Publishing Stages & Versioning

nochannel commerce pim offers a structured workflow for creating, reviewing, and publishing product information this ensures data accuracy and control throughout the process save as draft this stage allows you to create and edit attributes, attribute groups, product templates and swatches as drafts anything saved as a draft will not be visible on your storefront this provides flexibility to refine product details before making them public ready (products & variants) once your products and variants are finalized within a template, you can mark them as 'ready' this stage signifies that the draft is ready for internal review catalog managers use this phase to review the information effectively, facilitating a smooth transition to publication on consumer facing platforms the ready stage is exclusive to products and variants, as only they can have a direct impact on your storefront publish this final step makes your created product information (templates, products, variants, attributes, and swatches) officially available on the nochannel commerce portal any changes made before publishing will be immediately reflected on your storefront this makes your template accessible and visible on the platform to users our pim also provides the flexibility to directly publish your product or attribute on the portal, even if it's not marked as 'ready' the save as draft and publish stage applies to all assets, including attributes, attribute groups, product templates, and swatches versioning nochannel commerce pim employs a robust version control system to track changes made to product attributes here's an overview of how versioning operates within a pim environment initial versioning when you create a new attribute, attribute group, product, and variant it receives an initial version number (e g , version 1) this version represents the first iteration of the system draft state modifications edits to various data entities within the pim system, including attributes, attribute groups, product templates, and swatches, go through versioning draft modifications editing a draft entity (attribute, attribute group, product template, or swatch) increments its version number (e g , version 1 to version 2) this creates a clear history for each entity, allowing you to track modifications over time publishing and versioning outcomes publishing a draft entity may result in a new version depending on the nature of the changes major version changes a new major version (i e version 2 or version 3) is created for significant changes that alter the entity's functionality (e g , changing data type for an attribute) this may also involve generating related drafts for product templates or groups to ensure these changes are reflected throughout the system sub versions (attributes only) minor cosmetic updates to a published attribute (e g , name change) result in a sub version (e g , version 1 1) instead of a complete version jump this differentiation applies specifically to attributes, as updates to other entity types typically warrant a full version increment upon publishing publishing and live environment when a draft attribute is published with an updated version (e g , version 3), it becomes a new entry in the live environment the previous attribute with version 2 remains alongside the newly published attribute this preserves historical versions in the live environment for reference and continuity continuing versioning in draft further edits to a published attribute's draft version (e g , version 3) create a new draft version with an incremented number this continuous versioning process allows for clear tracking of all attribute modifications within the pim system ensuring data consistency if you attempt to change an attribute's data type (e g , string to numeric), the system will prompt you to create a new attribute with the desired data type instead this ensures data integrity and adherence to your established product information structure