xTupleCommerce Product Guide

While you may be familiar with characteristics from your work with the ERP, item characteristics operate somewhat differently in the context of xTupleCommerce. With xTupleCommerce, all item characteristics associated with published items will be displayed online as additional product information. This additional information will appear in the product details portion of your online product definition.

If an item characteristics has multiple values, these will be displayed on the portal as a matching pair. For example, a multi-functional screwdriver may have interchangeable bits, depending on the screw head. The bits may be Phillips or flat heads or hex heads, etc. In this example, assuming the characteristics and values were defined this way, the online product detail would show "Screwdriver-Phillips," "Screwdriver-flat," and "Screwdriver-hex."

Again, characteristics provide one more method for listing static information about your products on your portal.

Characteristics are also used for the assemble to order items. If the item is configurable, the price associated with the characteristics will be visible and added to the overall cost of the item on the web portal when selected. You can learn more about configurable items for the web portal in Section 2.6, “Assemble to Order”.