Product lines provide another higher level of hierarchy for products. Product lines group products from multiple families, and are used for very complex products that have many features.
For example, a PBX system may have hundreds of features that can be turned on and off. Each of these features would be an individual product within the product line.
Or an office suite may be made up of multiple products (word processor, spreadsheet, email, presentation, and database). While each individual product may belong to a different product family, they all belong to the same product line.
You manage product lines from the Product Line Maintenance page. To display the page:
To add a product line, on the List Product Lines page, click Add a product line.
To edit a product line, click the Edit link for the product line you want to edit.
On the Product Line Maintenance page, specify the product line information as follows:
| Code | In the Code field, type a code to represent the product line.
Once you save the product line, you cannot change the code. |
| Name | In the Name field, type the name of the product line. |
| Active | To make the product line available for use, check the Active check box.
If this box is not checked, the product line is not available to be selected for products. |
| Activate as whole | If all of the products in a product line must be activated together, and users cannot specify quantities, check the Activate as whole check box. |
| Migration from | If this product line causes the products in another product line to be disabled, then from the Migration from dropdown, select the product line that is replaced. |
| On activation, must have at least one | If at least one product from this product family must be installed before this product line can be activated, then from the On activation, must have at least one dropdown, select the required product family. |
| Return authorization products | When an activated item is returned, if the product requires authorization for returns, the end customer must have an entitlement for a return authorization product. For each return, the entitlement quantity is decremented by 1.
In the Return authorization products field, specify the products that can be used for the authorization entitlement for products that belong to this product line. You can either type a comma-separated list of product numbers, or click the find icon to search for and select the products. |
| Activation Serial Number use | Use the Activation Serial Number use dropdown to control how the product line is passed through the key generator plugin to retrieve and send an Activation Serial Number (ASN) to Poetic during the activation process. The options are:
Disabled - This product line will not be passed to the activation plugin classes and an ASN will not be sent to Poetic for this product line. Enabled - This product line will be passed to the activation plugin classes along with associated ASNs. Poetic allows the plugin class to send an ASN for the product line. Strict - This product line will be passed to the activation plugin classes along with associated ASNs. If the plugin class does not return an ASN for this product line, the activation process fails and a message displays. |
| Show Activation Serial Numbers in these locations | Check the check boxes to show where you want the ASNs for this product line to display. |
When you have completed the updates, click Save.
The Transactions tab contains a list of changes that occurred to the product line.
| Date | The date and time of the transaction. |
| Action | The type of action that occurred during the transaction. |
| Data Type | The type of data that was affected by the transaction. |
| Original Value | The value before the change occurred. |
| Current Value | The current value after the change occurred. | Original Value | The value before the change occurred. | Updated by | The type of user who made the changes. |