Upgrade 0.9.2 to 1.0.0

The 1.0.0 BrandsSync release is a major update to the plugin. It includes several new and most awaited features. Below you will find the list of major changes in 1.0.0 release, steps to upgrade to the new version and procedures to migrate your grouped products to configurable (if you choose to do so). As for any previous release, we highly suggest to install it on your staging server before upgrading it on the live website and to backup database and files before starting the upgrade.

New Features

• Support for configurable products: Products can now be imported as configurable (in addition to grouped) and the ones without size (e.g. bags, wallets, etc) will be imported as simple.
• Background product import: Importing products may be a long task, so the 1.0.0 release process products to be imported using Magento cron procedures instead of asking the user to wait for the import to be completed, allowing you to save a lot of time.
• Added a new status page to check that your configuration is fine. It checks for API permissions, scheduled tasks execution, product import queue, attribute settings and webserver/php configurations.
• Added support for new attributes available in supplier data like gender and color, which can be used to improve the search filter experience.
• Allow to filter only for products that are not already imported.
• Compatible with Magento Security Patch SUPEE-6788 (and Magento 1.9.2.2)

Upgrade Notes

When upgrading from 0.9.2 to 1.0.0, the Magento setup will ensure that all needed database changes are performed automatically. Some customers may need to manually remove an attribute identified by the code "category", which was created in early alpha release of the plugin and kept till 0.9.2. In the new status page you will see a warning asking you to remove this attribute. To do so you just need to navigate to Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage attributes, look for an attribute called category and delete it. This change also solves some rare issues encountered with themes in which the product page could return a blank page.

Migration from Grouped products to Configurable products.

The extension is designed to allow you to seamlessly change between grouped and configurable products at any time. Like the new product import procedure, this task is also executed in background so you don't have to worry about timeout issues.

Starting the conversion of your existing products is easy, you just need to change the setting in the configuration page. Important It is also required to select a suitable attribute in the "Size attribute" configuration to be used for the genration of configurable products. As soon as you change the setting, the extension will start the migration procedure, which may take up to 12 hours depending on the number of products you have previously imported. Changing the setting from grouped to configurable will override any change you manually made to the products, including prices, and markup will be set according to the extension configuration.

You will be able to check the conversion progress through the status page. There you will see the current number of product.

At last, you should note that the migration will be completed only for in stock products. All out of stock products will be eventually converted when they become available again.

New attributes

Alongside with the new configurable option and the background product import, we also added the support for two new attributes: Gender and Color. To use these new attributes, you will need to create suitable attributes in Magento and choose them in the configuration. These attributes need to have scope Global, type Dropdown and need to be included in the Default Attribute Set in order to be able to select them in the configuration.

After you completed the configuration, all newly imported products will have those attributes set. To fill those attributes for existing products, you will need to perform the import again for those products (this will also happen during the migration from configurable to grouped).