Setup
Before a retailer can use assortments, Merchant Admins need to coordinate the set up of certain settings including schema data, doors, and deliveries. You’ll work with your account team to define these details during your onboarding process.
Changes to these settings can always be made after onboarding as well. To make adjustments to your schema you can again coordinate with your account team. But you’ll have access to revisit your door and delivery settings yourself. These configurations live in Merchant Settings which can be accessed by selecting the hamburger menu in the upper-left corner of the Drive.
Assortment schema data
Your assortment schema will define the data fields (columns) that show up in your Assortment tool, how each one will be populated, and the overall user experience for how buying teams, merchants and brands will interact with your assortment plan.
A typical assortment schema will include:
- Product attributes, including those needed for planning, initial market selection/commit, ordering, and web setup
- Pricing, including adjustments/calculations per item
- Notes
- Internal hierarchy and classifications
- Doors
- Formulas, including markup % and totals
For each field, we will define:
- Data source: Where will the data come from?
- Uploaded by the brand with their catalogs (typically product attributes and pricing)
- Entered manually by the buying/merchant team
- Entered manually by the brand sales team (applies to collaborative "external" assortments only)
- Automatically populated or calculated based on other fields
- Data type, formatting, and constraints:
- Freeform text
- Numbers: units, currencies, percentages, number of decimal points
- Yes/No or boolean
- Dropdowns: Preset lists that apply to all users/assortments in the organization
- Relationship/Lookups: Fields that are dependent on other fields (e.g. Department > Class > Subclass structure)
- Assortment user experience:
- Will the column be visible (checked) or hidden (unchecked) in the default column view?
- Best practice: The default view should include the fields needed in market by the majority of buying/merchant teams, and those which drive critical analysis and buying/planning decisions. Additional views can be created and saved for other uses to include other fields, or to serve other user types such as marketing or web data collection.
- Should the field be visible on the item details module?
- Best practice: Include key attributes and notes that a buyer/planner may need to refer to, or to fill out when adding a placeholder (SMU) for exclusives developed during the appointment. Including the same fields as the default column view is usually a good place to start.
- For dropdowns, should the user be allowed to overwrite the preset list and manually type in their own value?
- Best practice: This is recommended for internal lists that may change frequently, such as Department, Class, or Subclass. It is not recommended for standardized dropdowns like Delivery Month or Yes/No.
- Should users be notified in the "Updates Feed" if the field data changes?
- Best practice: Fields that have serious impact to buying/planning decisions should be included in the feed notifications. For example: Cost, Retail, Color, Size Range, and Availability.
- Will the column be visible (checked) or hidden (unchecked) in the default column view?
What you will need to provide:
- Any data which will need to be populated in a specific way to match your back-office systems. (This can apply to field names as well as the values populated in the fields.) Common examples include:
- Department, Class, Subclass and other hierarchical classifications
- Vendor or manufacturer names and codes
- If any of these fields have a "tree" or "nested" relationship to other fields (e.g. the Department selected impacts the list of possible options for Class), please note those relationships.
- Lists for any other pre-set dropdowns you wish to standardize across the buying/merchant teams. Examples might include:
- Delivery names
- Product Types
- Key trend concepts or marketing tags
- Price bands or price point ranges
- The different types of notes or hashtags needed to capture intent and analyze effectively. General "Notes" columns are useful, but more specific columns will help your buyers and merchants tag and track key strategies. Examples might include:
- Cluster, region, or door notes
- Trend notes
- Styling or marketing notes for photo shoots
- Collection or capsule notes
- Special events (e.g. holiday, Black Friday / Cyber Monday, annual sale, etc).
Doors and door attributes
Merchant Admins can add new doors and attributes through a Merchant Settings page. To access it click the hamburger menu from the drive page, select Merchant Admin, then go to Doors and door attributes.
Note: Only Merchant Admins have access to the Merchant Settings page.
If you want to add doors manually, you can choose Add door, then enter the door Number and the door Name in that row. When you’re done adding a door, select Save New Row. You can add up to 650 total doors within this table.
Note: By default, new doors are active, meaning they can be selected to be included in a new assortment. If you change the door to inactive, the door is no longer available to be included in the assortment but any existing assortments that already have this door included will not be affected.
When your doors are populated into the table, you can select Add door attributes to add new attribute columns, named whatever you’d like, that will define the standard attributes available across all assortments. You can add up to 50 door attribute columns.
For each door, you can assign a value under the attribute. If a door is not relevant for the attribute, you can leave it blank. Doing this allows you to categorize doors, which can be used for grouping within the assortment, filtering, sorting, and more.
Instead of manually adding each door, attribute, and attribute value within the table, you can do so in bulk via an import from Excel. Use the Export option to export the table information to a downloaded spreadsheet. Populate the spreadsheet with all of your doors and attribute information and then upload back into the system. You will see all of your data populate within the table on the screen.
This process can also be used to make bulk edits to your doors. If your table is already populated with information, using the Export option will download the full data set. You can then make edits and import the spreadsheet to load those changes into NuORDER.
Note: You can modify door names and values assigned to an attribute, but door numbers and attribute names can’t be changed.
When you’re finished adding doors and door attributes, select Save.
Note: Changes made on your Doors and door attributes page will impact all newly created assortments. Existing assortments will not be affected.
Deliveries
As with doors and door attributes, you can import deliveries from a spreadsheet or add them manually.
On the Merchant Settings screen, select Deliveries. Here, you can choose to Import a spreadsheet with existing delivery data.
If you want to add deliveries manually, you can choose Add delivery, then enter the delivery ID (Name) and delivery Name in that row. When you’re done adding a delivery, select Save New Row.
Note: By default, new deliveries are active, meaning they can be selected to be included in a new assortment. If you change the delivery to inactive, the delivery is no longer available to be included in the assortment but any existing assortments that already have this delivery included will not be affected.
If your table is already populated with information, using the Export option will download the full data set. You can then make edits and import the spreadsheet to load those changes into NuORDER.
When you’re finished adding deliveries, select .
Drive admin permissions
On the Drive admin permissions page you can view name, email and date added for current Drive Admins. Users added to the Drive Admin permissions list can update and create drive folders, set drive permissions, and add merchant-level saved views.