Pretty View and Nerdy View

To view and edit products within your tenant, you’ll first need the requisite permissions for the Tree (read, create, etc). Refer to our documentation on roles and permissions for more information.

Pretty View is the default view for product variants. ​​It’s a well organized, easy to use, and visually appealing way of not only displaying but also editing product data and marketing content.

To see Pretty View in action, open the Crystallize App, click the Catalogue button in the far-left row of buttons, then browse to any product and click on it. You’ll see a view similar to this one:

The main image associated with your first variant is used as a backdrop against which all variants are displayed, arranged horizontally on cards. If there are more variants than fit on the screen, arrow buttons allow you to scroll back and forth through them.

On each product variant card, you’ll see the variant’s name, identifier, attributes, default stock, and default price. For everything but attributes, you can click into each of the boxes and change the values. Click outside the box to finish editing. Click the action button (...) in the top-right corner of a card to find Edit and Delete options. At the far right end of the variant list, the Add a variant+ card allows you to create more variants as needed. Finally, if you click anywhere else on the card, you’ll reach the edit screen proper:

Here, you can add, edit, or remove the following:

• Variant name
• Stock keeping unit (SKU)
• Images and related metadata
• Videos and related metadata
• Attributes
• Stock values for each stock location defined for this tenant
• Prices for the price variants defined for this tenant
• Variant story components, if such components have been defined within the product shape used to create this item.
• Subscription plans

The Media component holds images and videos. With any image selected, you can click the action button (...) on its thumbnail to access a set of options: Image detail will take you to the image’s full details within the Asset Organizer, Download lets you download the image in various sizes and formats, and Remove media removes the image from the component.

With the variant toolbar at the top of the screen, you can also browse to other variants using the arrow buttons. The action button (...) beside these arrows allows you to delete the current variant or set it as the default variant (if there’s more than one variant and the current variant is not already the default).

For more detail, refer to our page on creating a product.

As usual, changes are automatically saved, but must be published to be made publicly available. Click the left-pointing arrow (←) on the variant toolbar to return to the main product page.

Now, what if you have tens or hundreds of variants for the same product—a rainbow of color options, or many stock locations for instance? As a user who maintains inventory and pricing information, how do you possibly keep up with creating and editing all these variants?

Nerdy View is the answer. Not only does it allow you to see all variants in a convenient and familiar spreadsheet format, it also allows you to perform quick and powerful editing of several or all variants at once—saving you from frustrating export-import processes or hundreds of clicks.

To get started with Nerdy View, you’ll need to enable it within the Labs section. Follow these instructions for enabling Labs features.

Once Nerdy View is enabled, browse to a product in your catalogue and have a look at the toolbar at the top of the screen. You’ll see the Views drop-down menu with Pretty selected by default. Select Nerdy, and watch your screen transform accordingly:

Here, the rows of the spreadsheet represent your product variants. The columns contain variant names, images, videos, price variants, stock locations, and attributes. At the top of the spreadsheet, you’ll see the total number of variants listed. When you make any changes, the Save changes button will be enabled. You must click this button to preserve any changes you make. If you don’t, changes will be lost when you browse away from this product.

With some products having many attributes, you may need to add tens or even hundreds of product variants representing different combinations of those attributes: a small red t-shirt, a medium red t-shirt, a large red t-shirt, and so on through all your color and size options. Instead of creating one variant at a time, you can add multiple variants at once using the Variant generator button, which appears at the bottom of the variant spreadsheet. Enter your product attributes by hand, or copy them from a spreadsheet that has been arranged with attribute names in the leftmost column and values within rows. When you click the Generate [X] variants button, every attribute combination will be created at once and added to the spreadsheet as a new row.

You can work with Nerdy View as if it were any other spreadsheet application. Some useful functions are listed below.

On your keyboard, you can use:

• [CTRL or ⌘] + Z to undo changes, one keystroke/command at a time.
• Shift + [CTRL or ⌘] + Z to redo anything that was undone.
• [CTRL or ⌘] + A to select every cell in the spreadsheet.
• Shift + Arrow keys to select multiple cells.
• [CTRL or ⌘] + C / [CTRL or ⌘] + V to copy and paste, even to/from other spreadsheet programs. You can also use Magic Paste to copy images into the Images column.

Using your mouse, you can: 

• Double-click on a cell to edit the value it contains.
• Double-click an image thumbnail to select it. Then you can copy the image, right-click and open it in a new browser tab, etc.
• Click and drag to select multiple rows, columns, or cells.
• Right-click within the spreadsheet to view options for Insert Row Below, Duplicate Row, and Delete Row.
• Right-click on a column header to view options for inserting a row, duplicating all rows, or deleting all rows. Attribute columns can also be deleted this way.
• Click the top-left corner of the spreadsheet to select everything.
• At the bottom of the spreadsheet, type or click the arrow buttons to set a number, then click the +Add button to add that many new rows to the spreadsheet.

Nerdy View offers a powerful Batch Edit feature for quickly generating price variants. To get started, click the action button (...) at the top of any price variant column and select the Batch edit option.

You can adjust the price in each column by:

• $ - Absolute value (ex. -10 to knock $10 off every price)
• % - Percentage (ex. -20 to decrease all prices by 20%)
• x - Multiplier (ex. 2 to double every price)

If you need more advanced calculations, have a look at these optional features:

• Adjust relative to: choose a different column for base prices (ex. deriving prices for a Black Friday Sale column by starting with the values from your Default price column)
• Apply to ranges: only perform the operation if the base price falls between the specified range (ex. only apply the discount to items $100+).
• Vanity prices: round prices up to the nearest ones, tens, or hundreds (ex. with 10 selected, 83 is rounded up to 90).
• Subtract: a value that will be subtracted from every price (ex. subtract 0.01 to convert all whole-number prices to the familiar $X.99 format).

All of this is done from top to bottom in order of operations: the prices are first adjusted, then rounded, then subtracted from (if applicable). If you only want rounding and/or subtraction, then choose an adjustment that won’t affect the base prices (ex. set 1 as the multiplier or 0 as the absolute).

To assign product variants to existing price lists, select any number of variants, then use the Add to price list drop-down at the top of the spreadsheet to assign them to an existing price list. Multiple price lists may be applied to a single product variant. The cheapest adjustment will be shown when the variant is displayed, queried, or being purchased.

There are several ways to add product variants to price lists. See our documentation on managing price lists for more information.

To remove product variants from a price list, you can use the Special Prices screen or the PIM API.

Folders also have a Nerdy View, accessible through the Views drop-down menu or by hovering on the folder’s name in the catalogue and clicking on the glasses icon. This screen has spreadsheet functionality similar to a product’s Nerdy View. From a folder’s Nerdy View, you can:

• Assign topics or shortcuts to items in the folder.
• Assign product variant SKUs in the folder to price lists.
• Click any column header to sort items ascending or descending.
• Click product or variant icons to see those items in Pretty View.
• Click on a column’s name, then drag and drop it to a new position within the spreadsheet.
• Click the action button (...) beside a column name to hide it.
• View and edit item and product variant data across the All, Products, and Variants tabs. Data can be copied and pasted from other cells or from external sources, including spreadsheets.
• Batch edit prices for products. On the Products or Variants tab, select one or more rows, then select Adjust price from the drop-down menu below. When you click the plus sign button (+) beside the Adjust price option, you’ll see a set of batch editing options identical to the ones available in product Nerdy View. Make your adjustments, then click the Save configuration button. Finally, click the Apply to X rows button on the right to commit the changes.
• Copy images into adjacent cells, and copy/paste images from external image URLs. You can also double-click on any image cell to reorder images or copy them to the lightbox. Likewise, images in the lightbox and from the assets panel on the left-hand side of the screen can be transferred to cells in the Images column.
• Double-click an item relation component cell to view and edit related items. You can also copy/paste their contents into other item relation cells, and drag/drop in new items from the left-hand catalogue sidebar.
• Search and filter items by text by using [CTRL or ⌘] + F to open a search box, then typing any search term. Cells within the table containing the search term will be highlighted. For filtering, click on the Search drop-down and choose the Any filter. Type in the desired text, then click the Apply button.
• Filter items by shape by clicking on the Search drop-down and choosing the Shape filter. Click on a shape, then click the Apply button.
• Filter items by component value by clicking on the Search drop-down and choosing the Shape filter. Click on a shape, and its single line, rich text, numeric, images, item relation, and switch components will be displayed. Clicking on one of the components will let you specify a desired match term or condition for the component (which is optional). Click the Apply button to finish.
• Move items: on the All or Products tabs, select one or more items, then click on the drop-down menu below the spreadsheet and select Move items. Drag and drop a folder from the catalogue pane to select a destination, then click Apply to X rows. An icon will display that shows where the item(s) will be moved. When you save and/or publish changes, the move action will take effect. You must then choose whether to move only draft versions to the destination folder, or to simultaneously move the items and publish them in their new location. Note that item shortcuts cannot be moved in this way.
• Publish or unpublish multiple rows by selecting them, then clicking the X rows button at the top of the screen. You can then choose between publishing or unpublishing them all at once.
• Delete one or more rows by selecting them, then clicking the X rows button at the top of the screen and choosing Delete. This action cannot be undone, so proceed carefully.

For any filters that are applied, you can click the X on the filter’s label to remove it, or use the Clear filters button to remove all filters.

Clicking the Save changes button saves whatever modifications you’ve made to the draft version of each item. In other words, the changes will be retained, but they won’t be publicly available. The Save and Publish button updates both the draft and published versions of each item, making your changes publicly available. If you browse away from Nerdy View without saving, all changes will be lost.

Each time you publish an item, Crystallize saves an archive of the previously published version. Refer to our archiving documentation for more information.