Configure Products

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the Salesforce Agentforce Commerce for B2C product types.
Explain how product attributes relate to products and appear on the storefront.
Describe how base and variation products relate.
Explain how products relate to categories.

Now that you’ve structured your storefront categories, it’s time to bring your catalog to life by configuring the products your shoppers will purchase. You need to make sure each product is accurately defined, searchable, and ready for sale. In this unit, you define product types, configure detailed attributes, and apply variations to provide a personalized shopping experience. You’ll also learn how to optimize product display to ensure your gear stands out and is easy for shoppers to find.

Define Products

A product is what you sell. Products can be physical objects or services, such as assembly, or options, such as service contracts.

Here are the Agentforce Commerce for B2C product types.

Standard: A one-off product or service
Main: All the variations of a product
Variation group: A group of products or services that share at least one attribute, such as color, and are assigned to a base product
Variation: A specific instance of a base product
Set: Multiple products or services that display together and can be ordered together or separately
Bundle: Multiple products or services that sell only as a group
Option: An add-on item, such as upgrades that come with a product or service, yet have a separate price and display name. They are not orderable or searchable.

View Products in Business Manager

Business Manager offers multiple ways to view products:

Product search: Find specific products by ID, name, or attributes.
Product list: Browse products within a category or catalog.
Product details page: Review detailed product information including attributes, pricing, and inventory.
Product variations: View different product variations like sizes or colors.
Product sets: Manage groups of products sold together.
Product inventory: Check stock levels and manage inventory.

Create a Base Product

While most companies import product data, merchandisers sometimes need to configure new products manually. You can do this by creating the product directly in the product catalog.

For example, your company received a special shipment of Healthfit Sweatshirts, and you want to get them in the catalog before the next import job runs.

Here’s how you create a base product in the product catalog, reflecting all products. (Remember, a base product represents all the variations of a product such as sizes and colors).

In Business Manager, select App Launcher, and select Merchant Tools | Site | Products and Catalogs | Products.
On the product search page, select New.
Enter the ID: healthfit-sweatshirt
Select the catalog: your-company-catalog.
Set Online and Searchable to Yes.
Enter the name: Healthfit Sweatshirt
Select Apply.
Select the Categories tab.
Select the category: Sportswear.
Select Apply.

Manage Product Display with Visual Merchandising

After you assign products to a category, you can use the visual merchandising grid view to see how modifications to the display order of your product appear in your storefront. Visual Merchandising is your workspace for managing how products appear on category pages and in search results. Instead of editing individual product settings scattered across Business Manager, you work from one central location where you can drag product cards, adjust rankings, and see changes immediately.

Think of it as your control panel for the storefront. When you want to feature seasonal items, promote slow-moving inventory, or reposition products based on performance data, you do it here. The workspace gives you two views—grid and list—and works across both category pages and search results.

Here’s how to view products in the grid view.

In Business Manager, select App Launcher, and select Merchant Tools | Site | Products and Catalogs | Catalogs.
Select the catalog category that you want to edit.
In the Product list, select the grid view icon .
Drag product tiles into the desired order. You can also enter a position number in the position field on the product tile.

Assign Products to Categories

For a product to appear on the storefront, you assign it to a category. You can assign products to multiple categories within and across your catalogs.

Commerce for B2C supports two category assignment types:

Classification category: Based on the product catalog and its attributes
Primary category: Based on the storefront catalog and its attributes

The primary category defines breadcrumbs on product detail pages. Without a primary category, Commerce for B2C uses the classification category.

Here’s how you assign a category to a base product.

In Business Manager, select App Launcher, and select Merchant Tools | Site | Products and Catalogs | Products.
Find and open the base product: Healthfit Sweatshirt.
Select Lock. This locks the product for editing.
Select the Categories tab and select Edit Categories.

Assign a category to the base product.

Select the catalog: your-company-catalog.
Expand the catalog.
Select Past Season.
Apply your changes.

Manage Product Attributes

Product attributes are data such as description, size, and color, within the product system object. The product ID attribute identifies a distinct item for sale and relates to the stock keeping unit (SKU) in inventory management. You can find the product system object in Business ManagerAdministration | Site Development | System Object Types | Product.

Products can share attributes or have different attributes. Look at the attributes of these Cloud Kicks products.

Apparel attributes: Highlights, description, care, details, complete the look, how to style, available sizes
Footwear attributes: Highlights, description, details, how to style, available sizes

You assign product attributes (created for a catalog) to a base product and give them values, such asred, green, and bluefor the color attribute. These attributes are called variation attributes because they define variation products. Agentforce Commerce for B2C uses page-specific templates to display variation attributes in a common way on the product details, search results, and product compare pages.

In this example, you create a variation attribute and add it to the Healthfit Sweatshirt.

Create a variation attribute.

In Business Manager, select App Launcher, and select Merchant Tools | Site | Products and Catalogs | variation attributes | Catalog.
Create a variation attribute that uses the color attribute definition and at least one color value.
Create a size attribute with small, medium, and large values.

Use the variation attribute.

In Business Manager, select App Launcher, and select Merchant Tools | Site | Products and Catalogs | Products.
Select a base product: Healthfit Sweatshirt.
Select Lock to lock the product for changes. This action also locks the associated variation products.
Select the Variations tab.
Select the shared attribute that you created and select Apply.

If you can’t lock a product, see your admin.

Create Attribute Groups

You create an attribute group to help you manage product attributes. An attribute group is a grouping of attribute assignments that’s attached to a category. Attributes can belong to more than one attribute group. The attribute assignments display on the product details page and during some product comparisons.

Here’s how you create an attribute group.

In Business Manager, select App Launcher, and select Merchant Tools | Site | Products and Catalogs | Catalogs.
Select the category: your-company-catalog.
Select Edit beside a category: Sportswear.
Select the Product Attribute Definitions tab.
- Enter an ID: personalization.
- Enter a name: Personalization.
- Select Add.
Click the Edit link in the Attributes column.
- Select the ellipses (...).
- Locate and select UPC and Brand.
Choose Select.
Select Back.
Select Apply.
Rebuild the product index for the changes to take effect.
- Select Merchant Tools | Search | Search Indexes.
- Select the product index.
- Select Rebuild.
The product data about brand and style number now appears on the product details page for products categorized by Sportswear.

Use Variation Products

You can add multiple variations to your new base product, Healthfit Sweatshirt. This sweatshirt comes in three colors: green, red, and blue. Here are its variations.

Product ID

Color

healthfit-ss-90887

green

healthfit-ss-90888

red

healthfit-ss-90889

blue

Here’s how you create the variations.

In Business Manager, select App Launcher, and select Merchant Tools | Site | Products and Catalogs | Products.
Find and open the base product: healthfit-sweatshirt
Lock the product for editing.
Select the base product attributes.

Select the Variations tab.
In the variation attributes section, select the ellipses (...).
Select the attributes that you want to include: color
Select Apply.

Create the first variation.

In the Variations Products section, enter the first product ID: healthfit-ss-90887.If you don’t provide an ID, the variation product uses the ID of the base product and a suffix.
Select Add.
Scroll down to the same section and select the color: green

Enter the second variation: healthfit-ss-90888.

Select Add.
Scroll down to the same section and select the color: red

Enter the third variation: healthfit-ss-90889.

Select Add.
Scroll down to the same section and select the color: blue.
Select Apply.

Select green as the default and select Apply. This variation shows up as the default on the storefront.

You repeat the process and add the size attribute (small, medium, large) and assign this attribute to the variations.

In this unit, you learned about products and attributes and assigned products to categories. Next, learn how to configure variation groups and slicing.

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