Create and duplicate Shopware products: fast, complete, visible

Create and duplicate Shopware products without producing orphaned records: when creating, the PIM only asks for name, product number and visibility and then opens the detail page directly. When duplicating a variant product you decide which fields the new variants inherit. And you can look at a product that is still inactive in the shop beforehand.

Creating products in standard Shopware

A new product in the Shopware admin starts with a large, empty form. Two things are easily overlooked: without visibility in a sales channel the product does not appear in the shop, and a product that has not been activated yet cannot be viewed in the storefront. Anyone preparing new products therefore often works blind until go-live. When copying a variant product another question comes up: which values should the variants of the copy carry themselves, and which should they take over from the new main product?

Create and duplicate Shopware products with the PIM

Guided creation

"Add product" in the PIM product list opens a compact window with three entries. The name is required. The PIM suggests the product number from Shopware's number range; you can overwrite it, and if it stays unchanged it is reserved bindingly on creation. Under visibility all sales channels are preselected, and you deselect the ones you do not need. In the background the PIM sets a price of 0, the standard tax rate, a stock of 0 and the status inactive. With "Create & open" the product is created, the change log records "product created", and the detail page opens for price, categories, texts and images.

Who may create products is controlled in two places: the Shopware role "Create" (staw_pim.creator) and the feature switch "Create products" in the "PIM Super Admin" tab of the config matrix.

Duplicate

You start duplicating in the context menu of the product list or in the detail view. The copy is inactive at first and carries the suffix "(Kopie)" in its name. Taken over are, among others, price, purchase prices, manufacturer, delivery time, description, meta title and meta description, dimensions, order quantities, custom fields, categories, tags, properties, visibilities and images including the cover image. Tier prices are copied for the main product and every variant.

• From the product list the PIM assigns the next free number from the Shopware number range (fallback: suffix -Copy) and creates its own SEO URL for the copy and its variants following the channel template.
• From the detail view it appends -Copy to the product number and opens the copy directly.

Inheritance dialog for variant products

If the product has variants, a dialog asks beforehand which fields the new variants should inherit from the main product: images, name, price, weight and EAN. Images, name and price are preselected. Inherited fields follow later changes to the main product automatically, non-inherited ones are copied as an own value. Stock and product number remain per variant for technical reasons. When duplicating from the product list, the variants of the copy are created inactive and receive numbers following the pattern <new number>.<sequence number>.

Preview of inactive products

In the detail view "Preview" opens the product in the shop, with a choice of sales channel if there are several. If the product is inactive, the button carries a marker. If you have enabled "Allow preview for inactive products" in the config matrix in the "Products" tab (default: off), the PIM activates the product temporarily after a confirmation. If there is no visibility, it sets "Direct link only". It reverts both automatically after 15, 30, 60 or 120 seconds, 30 being the default.

Release date

You maintain the release date (releaseDate in Shopware) in the detail view in the "Availability" section and per variant in the variant window, where an empty field inherits from the main product. In bulk edit you set it for many products at once, and the CSV has its own column for it.

Step by step: create a new product and check it before go-live

1. Create: click "Add product" in the product list, enter the name and accept the suggested product number.
2. Choose channels: keep only the sales channels in which the product should appear and click "Create & open".
3. Maintain: add price, categories, description, images and, if needed, the release date on the detail page.
4. View: open "Preview". With preview allowed, the inactive product becomes visible for the set duration.
5. Go live: activate the product once everything is right, or submit it for review in the approval workflow.

Use cases

• New colour of a bestseller: duplicate the variant product from the product list, let price and images be inherited, adjust only name and options.
• Seasonal product: copy last year's product; the copy stays inactive until the new season's texts and prices are in place.
• Sign-off by colleagues: show an inactive product via preview without activating it permanently. For a structured review there is the Shopware product approval workflow.
• Pre-order: set the release date for a whole collection via bulk edit.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• PIM for Shopware manual - creating, duplicating and preview at a glance
• Generate Shopware variants - variants for the new product
• Shopware product approval workflow - review first, then go live
• Shopware user permissions for product data - who may create and duplicate
• Generate Shopware SEO URLs - addresses from patterns

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