Customer product groups are a feature in Eclipse where “groups of products” can be created to help customers easily find the products they purchase frequently to quickly get them on order. These product groups can now be placed in product group folders (*New in release 3.9.0). Product groups are available in both Eclipse WOE and OE Touch however the new folders can only be accessed through OE Touch.
The Innovo Product Group Maintenance Utility allows your employees to easily create and manage these product groups and folders in Eclipse for their customers. They can create, edit, and delete product groups and folders as well as copy existing groups and folders from one customer to another.
If you have purchased the Product Group Utility, you will find it on your Custom Menu called "Innovo Product Group Utility".
Viewing and Editing Groups for Specific Customers
There are two ways to manage product groups in the utility:
- By customer
- By product
Most of the time you will be managing groups at the customer level. Once a customer is entered, you will see all of the existing product groups and product group folders for that customer and will have the following options:
- ALT+N - Create new product groups and folders
- ALT+E - Edit existing group or folder
- ALT+D - Delete a group or folder
- ALT+L - Delete ALL groups or folders
- ALT+C - Copy an individual group or folder from one customer to another
- ALT+A - Copy all groups or folders from one customer to another
- ALT+U - Upload/Import product groups and folders from a tab delimited .txt file
- ALT+X - Export product groups and folders to a .csv file
- ALT+X - Export product groups and folders
- ALT+V - Change between Customer and Product views
It is important to note that product groups are maintained at the ship-to customer level in Eclipse. If you have a contact tied to a customer with multiple ship-to accounts, the groups will only be displayed under either the bill-to/ship-to or the individual ship-to depending on which customer is active when groups are created. This utility can be used as a "template" where you can create product groups under one ship-to and copy to the others. You can even copy across bill-to customers.
Creating a New Group or Folder
To create a new product group or folder, use the "New" hotkey and select either Product Folder or Product Group, enter the product group or folder name. When naming your product group, keep in mind that special characters such as "/&?" are not permitted. We suggest you only use alphanumeric characters to be safe.
Once you enter the group name, you will be placed in the Product Group Detail screen where you can enter the individual products as well as the suggested quantities for each product. The user will be able to edit suggested quantities before placing in the cart or from the cart itself, however this is a useful feature if you want the customer to order in multiples of the sell pack quantity.
The order in which the products are entered here is the order in which they will be displayed in OE Touch and Eclipse WOE. You can use the alt+M hotkey key in this screen if you want to move products around.
Hotkeys:
- Alt+R - Rename Group will rename the product group that appears in OE Touch and Eclipse WOE.
- Alt+M - Move Product will allow you to move a product in the group. Place your cursor on the product you want to move and press alt+M, then move your cursor where you want the product to go and press <enter>.
- Alt+F - Move to Folder will allow you to move the product group to a folder for that customer.
Copy Groups and Folders
You can copy an individual or all groups and folders from one customer to one or multiple customers.
To copy an individual group or folder, place your cursor on that line and use the “Copy” hotkey (alt+C). This will display the standard Eclipse multi-input screen where you can enter a single customer or a list of customers.
To copy all groups and folders, use the “Copy All” hotkey (alt+A) and then enter a customer or a list of customers.
Anytime you copy an individual or all folders, you will be prompted with the message, "For Duplicate Folder" where you will have the options to Skip, Merge, or Overwrite. Answering Skip will not copy a folder if that folder name already exists. Answering Merge will add any new groups to the "copied to" customer's folder that did not already exist, and will not remove any groups from the "copied to" customer that did not exist in the "copied from" customer. Answering Overwrite will overwrite the folder on the "copied to" customer if that folder name already exists. *New in release 3.9.0
You will also be prompted with the message, "Overwrite Any Existing Groups" with Y/N options. Answering Yes to this message will overwrite a group on the "copied to" customer if that group name already exists. Answering No to this message will not copy a group if that group name already exists. When finished, you will see the message, "Copy Complete!"
Edit Existing Folder
*New in release 3.9.0
To edit an existing folder, place your cursor on the appropriate folder name and use the "Edit" hotkey (Alt+E). This will take you into the Innovo Product Folder Detail screen for that specific folder where you can add new groups (Alt+N), edit existing groups (Alt+E), move groups around (Alt+M), and delete (Alt+Delete) a group from the folder.
To move a product group, place your cursor on the group, use the "Move Group" hotkey (Alt+M), then place your cursor where you would like to move it, and press <enter>.
When using the Alt+Delete hotkey, you will be prompted whether to remove the group from the folder. Answering Y will remove the group from the current folder and place it in the main product group screen for that customer.
Edit Existing Group
To edit an existing product group, place your cursor on the appropriate group name and use the "Edit" hotkey (alt+E). This will take you into the Innovo Product Group Detail screen for that specific product group where you can add products, insert (Alt+Insert) products, delete (Alt+Delete) products, rename group (Alt+R), add or update the description of the group (Alt+D), move products around (Alt+M), and move the product group to a folder (Alt+F).
The Move to Folder (Alt+F) hotkey will move a product group that is not in a folder to the desired folder, or move a product group from one folder to another. Use the F10 hotkey to see the available groups. *New in release 3.9.0
To move a product, place your cursor on the product, use the "Move" hotkey (alt+M), then place your cursor where you would like to move it, and press <enter>.
Upload Product Groups and Folders
The Product Group Maintenance Utility allows users to use the Upload (Alt+U) hotkey to import a tab delimited .txt file to easily create product groups in Eclipse.
The columns must be in the following order:
- Internal customer Id
- Product Group name
- Internal product Id or any keyword that will match on a single product
- Quantity
- Folder name (leave blank if you are not using product group folders for this customer)
For example, if you look at the file above you will see we will be uploading three folders for customer 42701, each with multiple product groups, and two product groups that are not in a folder. Note that in the quantity column, you do not want to enter any commas.
In the product column you can enter the internal Eclipse product Id, the UPC code, the catalog number, or any UD field that would be unique per product. The system is smart enough to then match on the internal Eclipse product Id.
The following characters are not permitted in the group name or quantity fields - we suggest using only alphanumeric characters for the group name:
- Comma
- Underscore
- Tab
- Tilde (~)
- Question mark
- Slash (/)
- Ampersand (&)
The file must be saved as a tab delimited file with the extension “txt”.
To import the file, use the “Upload” hotkey and choose the appropriate text file stored on your computer. When the upload is complete, the user will be notified and if there are any errors, an error report will be sent to the user’s hold file (spooler).
Deleting Groups
To delete an individual group, place your cursor on the appropriate group and press ALT+D. To delete all groups, press ALT+L and you will be prompted to delete all groups for this customer.
Managing Groups By Product
Sometimes you may find it useful to manage groups at the product level - meaning you will enter a product and see all product groups that contain that product. If you want to remove a product from a group or all groups, this would be the way to do that. You can also find and replace a product with another product - for example, if a product becomes discontinued by the manufacturer.
To manage groups at the product level, use the "Chg View" hotkey (alt+V). Once a product is loaded, you will see all groups that product is in along with the customer name. You may see a product group name repeat in the list but that just means that group name exists for multiple customers - it may or may not contain the same products.
To edit a group, place your cursor on the appropriate group and use the "Edit" hotkey (alt+E) which will display the product group detail screen discussed above.
Removing a Product
To remove the active product from an individual group, use the "Remove" hotkey (alt+R) which will remove the product from that group. To remove the active product from all groups, use the "Remove All" hotkey (alt+A).
Please note if the active product exists in the group more than once, all occurrences of the product will be removed.
Replacing a Product
To find the active product in all groups and replace with a different product, use the "Replace" hotkey (alt+P) which will prompt you for the replacement product. Once the product has been successfully replaced in all groups, the active product will be changed to the replaced product.
Please note if the active product exists in the group more than once, all occurrences of the product will be replaced.
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