GC.MDM
Have you ever made pizza because the urge came to you late at night?
You turn on the oven so it's already heating up. You take out the mushrooms and bacon, you defrost the corn you put aside the previous time and suddenly you notice that there is no cheese and the yeast is spoiled... And the whole plan for pizza is ruined.
The same is with product management... It is not enough to simply come up with an idea that you will trade in parts or paintings... At the beginning you need to collect your thoughts, see what you have prepared and think how to put these blocks together to make a "tasty pizza".
Let's say you open a gallery offering posters, decoupage and antiques. You want to sell these different groups in your store and you want to manage them from one place.
How do you go about it?
At the very beginning, in MDM you have to choose workspace defined for you so that you can see the groups, articles or criteria that are subordinate to your user. For the mentioned gallery, the OLD24 workspace has been selected, so this workspace is selected by clicking Program/Workspace/OLD24.
DEFINING ARTICLE GROUPS
In order for you to create new articles, you need to define what criteria or article properties are to be set for specific groups attached to your workspace.
Let's start by defining the groups that you will create. Go to Dictionaries/Article groups to define our posters/decoupage items and antiques.
An empty list of groups appears, because nothing has been defined here yet. So add the first group by clicking on "Add". A window appears, as in the picture below, where you can define the most important group parameters.
We'll start by defining a group: "Posters".
Will the group "posters" contain other groups within it? Choose "yes" or "no". You can approach the topic in several ways. For example, you can define it in such a way that posters have subgroups: Movie, Theatre, Music, etc. In such a case these are subgroups in the main group "posters" and the user then enters the store in the group "posters" as a rule, and then has the choice to further narrow the groups and only after such a narrowing to, for example, the subgroup "movie" will some movie posters appear to him. In the present case, a different option was chosen. It was assumed that the group "posters" will not have subgroups that need to be selected to see specific results. It was assumed that upon entering posters, the user was to immediately see some spectrum of results, and if they wanted to focus on movie posters, they would have that filter to choose from. Movie posters will simply be posters that will have the "movie" criterion defined, but it will not be a separate group. It will simply be one of the criteria, definable features.
It includes the article: Yes or No. Our posters group will contain multiple articles, so we set it to "Yes".
Is this a universal group, so should all criteria and features be exactly the same as all other groups, but will it be a group with criteria and features specific to itself? I choose "No" because posters have a lot of criteria that will not be found in other groups.
The remaining parameter is to set the status of the group ("Active" if the group is to be visible in the store, "Hidden" if the group is not to be visible in the store permanently, "Inactive" if the group is temporarily not to be visible)
And the last parameter is setting the data source.
Finally, our first group settings look like this:
After defining the other groups, we already have three groups in the gallery ready to define how the data in each group will be presented. We have the groups: "Posters", "Unique breadboards and acessories" and "Vintage rarities".
What happens if we now immediately start adding more posters?
The system knows that there is such a group as posters and they will be attached into the posters group. But at this stage we will only be able to add universal information such as a description, photo or movie files or PDF instructions. But how to add information such as size, condition, year of printing of the poster etc.?
In order to be able to completely fill in the data of specific articles you first need to define criteria for the group.
DEFINING CRITERIA
Criteria are defined in the Dictionaries tab. You can choose between global criteria (i.e. criteria that will appear in every group connected to your data area) and criteria for article groups, i.e. criteria that will only appear in the given group.
Why should I create global criteria? Because you create them once and you have everything translated and set independently of the group. If you decide to use criteria for article groups, you will have to define translations for other languages or different values for each group separately.
For example, I know that both „posters” and „vintage rarities” will need a "period" criterion indicating the decade when the article was created. So should this be a global criterion or a criterion for a particular group. In my case, for posters I define decades up to 1980 and then simply write "After 1980" because that is when the time of interesting posters ended. On the other hand, in „Vintage rarities” the important period will also be the 1990s and only the last value will be "After 2000". Therefore, you can see that rethinking this issue makes me have to create two separate criteria: "Creation" as a criterion with different values for posters, and "Creation" as another criterion with different values for vintage rarities. They will have some of the values similar, but I have to define them separately.
Finally, my number of criteria for the Posters group is quite numerous, as it contains a dozen different criteria. Some contain character data type, some contain translated character data type, some allow to select from a list, some are closed, some have such a multi-value field. What is the point of all this?
I will explain with examples:
If you select the "New" button in the criteria for groups, a window will appear where you can define a new criterion and select very important parameters for it. When to choose Yes and when not to choose?
My first criterion will be "subject". I considered whether this criterion should not be a separate subgroup in posters at all, but as I wrote in the introduction, I decided that it would suffice and even be better if the user, wanting to see movie posters alone, simply selects such a filter, and I do not want to force every user to have to click Posters, then movie posters and only then see the movie posters they are looking for.
As you can see in the previous images, the topics criterion will contain a closed list of poster topics: Movie, Theatre, Sports, etc. I don't want to have a messy database, so I prefer to think about what poster topics will be available and then define them all. Of course, if after a year of running the program it turns out that a new poster topic needs to be defined, then it will be possible to add such a new value in the „Subject” criterion. Such defined is done by setting the value to "List:Yes" and then define all possible values to choose from. In my case the list is: Movie, Theatre, Sports, etc. If the list has to be closed and there is no possibility to add values manually, then "Closed:Yes" must also be selected. In the case of the subject of the posters, this is reasonable; in the case of the criterion of the country of film production, you should select "Closed:No" because the list of countries will grow gradually. In this case, you enter a new country and confirm it, and this country, apart from being included in the criterion for the given article, is added to the list of criterion values and you can select it from the list again.
Moreover, I will take care of data cleanliness and the criterion "subject" will be obligatory so that every poster has this field filled in and "Movie" is written everywhere, not, for example, 500x "Movie" and 100x "Movies". With this consideration, there will be order in the database and the user will be able to find the articles they are looking for at all. The setting "Required:Yes" makes sure that I always define this criterion. If I want to save the values for a given article, and the required criteria are not filled in, the program will remind me about it.
Moreover, it is possible that a given poster will be both a movie poster and a propaganda poster, so I will allow "Multivalue:Yes", that is, I will allow the „Subject” criterion to allow more than 1 value to be defined for a given article.
One of the most important features is to define the data type: Character, character translated, or maybe numerical?
For the "year of printing" criterion, I choose "Numerical" so that texts cannot be entered there, because the year is always supposed to be there. But what is the difference in value between the two criteria "Director" (character), and "Topics" (character translated). I don't intend to translate directors' names into different languages, so I chose the "character" option. "Andrzej Wajda" in any language will look like "Andrzej Wajda". But the criterion "subject matter" will already be "character-translated", because the value "Movie" in Polish will be called "Filmowe", not "Movie". This is an important point and you should already think about it at this stage, because changing the data type to something else can be difficult later.
Take a look at the final completed criteria description for one poster below, and you'll better see why the above settings are so important.
How do I know that a given criterion value is not already translated into another language?
Below you can see that the some new values manually entered in the „Movie country” field have not yet been translated into English. The value "Dania" is marked "(PL)" in brackets, which means that the value is only available in Polish.
Clicking on the Edit button opens the field shown below where you can enter a new value appropriate for the given language („Denmark” in this case).
ADDING A NEW ARTICLE
1. Before you add a new article, make sure you have selected the appropriate group in which the article should be placed. The article will inherit the criteria assigned to the selected group.
To add an article, press the "Add" button. This will prompt you to define a unique article number, select a manufacturer, and assign a name to the article.
Let's assume that we have filled in all the desired values and click OK.
We already have a poster created from scratch with its own name: "Beverly Hills Cop 2" („Gliniarz z Beverly Hills 2”), as shown in the image below. The index has been created, but there is no description, no criteria, and no images or videos attached. So it's time to fill in the data.
First, let's see how to fill in the data manually from the very beginning. You can see in the Information tab that the index has been correctly plugged into the appropriate "Posters" category.
Now it is time to prepare a description. This is a good moment to emphasize an important idea about working with GC.MDM program. As you can see in the picture below, the program consists of 2 areas: 1. the upper area, where we can see what index we have selected and 2. the lower area, where we fill in information about the selected index. You can see on the picture that we have selected (highlighted in blue) the poster "Beverly Hills Cop 2" and at the bottom we have tabs corresponding to pieces of information assigned to this index.
So select the Description tab and press the "Edit"
A window appears where you can define a description for the selected poster. We have a selected language in which we define the description, short dictionary description (that is, for example, a technical description that can be defined and then easily pasted into the given index in this place), own short description (that is, a description typical for the given index). And the same thing concerns the long (supplementary) description. In my case I've adopted the rule that the short description will simply serve as a place where I will store tags related to the given index, and since I have a lot of criteria, I don't really need the short description, because those features will be included in the criteria, and the description supplementing the selected criteria will always be in the long own description.
For example, this is how such a description completed by me may look like:
Can I prepare the description in other languages at once?
Yes, on the right side of the Description window there is a small arrow. Clicking it will cause the window to split in half and on one side you will have an area in one language and on the other side the same fields will appear to be filled in in another language. This way of translating descriptions makes it easier to edit and copy material from one language into, for example, an online translation program and then paste the translated information straight into the appropriate field in the translated language. Below is an example of a description completed in two languages.
Moving to the Files tab will allow us to add photos/images/videos/PDF documents or website links (for example links to Youtube clips) that will be associated with our poster:
Click Add and the window helping adding attachments will appear. First, define what kind of attachment you want to add. This can be a photo, a non-public photo (not to be shown on the site), a video, or an instruction. Next, select the file or files you want to attach. If necessary, specify the countries and languages for the files or the status of the files and click OK.
As the first photo from the top is shown as a thumbnail of an article, You can change the order of the photos using the blue arrows to get the desired order.
The selected files will be added and appear attached to the index, as shown in the image above.
To add a Youtube video select "Strona www" (www website) type and write the name of the website in such format: youtu.be/URL_link, eg. youtu.be/dXK0NLiiE70
It's time to fill in more tabs, and this is a good time to point out why you may have a different number of tabs than I do.
The type of tabs a user sees is defined in: Administration (top right corner next to language selection) / Employee / Edit. Here you can mark which tabs should be hidden. I have it defined like this.
When it comes to filling in the tabs, see how to fill in the criteria.
Those fields with a yellow background are mandatory criteria, so if you click Save and a yellow field is not filled in, the program will remind you which field has not been filled in yet. Of course you can save the information without filling in this mandatory field, but you will be aware that this field has not been filled in.
As you can see in the image below, some criteria defined as multi-value can have more values (Starring). There are also criteria where you can only select values from a closed list (Author), and there are also fields where you can enter values manually (Title). There are also fields where the program will only accept numbers (Date of poster).
COPYING AN ARTICLE
I often need to create a poster that has most of the descriptions and criteria the same as another poster already created and differs only in price and condition or some criterion.
How do I create such a copied article?
Find the index you want to copy and press the right mouse button and select Copy.
A window will appear where you can name your new index in the traditional way and specify what parameters of the selected index you want to copy.
In my case, I'm copying the description and criteria because they relate to the same movie, which just happened to have two different posters, so all the criteria and product data are the same.
After OK approval, a new index will be created with the criteria and description copied as agreed, where you can make only the necessary corrections, instead of filling in all the data from scratch.
NOTES:
1) If any window is too large or too small for you, remember that you can resize it by grabbing its edges. The program will remember this change and the next time you run it again the window will be the size you changed it to.
2) Filtering: Above the index window you have the possibility of filtering the results. Remember, that for technical reasons, filtering by name is done normally, so typing "kla" in there will result in all indexes that have the string "kla" anywhere in their names.
On the other hand, the search mechanism in the Number column requires more precision. Just typing "Rum" won't give any results, because the mechanism will search for the exact closed phrase and won't show indexes that start with "rum" but go on to contain further characters. So to find a "number" in this column that contains the phrase "rum" and something further occurring after those character strings, add a "%" sign to the phrase "rum".
3. Searching for multiple items at the same time: If you want to filter several items at once, you can use excel database. If you don't have one, export it to excel, then copy from it some items of interest in column A, using CTRL+C keyboard shortcut.
Then paste in the Number field using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+E and confirm with ENTER.
IMPORTING CRITERIA VALUES
Whether you have a catalog and sell posters, laptops or perhaps car parts, there comes a time when you need to update or enrich your product information database and import criteria values, such as the year of film production for movie posters, the supported operating system for tablets or the tyre width for tyre trading.
Instead of doing this manually product by product, you probably prefer to prepare your base file and import your data in bulk.
Let's say you sell car tyres and need to import criteria into your tyre database: "Rim size" and "Tyre width", because you've noticed that your users want to search for tyres from you in this way, and such criteria will allow them to narrow down their search results.
You have such criteria defined in your database and just want to import specific values.
So you copy the data file to the location from which you are importing the data (for example, some directory on a remote desktop), go to GC.MDM and select EXCHANGE/Import Criteria fro Article Groups
NOTE: For different product categories, the same criteria may take different values. Therefore, at this stage it is necessary to click the "Articles" button and specify the category for which we are importing criteria values. In our case, this will be the Tire Wheels/Tire category. After selecting the appropriate category (we don't have to choose the lowest level of the category - for example, Tires can still have subcategories Passenger/Cargo/etc.), we click the green "Select" button.
Then, from the window shown below, you click on the three dots and select the data file. Then you click "Import."
In any good case, such an action will end with the message "Operation completed – Imported X values (0 errors)".
NOTE: It's important that there are no errors, because in order for the update of a particular product to occur, the changed/added values must be correct. If one of the criterion values specified for a product is not correct, and the other imported criterion values are correct, then only the incorrect value will not be assigned to that product, and the others will be updated.
In our case, a message like this appears:
"Operation completed - Imported 1 values (1 errors)".
What happened?
If we have a lot of errors, we can copy the entire content of the messages via the CTRL+C shortcut, and then paste the messages into a text editor and analyze them.
In our case, in the detailed messages we have the message:
Value outside closed list: "Tyre width "200" .
What does this mean?
It means that our criterion "Tyre width” has been defined as a criterion for which the values are not entered arbitrarily, but are selected from a list (they are repeatable), and besides, it is specified that the size of the value is closed. Therefore, you can choose from only predefined values.
For example, with posters we had movie/tourist values, but if you tried to import the value "humorous", an error would occur, because such a value does not exist in the defined list of allowed values.
In the same way, in our case, it is possible that a mistake was made in the prepared file and such a value is wrong, so the file should be corrected (it happens, and it is good that the system keeps an eye on this). The second possibility is that the imported value is correct, but at the stage of preparing the criteria values, such a value was not foreseen.
Let's assume that the prepared value is correct and the value should be added to the closed list.
In this case, open "Criteria for article groups" and add the missing value by pressing the Add button.
NOTICE:
1. If you want to remove the criterion value, that is, for example, you had "15" in the database, and you want the value not to be displayed at all, then import this value as "<NULL>"