Variant Groups

A variant group links the catalog products that are one device in different finishes, so you can find them together and enter their connection metadata once.

What a Variant Group Is

Many devices are sold in more than one finish. A ceiling speaker, for example, is sold in white and in black. Each finish is a separate product in your catalog. A variant group records that those products are the same device.

• A group holds products of one make.
• A product belongs to one group at most.
• A group has an option name, which says what differs between its products. The option name starts as Colour, and you can change it.
• Each product in a group has a label, which is that product's value for the option. Examples are White and Black.
• Grouping changes nothing else. Every product keeps its own model, part number, price and description.

Grouping Products

1. On the Products page, tick the checkboxes of two or more products of the same make.
2. Click Group as variants. The button appears above the grid when a product is ticked, and it is disabled until two are ticked.
3. Review what the dialog suggests, and change anything that is wrong:
   • Group name - the start of the model number that the products share. For C-IC6LP-W and C-IC6LP-B it is C-IC6LP. When the model numbers share no start, the field is empty and you type a name. Create group is disabled while this field is empty.
   • Option - Colour.
   • A label for each product, read from the end of its model number. C-IC6LP-W gets White and C-IC6LP-B gets Black. When the ending names no finish, the label is the part of the model number that follows the shared start.
4. Click Create group.

The products now show the group in the Variant column, and their checkboxes are cleared. A group name is unique within a make, so one make cannot have two groups with the same name.

When the Dialog Lists Problems

The dialog checks the ticked products when it opens. When they cannot form a group, the dialog lists the reasons in place of the name, option and label fields, and Create group is disabled. The reasons you will normally see are:

• The products have different makes. The list names the makes.
• A product is already in a variant group. The list names the product and its group.

Create group is disabled because neither problem can be fixed in the dialog. Click Cancel, change which products are ticked, and click Group as variants again. To move a product to another group, ungroup it first.

The dialog can also list a problem after you click Create group: a product has no label, Option is empty, or the make already has a group with that name. This time the fields stay on screen and the button stays enabled, because you correct the entry and click Create group again.

The Variant Column

The Variant column on the Products page shows a chip for each grouped product. The chip holds the group name and the product's label, for example C-IC6LP · White. The cell is empty for a product that is in no group.

The column has a filter, which you open from the column header as you open the Make, Model and Part# filters. The filter is a list. Its first entry is All products, and it has one entry for each group. A group's entry shows the make, the group name and the number of products in the group, for example Biamp C-IC6LP (2). Choose a group to list only its products. Choose All products or click Clear Filters to list the whole catalog again.

Export All Filtered follows this filter as it follows the other column filters. When a group is chosen, the export file holds only that group's products.

Editing a Group

Click a chip in the Variant column to open its menu. The menu has three actions:

• Apply metadata to variants - copies this product's connection metadata to other products in the group. See Applying Metadata to Variants below.
• Edit group - opens the Edit variant group dialog.
• Ungroup this product - takes the product out of the group at once, without asking you to confirm. The product stays in the catalog and loses its label.

A user with read-only access sees the chip without the menu. A grouped product's edit page shows the same chip beside the page title, also without the menu.

The Edit variant group dialog shows the group's make, which cannot be changed. It has these controls:

• Group name, Option and Description - change the text, then click Save.
• The label beside each product - change it, then click Save. The label column is headed with the option name.
• Remove - takes that product out of the group at once.
• Add members - opens a list of products that can join the group. The list offers only products of the group's make that are in no group, and it shows the first 20 matches. To search it, type part of a model, part number or description and press Enter. Each product has a suggested label, which you can change. Click Add and the product joins the group at once.
• Delete group - asks you to confirm, then deletes the group. Its products stay in the catalog and lose their labels.

Save stores the name, the option, the description and the labels. Remove, Add and Delete group take effect without Save. Close leaves the dialog and discards text that you have not saved.

Applying Metadata to Variants

The products in a variant group usually have the same ports, so you can enter the connection metadata on one product and copy it to the others. You can copy it from the chip, or when you save the product.

From the Chip

1. On the Products page, click the chip of the product that has the metadata you want to copy.
2. Click Apply metadata to variants. When the product has no metadata, this action is shown disabled, and hovering over it shows "This product has no metadata to copy".
3. The dialog lists the other products in the group, each with a ticked checkbox. Untick a product to leave it unchanged. The Metadata column shows Replaced for a product that already has metadata and Added for a product that has none.
4. Leave Also copy block skin ticked to copy the schematic block too, or untick it.
5. Click Apply. A message gives the number of variants that were updated.

When You Save a Product

1. Open the edit page of a grouped product.
2. Click Edit beside Connection Metadata, change the metadata, and click Save Connection Metadata. The button reads Configure when the product has no metadata yet.
3. An Also apply to variants list appears above the page's Save button. It lists the other products in the group as the dialog does, all ticked, with the same Also copy block skin checkbox.
4. Click Save. The product is saved first. Its metadata is then copied to the ticked variants.

The list appears only after the metadata has really changed. It does not appear when you save the metadata editor without changing anything, or when you change only other fields such as the price. It disappears when you undo your change in the editor and save the editor again. To save the product without copying, untick every variant.

What Is Copied

• The source product's saved connection metadata replaces all the metadata of each ticked variant. Nothing from a variant's earlier metadata is kept.
• Connection metadata holds its own copy of the product's make, model and description. In the copied metadata, each variant has its own make and model. It also has its own description when the variant has one.
• A variant's catalog fields do not change. Its model, part number, price and description stay as they were.
• When Also copy block skin is ticked, each variant also takes the source product's Schematic block. When the source product uses the standard block, there is no block skin to copy. Each variant then keeps its own block, and the message adds "The source has no block skin, so none was copied."
• When Also copy block skin is unticked, each variant keeps its own block.
• A product that has left the group since the list was shown is skipped. The message gives the number that were skipped.

Changing a Grouped Product's Make

A group holds one make, so the make of a grouped product cannot be changed. If you change Make on a grouped product's edit page and click Save, nothing is saved and a message says "Ungroup this product before changing its make." Ungroup the product from its chip on the Products page, and then change the make.

The Excel import follows the same rule. A row that would change the make of a grouped product is skipped, and the import's result message counts it as "skipped (make change on a grouped product; ungroup it first)".

A change of letter case only, such as biamp to Biamp, is the same make and is saved. So is a change of the spaces before or after the name.

Export and Import

Variant groups travel in catalog export files. Export & Import Products explains the files and the import preview.

• An export file records the group name, the option name and the label of each grouped product.
• An import writes the products first and rebuilds the groups afterwards. For each group in the file, it looks in your catalog for a group with the same make and name. When there is none, it creates the group with the option name from the file. It then puts the file's products into the group with their labels.
• Only products that the import wrote are put into groups. New products are always written. Products that you already have are written only when you tick Update the N products that already exist in the Import Products preview.
• With that option ticked, the import moves those existing products into the file's groups. A product that is in another group leaves it, and a group that loses all its products this way is deleted.
• A product with no group in the file is never taken out of a group. An export file made before variant groups existed has no group fields, so importing it changes no groups.

The import summary shows Groups linked with the number of groups that the import filled, or Group linked for a single group. The count is left out when no group was linked. If a group could not be linked, the summary lists it under Variant groups not linked, with the make, the group name and the reason. The products in that group were imported all the same, and you can group them on the Products page.

Integrations can work with variant groups too. The REST endpoints are described under API Reference in Variant Groups, and the tools for AI agents are listed in MCP Server.