Comparison Administration

Catalog Item Comparisons are used to both create arbitrary relationships between items and also establish ways to compare items.

Comparisons List

Selecting Comparisons from the Linkbar will present you with a list of the comparisons defined in Catalog.

Toolbar

In conjuction with selecting one or more checkboxes in the list, the Toolbar provides the following functions:

• Publish the selected comparison.
• Unpublish the selected comparison.
• Edit a selected comparison.
• Add a new comparison
• Delete the selected comparison(s).

Filters

You can filter the list by the following:

• Part of a string in the title of a class.
• A single class for all of the items in the first column.
• A single class for all of the items in the second column.

List Interaction

You can interact with the list of classes in the following ways:

• Click the linked column headers to change the sort order of the list and to reverse the sort direction.
• In the Comnparison Title column, click the first link to edit the class.
• In the Title 1 or Title 2 column, click the outbound link to edit the actual item.
• In the Published column, click the icons to toggle between published and unpublished states.
• In the Order column, click the up and down arrow icons to weight the ordering in different directions.
• Use the list pagination features as you would for any other component.

Adding or Editting a Comparison

Toolbar

The Toolbar provides the following functions:

• Save the current item but as a new copy of the original item (Save To Copy).  Any change made are saved with the new item, not the original.
• Save the current item and then returns you to add another (Save & New).
• Save the current item and return to the list.
• Apply the changes made to the current item and return to the same page to continue edits.
• Cancel the edits without saving and return to the list.

Main Page

The add/edit page is divided into two main areas: a Title Block and a tabbed section.

The Title Block allows you to manage the following fields:

• Title - the title for the comparison.
• Alias - the alias for the comparison (this is automatically generated when you tab out of title for the first time).
• First Item - the first item to compare.  Click Select and a popup window will allow you to search for the desired catalog item.
• Second Item - the second item to compare.  Click Select and a popup window will allow you to search for the desired catalog item.

General Tab

This tab allows you to manage the following fields:

• Description - A description that pertains to the relationship.
• Currency - An optional currency for the Price fields.
• Price1 - An optional price value (related to Price1 in the Catalog Item)
• Price1 - An optional price value (related to Price2 in the Catalog Item)
• Stock - An optional stock level value.
• Published - allows you to set the item to a published or unpublished state.
  
• Order - the weighted order for the item.  Negative numbers rise to the top of lists, and positive numbers sink to the bottom.  The order values do not need to be sequential.

Parameters

There are no parameters supported for comparisons at this stage.

Metadata

This tab allows you to manage the following fields:

• Comments - Additional comments that you may keep private (as opposed to the description which would be a public field).
• External Reference - An optional external reference.

 Additional Comments

There are various ways to use comparisons.  For example, you may have a class of "Camera" and a class of "Retailer".  Comparisons can be used to establish which cameras are sold by various retailers and what the relative prices are (to find the best buy).

The E-commerce information is optional but included since this would be a typical use of comparisons.  Two price fields are available in a Catalog Item and the Comparison.  Therefore, the price fields in the item could represent the "recommended retial price" and the price fields in the comparison would reflect the actual store price.  Price2 could be used to indicate a discounted price if an item was on sale in a particular store.

Price1 and Price2 could also represent a range of price values.  These fields are stored as decimal values (floating point numbers) so they could also be used to represent any sort of numeric range.

The External Reference field can be used in conjuction with importing data with our Exchange extension and would allow you to update particular dataset.

The Catalog - Comparison module integrates with this data.  With its auto-detect setting it can be placed in a permanent position (such as the right column in a template) and is aware of when a Catalog Item is being displayed.