have difficulty guessing in which category it is and so we tend to select everything
and then just leave the filters searched. But here we have two columns that are very practical and
will give us useful information to find the categories that already contain
accessories. Unlike the categories that contain accessory products of the
products listed above. So to activate these two columns that are currently grayed out,
simply check this option shows the existence of accessories. So it is marked
can slow down the application because indeed when you have a large number of categories,
the scripts that are behind this search can be quite long. So here, you see,
I have all these products that are selected and it tells me that in the accessory category,
this category contains certain products that are accessories of my dresses. And then
it also works the other way around. If for example here I come to take women's accessories
and well I will see that in women here I have categories that contain products
which are themselves per year accessories listed above. So, I told you in the introduction
that there are several methods for declaring accessory products for other products. So,
the first method we saw is by using this tab, but we can also do it
directly up there in the product table using the copy-paste function or the merge of the
accessories list between the products. So, to do that, in fact, we need to add new
columns. So we go to the column configuration and then in the products tab
here, we will look in this long list here for the columns concerning the
accessories. So just a little reminder, if you are a little lost in the long list,
you can click here on the button to roll everything up so as to close all the blocks
here and so you will find more easily the one that concerns you. So here is the one
called accessory. So I unroll it with the plus. And so there you have it, here you have different
columns. So one is called accessory 2 and the other is called accessory list. The
accessory list is available in several formats. So it will contain either the IDs,
the numbers of the accessory products, or their name, their reference, supplier reference or
one of the two barcodes. So it's one of these six columns. You can't have them
all at the same time or even two, it's not possible. So it's one or the other.
So for example, I'm going to take the names. So I'm going to put it here and I'm
also going to take accessory 2 and I validate. So these are two columns that will
give you information telling you for each of the products what the accessories
of the other products are. So here, as we are in the category called women's accessories,
here I have in the column is accessory the number of the other products which are by
year of my different accessories. And then this one is empty indeed because my women's accessories
themselves do not have accessories. So we're going to change categories. We're going to take women
in recursive mode. So here, I have all the products in the women's family and subcategories. And
here, I can clearly see in the list of accessories the different accessory products for these dresses
, etc. And we actually find our famous belts that I've associated several times. Well,
we had several belts, we duplicated them plus the pair of camp. So, what's the point
of these columns? Well, there are at least three. The first point of interest is to be able to create
filters, sort products with or without accessories, or sort products that have such and such accessories,
etc. So, always right-click and then use the filter function on this column, and
then use a filter like "contains," such and such a word, etc., or such and such an ID. The second point of use
is to export this data so that you can then reimport it, well, in another
pressop or when you migrate a pressop. So it's good to retrieve the names,
the IDs, of the products to be able to reassociate them. So on this subject, I advise you in this case
to use the notion of ID, exactly like in the accessory ID column and not the names
because you will see later that the import tool is capable of working with the IDs
at the accessory level but not with the names. At least not for the moment. And then the third
use of this is to make mergers. That is to say that we can take the list of accessories of a
product and say well on the other products or such and such other product, I also want to have these
accessories. Look, we're going to do an example. I'm going to give new accessories to this
first product there, the blouse. Uh, I'm going to give it as accessories those that are in
men's accessories. Okay? Those that are there. So I take my women's category again, I take
my blouse. Here at the bottom, I go to accessories home. So there, you already know the method. We're
removing our pre-filter. I'm going to refresh. So here I have all the men's accessories products.
I select them both. And as I said, I'm going to declare them blouse accessories.
So, I click on accessory and I declare it here at the top. Refresh is flashing. I refresh and
I see that my first product actually has two accessories, men's accessories,
accessories that are not currently associated with the other products. Well,
if I now select this product and then a few others, as there are two here, I can
right-click here and paste Home Belt Home Glove into all the selected cells
in this column, that is, in the next two rows. I do that and confirm.
At that point, Merlin recognized that I was in the accessories list column. It doesn't
simply offer me to copy and paste, but either to keep the existing accessories in these
two products and add the two that are here in yellow, or to delete everything
here and here and replace with this. If I delete, replace, I do indeed have my
home accessories which have become accessories for these two other products and the others which
have been removed. If, on the other hand, I repeat the same operation on these two other products but
this time I ask it to keep and add. I have, after refreshing
here, my women's accessories which were already there which have remained and then my men's accessories
here which have been added to my list. So, know that for the accessories table here,
you can also use the same pre-filters, same type of pre-filter as for the pre-filters of the
main table here, eh. So pre-filter to see the products with or without variations,
you find them here to filter by manufacturer, supplier or any other type of pre-filter on a
large number of possible sections. Here are some pretty practical tools to precisely,
uh, limit the list of products which interest you. And also in this area here, uh, I
just wanted to draw your attention to this little option here which is very practical. So it's
called also displaying secondary columns. So when this option is checked and you
refresh at that point, you will see that in your table here, so accessories, you
will end up with the same columns as those that were chosen at the display level
in the top table. Basically, the columns chosen in the column configuration here,
you have them in both tables when this option here is checked. When you don't have it,
in fact, which columns are displayed? In fact, you ca
n't define them yourself. These are only certain columns predefined by myself at the
programming level. So then it will not always be the same display. In fact,
I defined a list of main columns, let's say about ten columns. And among these 10
main columns are displayed only those that are also present at the top. If, for
example, at the top, I remove the default category, at that point, you will not have it at the bottom either.
Okay? And if you then want to have all the columns or specific columns at the bottom,
you have to display them at the top, such as the weight or the selling price, and then check this
option. So, my explanations aren't necessarily very clear, so I invite you to try it out
and you'll see for yourself. I think you'll understand very quickly how it works.
So, what's the point of displaying additional columns here? Well, it's going to be, for example
, to filter, to do searches, and so on. Uh, you can use any
argument on any column with the function, uh, filtered on this column, which
is a little further down there. You don't see it in the filter menu on this column to
select products before associates like accessories. You can also use
a function that I really like called filtered selection, which actually allows you to search
for values ​​and automatically select the rows that correspond to the value you
search. So without needing to set up filters, it can thus select
a multitude of rows from a large number of rows that are themselves not selected. There you go.
So a whole bunch of little tools here that are very practical for filtering, selecting, ordering,
uh, your accessories in this table. Last part of this training on accessories,
importing. So if you want to create accessories or associate accessories with your
products via a file, you need a column that will contain any name, it doesn't
matter. If you want this column to be mapped and automatically recognized by Merlin,
the correct name is this one: ID-bas accessories. This is the name of the section in
the Prestashop database. But regardless of the name of the column, what you need in your column,
this is important to understand, you need the list of numbers or identifiers
of your products, 10 accessories like here 5,6 5,6,7 et cetera. So products 5 and 6
here will be defined as accessories of the product that will be created or modified, uh, through
the first line. So here is a column with the ID numbers and at the level of
your mapping, well, this column, whatever its name, once again, you need the map
, so in your list here in this section called list of accessories here. And so this
column only works by addition, that is, you can add
accessories to a product using import; you cannot remove them. This is important to understand.
If you want to remove accessories, well, what you need is to go to the main window,
in the accessories tab, eh, what we saw just before, delete the
product accessories and reimport the complete lists, finally complete or different. And then for the moment,
another constraint, this tool is currently only capable of working with
lists of IDs. We cannot choose anything other than that here for the moment. So,
in a future version, here, you will also have a list of names, references, barcodes,
things like that. So, to be able to work with lists other than just
product numbers. And for now, that's what you need to do. So, identifier list,
you check, you map, you continue and thus you will have your accessories associated with
your products. Once again, in addition. So, if in your list you have products that
are already accessories, they will of course not be declared twice. Uh, it will only update
the new accessories. There you go, this part on importing completes this
long training on the concept of accessories. Thank you and see you soon for another tutorial.