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

With the variant toolbar at the top of the screen, you can also browse to other variants using the arrow buttons. The action button (...) 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+Z to undo changes, one keystroke/command at a time.
• Shift +CTRL+Z to redo anything that was undone.
• CTRL+A to select every cell in the spreadsheet.
• Shift+Arrow keys to select multiple cells.
• CTRL+C / CTRL+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).

If you’ve enabled price lists within Labs, you’ll be able 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.

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