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Product status rules
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Product status rules

The purpose of the Product status in Norce Commerce is to represent the product life cycle. All products are “born”, they live for a (sometimes very long) while until they die. These statuses guide the commerce front ends on what products are ready to be sold, what should be accessible in searches or listings, and what should be hidden in certain situations etc.

Many ERP systems have something similar to Norce Commerce's status that can be either more complex or simpler. If that is the case, the solution must provide some sort of mapping between the ERP and Norce.

Additionally, Norce also has a built-in functionality that adds automatic status changes in certain scenarios for products.

All Norce Commerce Services calls that fetch products allow the addition of one or multiple status Id's, enabling you to specify whether only active products or inactive products should also be included in the search. This means that even hidden products may be searchable in certain situations.

statusSeed is the input parameter in Norce Commerce Services on almost all calls that returns products.

Norce Commerces built-in Statuses

IdStatusDescription
1ActiveOpen products that are currently available for sale.
2ComingProducts that are not yet available for sale but will be in within a foreseeable future.
3ExpiringProducts that are currently available for sale but will be closed when they are out of stock.
4HiddenAvailable for sale in special cases, but to not shown in product listings or search results. Sometimes used for temporary not sellable products.
5InactiveClosed, not available for sale.
6Not activatedSupplier products that has not been created yet and has not yet received a part number.
Note

In product listings, it is common to fetch products that are Active and Expiring (1,3), while leaving out Coming products (2) that are not yet ready for sale. For special cases, such as accessory products that should not appear in listings but may be included in specific searches, Hidden products (4) can be added to the listings.

How products moves through statuses

Norce Commerce provides multiple options to modify the product status. Besides manually changing the status, the platform also has built-in rules and configurable settings that automate some parts of the product lifecycle.

Optional rules can be set up under client settings in the Admin UI > “sku status automation”.

1 Product creation

Excel or UI
Connect integration
Creation rule
Common practice
Manually created
Product creation
From other systems
Not activated
Active
Coming
Hidden

Product can be created in Norce in 3 different ways:

  • Manually in the Admin UI, where you can set the new product to any status you want.
  • From an integration or import, using Norce Commerce Connect. Here you can also set the product to any status you want.
  • From product creation rules. On every rule you can configure it to set any status you want.
Note

A common practice is to set the status to Coming if the products should be enriched with texts, images etc. before being sold. Otherwise, the products can be set to Hidden or Active directly.

2 Product activation

Triggered by start date
Manually changed
From integration
And has setting
Triggered when product gets in stock
Coming
Active
Any status
In-stock rule

When a product is created with the Coming status, there are a couple of ways to get them activated:

  • The start date has arrived. If a start date has been set for a product with the Coming status, Norce will automatically change the status to Active early in the morning on the activation day.
  • The status can be changed manually to Active in the Admin UI when the product is ready.
  • Update status from another system using Norce Commerce Connect or excel import.
Optional rules

Additionally, you can configure a setting that automatically activate coming products when they are in stock. (the rule: “Set sku status coming to active when in stock”)

Read about in-stock based rules below.

Revert status to “active”

Manually changed, excel or integration
when product gets suppliers
And has setting
And has setting
Triggered when product gets in stock
Triggered when product gets a main image
Any status
Active
Expiring or Inactive
Hidden
In-stock rule
Image rule

All statuses except for Coming can revert back to Active.

  • Change it manually in admin to Active when the product is ready.
  • Update status from another system using Norce Commerce Connect or excel import.
  • Expiring and Inactive products will automatically revert to Active if the product suddenly gets Active suppliers again. (but only if they were set to expiring earlier by rules, not if they were set manually)
Optional rules

Hidden products can automatically be set to Active by two configurable rules:

  • If “Set sku status to hidden when out of stock” is set, the product will be activated if the product is back in stock.
  • If “Set sku status to hidden when no image” is set, the product will be activated if an image has been added to the product.

Read about in-stock based rules below.

3 Make products hidden

Manually changed, excel or integration
And has setting
And has setting
Triggered when product is out of stock
Triggered when product missing a main image
Any status
Hidden
Active
In-stock rule
Image rule

When a product is in the Active status, it can be set to Hidden using the following methods:

  • Change it manually in the Admin UI.
  • Update status from another system using Norce Commerce Connect or excel import.
Optional rules

There are two population rules that apply here:

  • The “Set sku status to hidden when out of stock” rule sets the product status to Hidden when it is out of stock.
  • The “Set sku status to hidden when no image” rule sets the product status to Hidden when there is no main image available.

Read about in-stock based rules below.

4 Products are expiring

Manually changed, excel or integration
Triggered by end date
when product has no suppliers any longer
And has setting
Triggered when product has no suppliers anymore
Any status
Expiring
Active
Hidden
In-stock or image rule

For products that are set to Active there is a few ways to make them move to Expiring:

  • You can manually change their status to Expiring in the Admin UI, or through Norce Commerce Connect using either a system integration or an Excel import.
  • If the end date for the product has passed, Norce will automatically change its status to Expiring early in the morning.
  • If the product has suppliers connected to it, but all of them are marked as Inactive, Norce will interpret this as the suppliers no longer including the product in their catalog, and will automatically change its status to Expiring.
Optional rules

When it comes to Hidden products, two population rules apply in this case. The rules work similarly: if the hidden products only have suppliers with inactive connections, the products will be set to Expiring. The two rules are: "Set sku status to hidden when out of stock" and "Set sku status to hidden when no image".

Read about in-stock based rules below.

5 Expired products

Manually changed, excel or integration
when product is out of stock
And has setting
Triggered when product has neither supplier nor local stock
Any status
Inactive
Expiring
supplier stock

For products that are set to Expiring there are a few ways to make them move to Inactive:

  • You can manually change their status to Inactive, in the Admin UI, or through Norce Commerce Connect using either a system integration or an Excel import.
  • When the product is out of stock (and the optional rule below is not set).
Optional rules

The rule “Set sku status expiring to inactive when out of supplier stock” checks if the Expiring products are out of stock at the suppliers as well as in the local stock. Unless all are out, the product will not be set to Inactive.

Read about in-stock based rules below.

Exceptions to the status rules

Locked status

In the Admin UI, next to the product status, there is a lock symbol. If you click on it, you will "lock" the status on its current value. Once locked, no rules, imports, or system integrations can change the status. You must unlock it to be able to change the status again.

Manual sku status changes

Optional rule

There is an optional rule called “Manual sku status changes”, which will tell Norce to disable all automations regarding product statuses. This rule can be used if you want to handle product statuses manually or from a source system such as the ERP (by using the Norce Commerce Connect).

In-stock based rules

For status rules based on inventory levels, Norce Commerce looks at all warehouses that are of the type Warehouse. Warehouses with the type Store or Other are ignored.

For supplier On Hand, all warehouses are checked where “included in stock calculations” is set to true on the warehouse.

Optional rule

There is an optional invisible setting that can be used to change which warehouse types are checked in this rule. This setting allows you to use any other warehouse type or a set of types for the rule.

IsDropShipOnly

For products that are set to IsDropShipOnly, or if its primary category is set to it, the in-stock check will only be done on the Suppliers stock, never on the local stocks.

Products (or whole categories) can be marked as IsDropShipOnly, which means that they are always handled as dropshipping products, even if there are products in the local stock.

Suggested further reading

  • Product lifecycle TODO
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