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Product Object Types in EPC
Product object types help you streamline your product catalog by creating classes of products that have similar characteristics. A product object type is a reusable entity that describes a common set of fields and attributes as well as the layouts for all linked products. You can use object types to group products with similar characteristics to ensure consistent behavior and application of rules.
Object types are designed with an IS-A inheritance type architecture. For those of you familiar with object-oriented programming and design, you recognize that object types create relationships between abstractions where one object type is a subtype of another object type. The first level of abstraction is called a base object type, and the subsequent levels are called subtypes. Then, when you apply this relationship to a product, the object type allows the product to inherit all of the characteristics (attributes, fields, and layouts) of its object type hierarchy.
For example, a company may offer a set of different types of products: electronics, clothing, and furniture. Products in each category share similar characteristics that are not applicable to products in a different category; such as screen size and network speed are not applicable to clothing or furniture.
Instead of creating a separate electronic product, you can define the Electronics object type that contains all characteristics related to electronics. All child object types of Electronics inherit these properties. You can modify the properties of child object types by adding new properties. A Smartphone object type can be a child of the Electronics object type. It inherits all properties from Electronics but also has additional properties specific to Smartphones: IMEI Number or Bluetooth Capability.
After you create an object type, like a smartphone, you can instantiate it to create a hundred smartphone product specifications to ensure consistent behavior and application of rules, such as fulfillment rules.
Object types are created during an initial setup by a system administrator. For instruction on how to create an object type, refer to Create an Object Type.
- Inheritance Within the Object Type Hierarchy
A product object type is a reusable entity that has a common set of fields, attributes, and layouts for all the linked products. Vlocity object types are designed with an inheritance type architecture where a child object type inherits the layout of the parent product, along with all the associated fields and attributes. - Layout Inheritance within the Object Type Hierarchy
Similar to Salesforce page layouts, object type layouts allow you to control the layout and organization of an object type’s attributes and fields. New objects subtypes and products inherit the layout from the object that they're associated with. - EPC Best Practices for Product Object Types
Salesforce recommends creating a base object type for each layer of your SID model (Offer Specs, Product Specs, Service Specs and Resources Specs) during initial setup. These are essentially your product catalog’s “primordial objects” from which all other products descend. - Picklists in EPC
If an attribute includes multiple values, a picklist represents all of the defined values for that attribute. A picklist is an ordered list of values that customers can choose from when buying a product. You must define picklists before creating attributes.
