|
 |
|  | | Author: | jennnifer  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 10:12 | | Subject: | Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 135 times | | Topic: | Catalog | | Status: | Open | |
|
| Hello,
Regardless of my thoughts toward losing some valuable variants in our Catalog,
I have now read the message twice, and read most of the main Forum thread, and
I still have no idea how technically this is going to work.
You are going to take two active catalog items, 3747b and 3747a for example,
choose a main Image, choose one Image for each of the color thumbnails, choose
1 Price Guide (or does this merge also), and add a new Note explaining the 2
different versions. Is an experienced Catalog Expert going to do this or someone
else? Will the deleted info be archived in case of errors?
Then, you are going to merge the two items in the Catalog.
Seller shop inventory
Seller's shop items will be merged unless they paste a specific string of
text on the entry ahead of time. If not, they will not get to choose which price
is used or any of the other lot data. They will not be given a log of exactly
what was merged or changed.
It's not as if sellers are already prone to blaming BrickLink for errors
in their inventory. Now BrickLink will be actively changing their store listings.
We have no way of testing if this going to work and no way of flagging or logging
errors created.
Set Inventories
All Set Inventories that have these items will change to just one item. Any sets
that have the parts listed as Alternates will ?? Any Match ID's affected
will ?? Links to Change Requests discussing these items will ??
Everything else
All Wanted Lists that have these items listed will have the parts merged? What
if they are in separate projects? Isn't there an issue with Wanted Lists
already that involves problems with duplicate items?
All external links to one (or both) of the item variants will break or ??
All the people who write related software will have to adjust, rewrite, debug,
and ??
To sum up:
There is a reason it took so long to Mark Items for Deletion and then actually
delete them. It's to avoid all this trouble and uncertainty.
What happens 3 months from now when a seller who's been away reopens his
shop and doesn't understand what happened? You simply cannot count on every
single member receiving, reading, and understanding the email message sent out.
Will they receive any Action Items within BrickLink to understand the changes?
I wonder how much Catalog Credit will just vanish on Feb 15th. Credit for images,
items, inventories, ... all gone.
Thanks,
~Jen
|
 |
|
|  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  | | Author: | jennnifer  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 10:36 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 54 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| In Catalog, jennnifer writes:
| |
Seller shop inventory
Seller's shop items will be merged unless they paste a specific string of
text on the entry ahead of time. If not, they will not get to choose which price
is used or any of the other lot data. They will not be given a log of exactly
what was merged or changed.
It's not as if sellers are already prone to blaming BrickLink for errors
in their inventory. Now BrickLink will be actively changing their store listings.
We have no way of testing if this going to work and no way of flagging or logging
errors created.
|
From the email message:
'Because this plan includes merging a number of variant entries, those of
you who wish to maintain the distinction between these variants will need to
add a short line of text in the notes for each lot affected.'
So, store listings don't have 'notes', we have Comments and Remarks.
In which text field does this string of text need to be entered? Does other text
need to be removed? If not, what should separate the existing text and the string
that BL is looking for?
~Jen
|
 |
|
|  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  | | Author: | SylvainLS  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 10:44 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 47 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| In Catalog, jennnifer writes:
| | […]
Seller shop inventory
Seller's shop items will be merged unless they paste a specific string of
text on the entry ahead of time. If not, they will not get to choose which price
is used or any of the other lot data. They will not be given a log of exactly
what was merged or changed.[…]
|
AFAIU, lots in stores won’t be merged. You’ll “just” have two lots for the same
ID, with different prices and comments.
Before:
— id 2454, New, Black, $0.5, your remarks & comments
— id 46212, New, Black, $5.0, your remarks & comments
After:
— id 2454, New, Black, $0.5, your remark & comments
— id 2454, New, Black, $5.0, your remark & comments
(I didn’t check the PG. It’s only an example in which I’m imagining/guessing
the 46212 in Black would be more expensive because it’s older.)
You only need to add “notes” (either in remark or comments) if you want to easily
know which was which.
So you would add “genuine older version without inner supports!” to the comments
for 46212.
|
 |
|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  | | Author: | StarBrick  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 11:05 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 41 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| And can this be facilitated by BL with some script instead of manually going
over all the entries....?
|
|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | Author: | SylvainLS  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 11:13 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 50 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| In Catalog, StarBrick writes:
| | And can this be facilitated by BL with some script instead of manually going
over all the entries....?
|
Well, they could make a script to change ALL the comments (or remarks or both)
to add the text… but it would need a big one-use-only process to make it optional.
Also, what if the field is already full?
And the “easiest” way I see to make it optional would be to have it working only
on a store and to only use it when the store explicitly asks for it. So that
needs someone dedicated to that for some time.
|
|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | Author: | StarBrick  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 11:41 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 40 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| I get that, and I am definitly NOT a coder/programmer....
I was more thinking of a specific webpage attached to your inventory where at
the back the 4000+ lines of items that will be affected are used to filter ones
inventory.
So that would make a subset (out of your complete inv) and there it can be manually
edited.
Or even better:
- add the 'optional text to be added to the lot' to that page in the
script
- add a yes/no button to it
- sellers can click each filtered lots to their liking.
That would be some nice feature and customer service !
|
|
|  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  | | Author: | Leftoverbricks  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 12:01 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 42 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| I very much agree with all your critical and, in my opinion, justified comments
about this change. Moreover, you are one of the active inventory contributors,
so your comments have a lot of weight for me.
I can only hope that everything goes well, but I honestly don't have much
confidence in it, given the often poor communication by BL in the past. This
is further aggravated by the well-known spaghetti code, which means BL cannot
achieve much when it comes to automation.
Meanwhile it's a definite thing so we can only keep our fingers crossed.
Personally, I cannot escape the impression that now that TLG is the owner of
Bricklink, this has been pushed through.
Martin
In Catalog, jennnifer writes:
| | Hello,
Regardless of my thoughts toward losing some valuable variants in our Catalog,
I have now read the message twice, and read most of the main Forum thread, and
I still have no idea how technically this is going to work.
You are going to take two active catalog items, 3747b and 3747a for example,
choose a main Image, choose one Image for each of the color thumbnails, choose
1 Price Guide (or does this merge also), and add a new Note explaining the 2
different versions. Is an experienced Catalog Expert going to do this or someone
else? Will the deleted info be archived in case of errors?
Then, you are going to merge the two items in the Catalog.
Seller shop inventory
Seller's shop items will be merged unless they paste a specific string of
text on the entry ahead of time. If not, they will not get to choose which price
is used or any of the other lot data. They will not be given a log of exactly
what was merged or changed.
It's not as if sellers are already prone to blaming BrickLink for errors
in their inventory. Now BrickLink will be actively changing their store listings.
We have no way of testing if this going to work and no way of flagging or logging
errors created.
Set Inventories
All Set Inventories that have these items will change to just one item. Any sets
that have the parts listed as Alternates will ?? Any Match ID's affected
will ?? Links to Change Requests discussing these items will ??
Everything else
All Wanted Lists that have these items listed will have the parts merged? What
if they are in separate projects? Isn't there an issue with Wanted Lists
already that involves problems with duplicate items?
All external links to one (or both) of the item variants will break or ??
All the people who write related software will have to adjust, rewrite, debug,
and ??
To sum up:
There is a reason it took so long to Mark Items for Deletion and then actually
delete them. It's to avoid all this trouble and uncertainty.
What happens 3 months from now when a seller who's been away reopens his
shop and doesn't understand what happened? You simply cannot count on every
single member receiving, reading, and understanding the email message sent out.
Will they receive any Action Items within BrickLink to understand the changes?
I wonder how much Catalog Credit will just vanish on Feb 15th. Credit for images,
items, inventories, ... all gone.
Thanks,
~Jen
|
|
 |
|
|  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  | | Author: | Give.Me.A.Brick  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 12:10 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 37 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| Russell said a few times already that lots will not be merged in stores:
| | When catalog entries are merged, they do not combine lots in stores or wanted
lists. So separate lots will be retained with whichever note is attached. Only
the Item Name and Item Number of the item will change.
|
https://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1447429
|
|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  | | Author: | jennnifer  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 12:26 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 42 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| In Catalog, Give.Me.A.Brick writes:
| | Russell said a few times already that lots will not be merged in stores:
| | When catalog entries are merged, they do not combine lots in stores or wanted
lists. So separate lots will be retained with whichever note is attached. Only
the Item Name and Item Number of the item will change.
|
https://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1447429
|
Wow. Got it. So, the 'notes' we are adding is just a suggestion for ourselves
to be using to follow up on all the changes? That was as clear as mud in my opinion.
But, at least, that's one less thing to worry about!
~Jen
|
|
|  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  | | Author: | jennnifer  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 12:41 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 37 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| Reposting for clarity and questions answered:
Hello,
Regardless of my thoughts toward losing some valuable variants in our Catalog,
I have now read the message twice, and read most of the main Forum thread, and
I still have no idea how technically this is going to work.
You are going to take two active catalog items, 3747b and 3747a for example,
choose a main Image, choose one Image for each of the color thumbnails, choose
1 Price Guide (or does this merge also), and add a new Note explaining the 2
different versions. Is an experienced Catalog Expert going to do this or someone
else? Will the deleted info be archived in case of errors?
Then, you are going to merge the two items in the Catalog.
Seller shop inventory
Sellers get to go through their inventory after all this and clean up their resulting
duplicate lots. They should add 'notes' everywhere now to get ahead of
the issue. Any items that are in active orders when the change occurs... well,
be sure to make 'notes' on those so your buyer gets what they ordered.
Set Inventories
All Set Inventories that have these items will change to just one item. Any sets
that have the parts listed as Alternates will ?? Any Match ID's affected
will ?? Links to Change Requests discussing these items will ??
Everything else
All Wanted Lists that have these items listed will have the parts merged? What
if they are in separate projects? Isn't there an issue with Wanted Lists
already that involves problems with duplicate items?
All external links to one (or both) of the item variants will break or ??
All the people who write related software will have to adjust, rewrite, debug,
and ??
To sum up:
There is a reason it took so long to Mark Items for Deletion and then actually
delete them. It's to avoid all this trouble and uncertainty.
What happens 3 months from now when a seller who's been away reopens his
shop and doesn't understand what happened? You simply cannot count on every
single member receiving, reading, and understanding the email message sent out.
Will they receive any Action Items within BrickLink to understand the changes?
I wonder how much Catalog Credit will just vanish on Feb 15th. Credit for images,
items, inventories, ... all gone.
Thanks,
~Jen
|
 |
|
|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  | | Author: | jennnifer  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 12:53 | | Subject: | Re: Variant merge - specific answers needed | | Viewed: | 45 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
|
| New question:
What's to happen to the number sequences of all the decorated parts?
Do I understand correctly that
are all to be one listing? Presumably 3626 something?
Will the 210 Vented Stud heads currently in the catalog be renumbered into the
3626 series? Will there be a Change Log entry to document this change?
~Jen
|
|
|
|
|