Managing Product Groups

The Product Group feature is actually a way to group products of the same product type for presentation purposes. This is useful when we want to have a common presentation layer of a service at Storefront (i.e. various editions of a software) which will also include a list of the product characteristics of each edition of the software (i.e. the products "Office 365 Business Essentials", "Office 365 Business Premium" are related with the "Office 365 Business" product group).  Thus, it makes for a more economical way to manage different 'flavors' of the same software in terms of marketing preparation, but also offers a more clear way of depicting the offering selection to the customer! Let's see how to create Product Groups:

Add a Product Group in BSS

1. Navigate to Billing > Products. On the actions bar, hover mouse over the 'Add' option and select 'Add Product Group'
   
   
   
2. Now you need to fill in the required fields:
   1. Description: The name of the product group that will also be displayed at the Storefront
   2. Category: The Storefront category under which the product group will be displayed. Note that: The system will use the category of the product group to show the service on the respective class level at the  Storefront, regardless of the categorization of the individual products, that belong to the product group.
   3. Industry: The customer industry where this product is focused. Note that: If a product is part of a product group, then the "Industries" field is disabled because it inherits the values of the product group.
   4. Product Type: The product type we want to use for the product group. Selecting a product type means that all the products that will be added on the product group will belong to this product type and inherit any characteristics / automations.
   5. Include all Products: Check this if you want all the products of the selected product type to belong to this product group.
      
      
   
3. Click 'Save' and you are done!

Publishing a Product Group

You can find respective information on publishing a product group to your Storefront here: Publish a Product Group in Storefront

Adding Products Under a Product Group

You can use three ways to add a product under a product group.

Using the Include all Products Action

When you check this, you force all the products of the product group's product type to belong to this product group automatically.

Assigning an Existing Product to the Product Group

1. Navigate to the product group page.
2. Locate and activate the 'Assign' option from the Shortcuts Menu
   
   
   
3. On the pop up use the filter to locate the product you want. Flag the product and click the 'Insert to Selected' action. Click Add and you are done!
   

Creating a New Product for the Group

1. Navigate to the product group page.
2. Locate and activate the 'New Product' option from the Shortcuts Menu. The new Product page will be shown