Advanced Menu Options - how to view in database download?

[dlundell]

Hi,

We're using the new SP2 advanced menu options (thanks for this feature by the way - it was a long time in coming).

I have some scripts that operate on a download of the product database in order to generate various listings of low or out-of-stock products.

I'd like to be able to do this for the advanced menu option inventory, but I don't see any fields in the product database that show it. I I thought
perhaps Quantity on Hand would do the right thing if Advanced Options were being used, but it doesn't.

Is there a way to get at the Advanced Options in a database download? Without it and/or the ability to search product for Advanced Option items
(for example, any product with an inventory count set to 0, etc), there isn't a way to find out-of-stock items, short of a brute force view and
visual scan, or a really hacky script to parse the resulting html file.

Thanks,

Don

[Jim]

Because of all the additional information available when using the Advanced Order options a new format was added to the product download file.
The following fields are added for Advanced options in each product row.
Option Column Headers, Option Append SKU, Option Use Multi Menus, Option Select Default, Product Options

Option Column Headers corresponds to the fields between USE and Append Text in the header of the advance option table. These are in the format Field1|n|Field2|n|Field3|n|Field4
Option Append SKU, and Option Use Multi Menus are the check boxes for Append Sku and Use Cascading menus.
Option Select Default corresponds to the text box "Text before option descriptions e.g. 'Choose' or 'Select'"

The Product Options field will contain "!menu1" This is used to indicate that the advanced options will be listed below the product in a special format. The format for the option rows is
!menu1 menu2 menu3 menu4 use apptext sku pricemod weightmod qtyonhand lowstock outofstock image
following this header row will be each option on its own row. Each row of data (not header rows) will now end with ##. (This includes the product data rows and the option data rows.)
After the last option for a product the next row of data will only contain "!!" in the first column of the row and the rest of the columns will be blank. Following that row will be the next product with all of its fields.

I tried to put an example in this post but it was to squished to really see what was going on. I recommend that you download a product with order options and examine the format.

In case you haven't noticed there is now an option on the main Products screen (where the Edit Product Info, Edit Product Layout, Power Edit etc are) called "Download". If you have a single or multiple products selected and click the Download button you will be taken through the normal download screens but only the selected product(s) will be in the download file.

This will complicate working with the Advanced options but it does put all the data for a product in an ordered fashion. You might also want to checkout the XML format which might be easier to work with.

[dlundell]

Because of all the additional information available when using the Advanced Order options a new format was added to the product download file.
The following fields are added for Advanced options in each product row.

Thanks, that's very good to know.

In case you haven't noticed there is now an option on the main Products screen (where the Edit Product Info, Edit Product Layout, Power Edit etc are) called "Download". If you have a single or multiple products selected and click the Download button you will be taken through the normal download screens but only the selected product(s) will be in the download file.

This will complicate working with the Advanced options but it does put all the data for a product in an ordered fashion. You might also want to checkout the XML format which might be easier to work with.

Nice feature - thanks.

There's are sort of related selection features that would be a big help. It would be nice to be able to select and operate on products in the following ways:

- Power Edit the set of products connected to a Page (not sure if this would live in the Page view or Power Edit)
- Ditto for coupon operation

And more generally, and more powerful, for Power Editing and Coupons, to do more than one Product Search - perhaps
one implementation would be narrowing down a given Product Search with another one, and on and on - or, some type
of combinatorial search.

For example, say I'd like to set up a coupon or search for a set of products that has a price less than $10.00 and is
narrowed down by some SKU pattern. Or, under a certain weight with a certain quantity on hand. You get the idea.

As long as I'm describing these, I'd throw in:

- regular expression searches, and being able to search Product Description and More Information Text

Any chance of some of these making it to a release?

Thanks Jim,

Don

[Jim]

Don,
I have logged your suggestions to be looked at for enhancements in a future release.

Jim

[dlundell]

Don,
I have logged your suggestions to be looked at for enhancements in a future release.

Jim

Thanks Jim.

It occurred to me just now that the new style assign-products-to-Page mechanism would be ideal for coupons.

- dc