The Queries section of the Products-area is where you create and configure product queries to e.g. retrieve All active products or All products with no Spanish translation, etc.
Queries are flexible and can be used for many purposes – you can create as many personal and shared queries as you like to find products you need to look at, but some queries are also used to e.g. retrieve products to include in a dynamic workspace structure.
Queries in PIM are based on repositories – specifically a Product-index – and consist of the same basic components; a source index, some parameters and expressions, etc. We’re not going to go into details about all of these index-related subjects here – but you can read about them in the linked repositories documentation.
Creating a query
To create a query:
- In the Query-section of the tree, use the + or context menu to create a new query
- Specify a name and a source index
- In the New expression slideover:
- Select a field to query on
- Select an operator to use
- Select a type of test value - and provide a value
- Save
You've now created a (basic) query which returns a subset of products matching your expression definition.
The intricacies of queries and expressions are beyond the scope of this article – you can read much more about that subject in the queries documentation – but once you’ve created a set of expressions and saved you should see fewer products returned by the query. In this manner you can create personal and shared queries for a variety of purposes.
Manage Queries
Using the context menu option Manage query you can open the Query overiew screen - it contains an overview of how this query is used on the system:
- The Expressions which control which subset of products is returned
- The Completeness context defined for the query
- Any display and editing settings defined for the query
- Any custom sorting rules applied to the query result
Click Manage on either of these widgets to make changes - as outlined below:
The Completeness-widget opens the General-tab which is used for configuring how the query behaves in list and edit screens.
The follwing settings are available:
- Open product direct in Edit mode - if checked, products open in edit mode rather than on the overview screen
- Use completeness rules to limit results - if checked, completeness rules are treated as expression and products with 100% completeness according to the rules are filtered out of the list of products returned by the query
The Completeness and Completeness languages widgets are used to add a context for completeness calculations. When you add rules & languages, products returned by this query will show a completeness percentage calculated based on your selection. This context is also applied if you use the query elsewhere, e.g. in dynamic workspaces.
