Items will group online when certain fields within the item are the same.
 
1. For Pet stores, grouping uses External Name and External Extended Name (if present)*.

2. For Department stores, grouping is done using Internal Name*.

3. For Entertainment stores, grouping uses Internal Name, Internal Name Extended and Extended Category aggregate name.
(+extended category name e.g "CD")
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In order for items to group, the above noted fields must be the same.

*In order for items to pivot within the same page they must all have the same pivotable Attribute Types with differing Attribute Values.

Example of a department store product:

Multiple items have the same Internal Name but differing extended name & descriptions:

• Keen Ladies Targhee II Mid Hiker/ Goat/Crown Blue
• Keen Ladies Targhee II Mid Hiker/ Steel Gray/Hydrangea

The items could have several listings for each that differ by pivotable attribute types and attribute values (pivotable attribute types are toggles that customers would select such as size, style, or color):

• Keen Ladies Targhee II Mid Hiker/10/Goat/Crown Blue
• Keen Ladies Targhee II Mid Hiker/10.5/Goat/Crown Blue
• Keen Ladies Targhee II Mid Hiker/11/Goat/Crown Blue etc.
• Keen Ladies Targhee II Mid Hiker/10/Steel Gray/Hydrangea
• Keen Ladies Targhee II Mid Hiker/10.5/ Steel Gray/Hydrangea
• Keen Ladies Targhee II Mid Hiker/11/ Steel Gray/Hydrangea etc.

If a customer searched for “Keen Targhee”, the search results tile would show the image for the most readily available item, with a More Options button below the item and From: $... if prices may vary across the item variants. It will show In Stock if any of the variants are in stock.

Clicking into More Options would show the item that was seen on the search page, with toggles for both color and size.

If the items have the same name, and same Attributes Types, but do not have the same Attribute Values.
Items with missing attributes will not show on the grouped item page.

How to group existing items

1. Look your items up in item list search using keywords, item name, attribute, or manufacturer name.
2. Double-click into each item you want to group.
3. Go to the attributes tab and ensure that your Pivotable attributes are in place on each item. For example: if the items should be selected by size, all the items should have the size attribute. If the items you are grouping do not all have the pivotable attribute types, customers will not be able to select all variants from one screen.
   
   Example: The item below has a Size and Flavor. If all items with the same name also have those pivotable attribute types, a cusotmer will be able to select between them from a single item page.
   
   
   
4. Multi-Select the items you want to group.
5. Right click and select Edit ## Items
   
   
   
6. This will bring up the bulk item editor
7. To group the items, you will need to make sure the necessary fields are the same on all the items. In this pet product we will make all Name External fields the same. They might initially have differing details in the text fields:
   
   
   
8. Highlight and remove the text that makes the item names different
9. To retain that detail on the item, CTRL X the text string that you are removing and paste it into the Extended Description External column (if you want that information to remain on the product as a text string and show online. If not needed online becuase the attributes display the information, this text can be deleted.)
    
   
   
10. Do this until all of your items follow the same naming convention and have names that are clear to online customers
    
    
    
11. In the lower right, check Update (##) and click Add to Database to save the cahnges.
    
    
    
12. In the item edit screen, the result is that the name is now split between two External Labels fields.
    
    
    
13. Go to the website admin page and flush Products and Attributes to immediately apply the grouping.

Results

Online, the items you changed will appear like this:

The name “Tucker’s Frozen Raw Cat Food” is the grouped item Name.

The Extended Description (below the item name) changes  as a customer toggles through the products.

The picture changes as the customer toggles through the products.

The various flavors become pivots that can be selected.

In the example above, if there were varied Sizes, those would be pivots as well and would affect the availability of Flavor options.

The price and item availability will change as toggles are selected if those differ.