Item Creator

The Item Creator is a quick and easy way to create many new items using very few mouse clicks. It utilizes the values of selectable features to create items for all combinations of these values.

Prerequisites

You need Perfion version 4.5.3 or later.

The first usage of the Item Creator

The Item Creator is reached by in a grid right-clicking anywhere and selecting “Create Items…”:

This will open the Item Creator. If it is the first time you open it, you will see the following window:

What you can do now is to start adding dimensions. A dimension is a selectable feature which values will later be used for creating the Items. Let us add a feature. Click “Add Dimension… “ and, in the window that appears, select a feature. Below we have selected a feature named “Color”. You can quickly navigate to color by simple typing it:

Note that Selected Dimensions displays the currently selected dimensions. Here it is only color, but more dimensions (i.e. features) can be added. Staying with only “Color” the Item Creator now looks like this:

Now Click “Edit options” in the color column, select some of the values found there and close the multi selector again. This gives us the following:

By selecting 10 colors we can now create 10 items by clicking “Create Selected”. We can also select/deselect the items we want be selecting/deselecting the individual items in the left most checkbox. Clicking “Create selected” will only create the items that are selected. Note: You can click the checkbox next to “Create Items” to select/deselect all items.

Below the items with colors “Blue” and “Aluminium” has been deselected:

Clicking “Create Selected”-button here will, after you confirmed that you want to create 8 items, create the items, close the Item Creator, and return to the main window in Perfion, as can be seen here:

Note that since the Item Creator was started in a grid showing products in category “Tea Pots” all items created will be assigned that category.

In order to “clean up”, you can delete the 8 items just created.

Multiple Dimensions

In the previous section you created items distinguished only by a single feature, named Color. Let us try to do this again, but now selecting more dimensions.

Opening the dialog again will remember where you left it (i.e. which dimensions you selected). Now click “Add dimensions…” and select two more features. Here it is Material and Brand:

Note that in the “Column chooser” features are added to the already selected features. If you want to deselect some feature, just click it again and it will be removed from the list.

Clicking OK now shows the selected 3 dimensions in the Item Creator:

So now it is about selecting values for each of them. In the image below we have selected 5 colors, 3 materials and 4 brands:

As you would expect 60 items are generated since 5 x 3 x 4 is 60.

From Perfion v. 4.5.35 it is possible to reorder the dimensions simply by dragging a column to another position. In Addition dimensions can be removed by dragging a column out of the grid.

Hitting “Create selected” now, will create these 60 items in a “flat list” i.e. without “Virtual items”. You, however, can choose to create “Virtual Items” for each of the dimensions except the last one. You do that be checking the dimensions you want (from left to right). Below both Color- and Size-dimensions are selected for creating a Virtual Item.

Clicking “Create Selected” now, will create the 60 “normal” items just as before. Additionally it will create 20 virtual items: 5 Color virtual items and for each of them 3 Material items. This gives 5 + (3 x 5) = 20 virtual items in total.

Clicking “Create Selected” will hereby give the following result:

The Item Creator will assign inherited values at virtuals. Notice, for example, that the value for “Color” is assigned at its virtual level (and hereby also for all children). This is indeed done, because the Color-feature (in this perfion database) is inheritable. “Material” is also assigned at its parent level, but it is also assigned on children (in this case the items). This is done, since Material is not inheritable.

Working with multiple dimensions sets

The Item Creator will by default store the last created dimension set per feature (i.e. one for “Products” another for “categories”, a third for “RelatedProducts” etc. When opened next time it will initialize using this information.

If you would like to have more dimensions sets available, it is possible. Just like views and filters you can create a selectable Search-feature in which to store these Dimension Sets.

To create such a feature you need to be an Administrator/Super User. If you are go to “Features” click “Search” in tree list, right click and pick “Add New…”. This brings up the Feature-Dialog:

The Item Creator recognizes the feature by its name. It must be named the same as the feature it organizes (usually, but not always, “Product”) having the letters “DimensionSets” appended. So having a feature named “Product” you would create this “Storing Dimension Set”-feature named “ProductDimensionSets” (as done in the dialog above).

Make sure the feature is Selectable (as shown). If you want better organizational options, you can check “Allow Hierarchy” and “Custom Ordering” as well.

Having done that the Item Creator will now show a combo box with currently available Dimension Sets (no sets are available initially). Dimension Sets are created much like Filters and Views in the Grid. Add some Dimension Sets will add a “*” to the combo box and it is now editable. Hitting return will ask you whether you want to store the Dimension Set. The dialog below shows the Item Creator with 4 dimension sets stored and available.