I have used Personalization for over 200 custom products. It is horrible. One cannot correct a spelling error or make the simplest change without going into each and every product. No, you cannot use the spreadsheet even to wipe out the current template and apply another in bulk. It is a nice tempting tool, but beware it is a trap and will frustrate the snot out of you when you have to make a change. AVOID it for now! I have sent them at least 6 e-mails about this and spoke to another handful of phone reps and sadly, nothing. This latest release did nothing for it. Very sad indeed. Any comment from anybody else who used it and had to make changes?

I use variation quite a bit (I sell bandsaw blades by the inch) instead of personalization. Once you get an excel sheet set up correctly changes go by very quickly. I have about 50 different bandsaw blades products, but they have over 100,000 variations, took only about a day. The hardest part was to add pictures. If I have to make any changes like prices, I probably could change them (without using the mass price adjuster tool) about 5 minutes per product. An example can be seen here:

http://www.spectrumsupply.com/woodmasterc.aspx

The hardest part is setting up the excel sheet to your specs. I probably spent a half of a day just to figure out how to do it more efficiently (I even started over again on a price sheet because I found a better way)

Have you tried the personalization template? I use personalization on only one product, and it seems fine for me.

"Variation" and "Personalization" are useful, but they don't interchange when selling one-off items and that is different than stock saw blades. If anybody has a "one off" item and it can be personalized then personalization is used, otherwise variation allows multiples of the "one off" item to be potentially sold. Example, Customer A buys the item with a variation and the item is technically sold out, but I don't manually adjust inventory, B comes in and buys it too picking a new variation. Using variations causes trouble and Personalization keeps the one item when it is a one-off and as the only inventory item but personalization is crappy for custom one-off sales, even though it was intended for such use.

The way around it is is make a product for the personalization and force the customer to add the one true item to the cart and then a second Personalization type item. Customers find it too complex and what should be easy becomes lost sales through a bad Personalization setup.

If NS allowed the spreadsheet to apply a particular Personalization template the problem would be solved. That way any change to the template could be propogated throughout the products and the old one wiped out. This allows universal treatment and promotes the use of a multiplicity of personalization templates...best wishes on your saw blade sales!

We're selling items that are different only by size or color. What have you found is the best way to build a sizing selection? I'm using personalization, but the way I have it set up you can pick two different sizes but only buy one item. Any ideas?

Hmm,

We use a modified version of personalizations (we need the little picture) and variations. at http://rematlanta.com
You may want to consider making your updates via excel using import/export. It is much faster and cleaner.

I am using both variations and product personalizations. I find the same problem with personization, as soon as you assign the template it breaks from the master. If you make a change to the master it doesn't feed out to all the products it is assigned. I haven't found a good answer or go around for the problem. Love the option but labor intense to manage. I have to use it becuase variation doesn't apply.

[quote name='AnneAshley' date='Sep 21 2009, 01:30 PM' post='24271']
If you make a change to the master it doesn't feed out to all the products it is assigned.
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I am guessing this was designed this way as
In some cases this could go very wrong such as if the was master updated all products and you didn't want it to update certain mass products they would have extra fields whether you wanted them to or not.

Dave