Variant groups at supplier scale, bulk category assignment, and selection guides in the API

Mostly about doing things to many products at once, rather than one at a time.

Import variant groups from a spreadsheet

Setting up an External Variant Group meant adding every product by hand. A supplier arriving with 40 colour groups was 40 manual setups.

You can now upload a CSV from Settings → External Variant Groups. One row is one product's place in a group, and a group is created if its name isn't already in use, so a whole range fits in one file:

Rows are matched to products by SKU, and rows whose SKU doesn't match a product are skipped and listed. If any row is invalid, nothing is imported and every error is listed, with a note on how line numbers are counted.

Also new for variant groups:

• Swatch images per member, for patterns and prints a colour code can't show.
• Search across groups and the products in them.
• A much faster page. The variant groups page loads quickly and reliably on large catalogs, instead of sometimes timing out or showing no groups.
• The product picker searches as you type rather than loading your whole catalog first.

Add products to categories in bulk

Select products in the list and choose Categories in the bulk bar to add them all to one or more categories in one go.

A calmer bulk bar

The bulk bar had grown to a long row of equally weighted buttons. The actions you use most — Visible, Hidden, Sync On, Sync Off, Sync, Channel, Categories and Delete — stay on the bar. Everything that assigns something now sits under More: Brand, Shipping profile, Shipping, Returns and Warranty text templates, FAQ template, Customs template, Tax category, Classification and Google product category. Most of these are new: you can now set any of them on hundreds of products at once.

Searchable multi-select attributes

Multi-select attributes with long lists now have a search box, with your choices shown as chips. Short lists keep their checkboxes. The Grape Variety attribute now carries the full reference list of 105 varieties, and search understands regional names — type Shiraz and you'll find Syrah.

Selection guides in the API

Size charts and other selection guides can now be managed through the API: list, create, read, update and delete them, and attach or detach a guide from products by SKU. Two new scopes control this — selection-guides:read and selection-guides:write — so a key can attach a size chart without being able to change prices. Attaching a guide moves the products' updatedAt, so updatedSince polling picks up the change.

Variant groups can be created through the API as well, with POST /v1/variant-groups/bulk, which accepts the same rows as the CSV upload and supports dryRun.