Removing sub-products problem

[vlm]

When we stop stocking an item, I need a way to quickly find and remove that item from all products for which it is assigned as a sub-product. I can't find any place in ShopSite that give me a list of all the products that use that item as a sub-product so that I can replace it with a new sub-product. How do I find them?

[Jim]

If it is assigned as a subproduct to multiple items just delete it and ShopSite will remove it from all page and product assignments.

[vlm]

Thanks, but I think you aren't understanding my question. I'm not trying to simply delete a product. I'm trying to REPLACE a discontinued sub-product with a new sub-product. Please re-read my question.

Can someone please tell me how to find all of the products to which another product has been assigned as a sub-product?

For instance: Widget A is assigned as a sub-product to 20 products in the database. When Widget A is discontinued, I need find those 20 products and replace the Widget A sub-product with a different product.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to pull up a list of all the product that have Widget A as a sub-product and then be able to power edit that sub-product field and replace it with another product of my choosing. Is there a way to do this?

[Jim]

Do you have ShopSite Pro? If so then here is how you could change a single product and change it for all places that it is assigned as a subproduct.

1. Use the Copy option to make a copy of your subproduct that you want to change. This will allow you to keep the original data (in the copied record) so that you would be able to use it again at a future time.

2. Edit the original product changing it's name, price, description to what ever the replacement product's information should be.

3. Publish the store so the new product information will appear on the pages.

4. Now you can change the copy of the original product to have the same name as it previously had.

The reason this will work is because internally the product assignments are kept as record numbers so changing the informatiion for a particular record number will make the new information display using the same record number. If you actually remove and assign a different product then the internal record number would change.

[bakerman]

What if I need to just discontinue the product but not delete it. Is there a way to list or remove the item as a subproduct?

[Jim]

The only way to remove it as a subproduct would be to go to each product that it is assigned to and remove it there. So Select the product that it is assigned to from the product list. Click the Assign Subproducts and deselect the specific product that you want to no longer use.

Again my earlier instructions abut making a copy of the product and then deleting the original may be easier if you have it assigned to multiple products.

[bakerman]

That would definitely be a feature request... something like the button for assigned to pages section.

[FlaGatorMan]

or what would be nice is to have an inactive button or check mark on the product. This way you can just remove the product from view but not delete the entire product. I know you can do this with making the quantity 0 but what if you have quantity and you just want to inactivate it.... would be nice.
Gator

[bakerman]

What we have actually done is created a product template that displays the item as discontinued, with instructions on what to do next.