Business Central offers the option to work with Item Variants instead of having to create individual items for each variant. Working with Item variants is also supported by Commerce 365 for Magento.
When creating a Magento item from the Business Central item the first thing to do is setting up Magento Item Templates and Magento Item Variant Templates. This will speed up the item creation process a lot and will prevent inconsistency in settings. We created a separate article Item Templates to explain how this works.
If the templates have been set up, it is important to decide the type of item you wish to create. When working with item variants this will be a configurable or a grouped item. The item variants will result in simple items. If you are not sure which item type to use please read the article Grouped and Configurable Items.
This article will provide you with all the information to choose the right type and will show you how to create them.
Below you will find a guide on how to create a configurable Magento item based on a Business Central item with item variants.
The Item Variant Card
When a grouped or configurable item has been created, you will notice a section "Variants" on the Magento item card.
This section displays the item variants that are related to the grouped or configurable item with it's basic settings. By clicking the variant code you can navigate to the Magento item variant card. The item variant card contains a lot of similar settings as the Magento item card however it is a little less sophisticated.
As shown in the image above item variants are almost always set up to be a simple item and not visible individually. The grouped or configurable item is set up to be Visible as Catalog And Search since this is the product displayed on the product page. When set up like this, the item variants will be displayed as in the outlined section and are able to be ordered simultaneously.
