Combining products into variations

Combining products into variations

Combining products into variations automatically turns separate products whose SKUs follow a common pattern into standard CS-Cart variation groups. You can assign different SKU processing rules to variants of the selected brand feature and run grouping manually or on a schedule.

What it is for

When different versions of the same model are stored as separate catalog items, building variation groups one by one takes time. The add-on calculates a common key from the SKUs, finds matching products, and combines them into variations. This reduces manual work and makes regular catalog processing easier.

Key features

• Select an active extended feature to use as the brand feature.
• Assign a separate grouping rule to each variant of the selected feature.
• Use one of four SKU processing modes: do not combine; exclude the last two characters; exclude the part after the last hyphen; or replace the fourth segment with XXX in the 0000.00.0.XXX.000.0 format.
• Start grouping with a button in the add-on settings or run it automatically through cron.
• Create a new variation group or add matching products to an existing group.
• Process only matches containing at least two products and display a result notification.
• Use the standard Product Variations add-on as the grouping mechanism.

How it works

1. Select an active extended brand feature in the add-on settings. To run grouping through cron, also set a security key.
2. Assign a grouping format to the required variants of the selected feature. Variants set to “Do not combine” are excluded from processing.
3. Start grouping with the button in the add-on settings or with the generated cron command.
4. The add-on analyzes product SKUs, calculates a common key according to the selected rule, and combines matches of at least two products into a variation group. If a suitable group already exists, the products are added to it.
5. After processing, CS-Cart displays the result and the number of products combined.