Create and edit product types

Understand the base product type

The built-in base product type contains basic product and SKU properties that apply to all products and SKUs in your catalog. Custom product types automatically inherit all the base product type’s properties.

The following table describes the default product properties for the base product type:

Property	Description
Name (required)	Short, descriptive name that identifies the product.
Product ID (required)	The ID that identifies the product internally. Each product ID must be unique within your catalog.
Description	A short description to display with the product.
Brand	The name of the manufacturer.
List Price (required)	Default price of the product before any discounts or promotions. If your store supports more than one currency, enter a list price for each price group shown. See Configure Price Groups for more information.
Sale Price	Sale price of the product. If your store supports more than one currency, enter a sale price for each price group shown. See Configure Price Groups for more information.
Shipping Surcharge	Additional shipping charges that apply to the product because of size, weight, or special handling. If your store supports more than one currency, enter a shipping surcharge for each price group shown. See Configure Price Groups for more information.
Product Tax Code	A tax code to assign to the product that allows your tax processor to make the appropriate tax calculations. For more information, see Configure Tax Processing.
Long Description	Detailed descriptive text to display with the product. The long description is created with an HTML editor called CKEditor that you can use to edit and apply rich-text formatting.
Active	Specifies whether the product is displayed on your store and in search results. By default, the Active option is not selected.
Discountable	Specifies whether the product can be discounted by Commerce promotions. By default, the Discountable option is selected. For more information, see Understand promotion targets.
Not For Individual Sale	Specifies whether the product can be purchased only as part of a complex, customizable product. For example, if your store sells laptops, some of the individual components such as motherboards or graphics cards may not be for sale as individual products but can be sold as component parts of a customized product. Products marked as not for individual sale do not appear in collections shoppers browse on your store or in search results. Unlike inactive products, which shoppers cannot purchase at all, products marked as not for individual sale can be purchased, but only as a component of a customizable product. By default, the Not For Individual Sale option is not selected. Note: To create customizable products, you must have an active Oracle CPQ account.
Not Returnable	Indicates that the storefront elements allowing shoppers to initiate a return from their order history should not be active for this product.
Exclude from XML Sitemap	Excludes selected products from the product sitemap. The XML sitemap is an index of page URLs on your site that is available for crawling by search engines. It helps search engines to crawl your site more intelligently.
Assetable	Indicates that the product should be tracked as an asset. Prior to checkout, Commerce will require shoppers to assign customer, service, and billing account details for this product, along with a billing profile. Select this property only for products sold as services or subscriptions such as broadband, wireless, or magazine subscriptions.
Shippable	Specifies that the product is a physical item that can be shipped. By default, the Shippable option is selected. Deselect it if the product is something that will not be shipped, such as a service.
Arrival Date	Stock arrival date for the product. Stock arrival date for the product. By default, this property is not displayed on the storefront (though it is available to be added to custom widgets you create), and does not control whether a product can be purchased. Shoppers can purchase an active product with active SKUs in stock, regardless of the Arrival Date, even if that date is in the future.
Height, Length, Width, and Weight	Specifies the physical dimensions of a product.
Order Limit	The maximum number of this product that can be purchased per order.

The following table describes the default SKU properties for the base product type.

Property	Description
Name	Short, descriptive name that identifies the SKU. By default, the SKU inherits the name of its parent product.
SKU ID	The ID that identifies the SKU internally. Each SKU ID must be unique within a product.
Active	Specifies whether the SKU is displayed on your store and in search results when its parent product is active. By default, the Active option is selected.
Discountable	Specifies whether the SKU can be discounted by Commerce promotions. By default, the Discountable option is selected. For more information, see Understand promotion targets.

Edit the base product type

You can add new properties to the base product type and make some changes to its default properties. You cannot remove any of the default type or SKU properties, though you can do the following:

Mark some of them as not required so that merchandisers can ignore them when creating new products. (The product’s Name, ID, and List Price properties are always required, as is the SKU ID property.)
Mark them as Internal-Only so that they cannot appear on the storefront.

To edit product properties in the base product type:

On the Catalog page, click the Manage Catalogs button and select Product Types.
Click Base Product to display its type properties.
To add a new product property, click Add Property and select Standard or Shopper Input.
- Standard specifies properties whose values you provide when creating products.
- Shopper Input specifies properties whose values shoppers provide when purchasing a product on your store. For example, initials for a monogram or a message to accompany gift wrapping.
See Create custom product types for details about how to add a new property.
To edit an existing property, click its Edit button.
You cannot change a default property’s ID. You can make optional properties required, but you cannot make required properties optional.

See Create custom product types for details about property settings.
Click Done when you finish adding and editing properties.

To add or edit SKU properties in the base product type:

On the Catalog page, click the Manage Catalogs button and select Product Types.
Click Base Product to display its type properties.
Click the SKU Properties tab.

Understand custom product types

In addition to inheriting all the product properties from the base product type, custom product types let you provide product, SKU, and variant properties for different kinds of products.

Standard product properties let you add information specific to a particular kind of product. For example, suppose your store carries a large inventory of cameras. You might want to create a custom product type called Camera that includes type properties like effective pixels and exposure control.
Standard product property values can also be used as search terms and facets on your store. For more information, see Create custom product types.
Shopper input product properties let you capture information from shoppers for a particular kind of product. For example, shoppers can enter initials for a monogram or a message to include in a card with gift wrapping. Shopper input properties can be displayed on the storefront but are not used as search terms and facets.
Shopper input properties can be optional or required. For example, when a shopper selects gift wrapping they can include an optional gift message, but when a shopper selects monogramming, they must supply the letters that will be monogrammed on the main product.

See Support add-on products for an example of incorporating a custom shopper input property into a widget so shoppers can use it on the storefront.
SKU properties let you add information specific to a SKU. For example, you could create custom SKU properties that hold UPC codes or IDs that represent SKUs in an external order management system.
SKU property values can also be used as search terms and facets on your store. For more information, see Create custom product types.
Variant properties represent options you can combine to create SKUs. For example, if a shirt is available in three sizes and two colors, size and color are its variant properties.
Variant property values can also drive image display on your store’s product details and category pages. Select one variant property per product that gets images assigned to each of its values. For example, suppose a shirt called Cotton Tee is available in three colors, red, blue, and green. You can assign separate images to each color value. When a shopper navigates to the shirt’s product details page and selects the color green, the main image changes to the green shirt.

You can also display style-based products on category pages. That is, images for each value of the selected variant appear as separate products on your store. Continuing with the shirt example, suppose the shirt is part of the Tops & Tees category. When a shopper navigates to Tops & Tees, the shirt appears three times on the page, once in each of the available colors.

For more information, see Create custom product types.

Create custom product types

To create a custom product type:

On the Catalog page, click the Manage Catalogs button and select Product Types.
Click New Custom Type.
Enter a name for the new product type and click Save.
You can now add product, SKU, and variant properties to the new product type.

To add standard product properties to a custom product type:

On the product type’s Product Properties tab, click Add Property and select Standard.
Select a property type and enter values to define it.
The property type you select controls the type of editor merchandisers see when they create products using this new type. For more information, see Property types.
Click Save.
Repeat steps 1 through 3 for each new standard product property you want to add to the product type. When you are finished, click Done.

To add shopper input properties to a custom product type:

On the product type’s Product Properties tab, click Add Property and select Shopper Input.
Select a property type and enter
The property type you select controls the type of editor shoppers see on your store. . For more information, see Property types.
Click Save.
Repeat steps 1 through 3 for each new standard product property you want to add to the product type. When you are finished, click Done.

To add SKU properties to a custom product type:

On the product type’s SKU Properties tab, click Add Property.
Select a property type and enter values to define it.
The property type you select controls the type of editor merchandisers see when they create products using this new type. For more information, see Property types.
Click Save.
Repeat steps 1 through 3 for each new SKU property you want to add to the product type. When you are finished, click Done.

To add variant properties to a custom product type:

On the product type’s Variant Properties tab, click Add Property.
Enter a name, ID, and values for the property. Press the ENTER key after you type each property value.
For example, to add color variants to a property type, you could enter the following:

Name: Color

ID: color

Values: Poppy, Navy, Charcoal, White

Tip: You can drag values to reorder them. The order values appear in here is their default order on the product detail page on your store, though you can change the order for individual products. See Sort variant values on the product details page for more information.
Click Save.
Repeat steps 1 through 3 for each new variant property you want to add. When you are finished, click Done.

You can configure how images are displayed for property values of one variant per product type. Select a variant whose properties look different in images, such as color.

To configure image display for a variant property’s values:

On the product type’s Variant Properties tab, click Edit for the property you want to use.
Under display properties, select Allow product images at variant property value level.
This allows you to assign a different image to each of the variant’s values.
If you also want to display images for each value separately on collections pages, select Display product entries in product listing by these property values.
Important: Once you save these options, you cannot change them.
Click Save.

See Add images to products for information about how to assign images to the values on a product-by-product basis.

Property types

The following table describes the properties you can add to a product type or SKU type.

Property type	Allows the merchandiser to enter
Short text	A single line of unformatted text.
Text area	One or more paragraphs of unformatted text. This is also known as a long text property. For details about this property type, see Add long text properties to products and SKUs.
Rich text	One or more paragraphs of formatted text. Note: A rich text property can have a default value of no more than 255 characters. However, if you import or manually enter the value, it can have multiple paragraphs, each with more than 255 characters.
Number	A numeric value.
Check box	A single true/false property.
Date	A date and time property with a calendar picker.
Selection list	A list property that allows a single selection from a specified set of values.

The following table describes the settings for each standard product or SKU property:

Setting	Description
Label (required)	The label that appears above the property editor in the product dialog.
Property ID (required)	The ID that identifies the property internally. Each property ID must be unique within your catalog, although the administration interface does not always prevent you from creating multiple properties with the same ID. If a property in the base product type and a custom property in a custom product type have the same property ID, the value of the property in the base product type always overwrites the value of the property in the custom product type.
Default Value	A value that is pre-populated in the property editor. Properties that are required must have default values.
Values	For a Selection List property, the set of strings to display in the list. You must add at least one string. Press Enter after you finish typing each string to add it to the Values field.
Required	Specifies whether a property must be set before a merchandiser can save a product. By default, properties are not required.
Translatable	Specifies whether a short-text or rich-text property can be translated. By default, properties are not translatable. If you select this option, you cannot change it later.
Display Properties	Select Visible in Storefront if you want to be able to display the property on your store. This is the default setting for all properties. Select Internal Only if you do not want the property to appear on your storefront. Note that shopper input properties cannot be Internal Only.
Allow property to be searched	Allows shoppers to search on values entered for properties. This setting is available for short text and number properties. You must also add the property to the searchable field ranking to make it searchable. See Add fields to the searchable field ranking list.
Allow property to be search facet	Allows shoppers to use the property as a refinement when filtering search results. This setting is available for short text and number properties.
Allow property to be a multi-select search facet	Allows shoppers to use the property as a refinement when making multiple selections to filter search results. For example, shoppers could filter results by selecting several brands. This setting is available for short text and number properties.

The following table describes the settings for each shopper input product property:

Setting	Description
Label (required)	The label that appears above the property editor on your store’s pages.
Property ID (required)	The ID that identifies the property internally. Each property ID must be unique within a product type.
Shopper Input Prompt	Helper text that appears with the property editor on your store’s pages.
Default Value	A value that is pre-populated in the property editor. Properties that are required must have default values.
Values	For a Selection List property, the set of strings to display in the list. You must add at least one string. Press Enter after you finish typing each string to add it to the Values field.
Required for Shopper	Specifies whether a property must be set before a shopper can complete the purchase. By default, properties are not required.

Add long text properties to products and SKUs

Long text properties (called Text Area in the administration interface Property Types dialog) let you store a large amount of plain unformatted text, such as content in CSV, JSON, or new-line-separated list formats.

No long text properties are available by default, but you can create and add long text properties to any Commerce product type or SKU type, using either the administration interface or the Admin API.

To create a long text property in the administration interface, follow the instructions in Create custom product types. To create a long text property with the Admin API, use the createProductTypeSpecification endpoint for product types and the createSkuProperty endpoint for SKU types. See Learn about the APIs for information about accessing the REST API documentation.