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Item definitions

Item definition and varying content

One of the main concepts when working with Item entities is inheritance of Items through Business Units and Business Unit Groups as well as Additional Properties inheritance via Item Categories.

For Items this inheritance is very often coupled with how you manage your assortment. Please see Assigning Assortment for more details.

Basic inheritance​

In Hii Retail we have the concept of inheritance which means data defined on a Business Unit Group will be inherited to all underlying Business Units.

This again means that an Item created for your entire organization (top level) will be the same in the entire organization; unless something changes on a lower level in the hierarchy.

The following example explains this in a graphical way: Item definition inheritance

Here is a step-by-step guide to the image above:

Item A​

  1. Note that Item A definition 1 is created on the very top level of the hierarchy, and hence propagated to all Business Units where no other details have been specified for Item A. (BUs 2000 - 20nn and 2200 - 22nn).
  2. Accordingly Business Units 1000 - 10nn and 1201 - 12nn have Item A definition 10 and Business Units 1100 - 11nn + 1200 have Item A definition 110. These are assigned to Business Unit Group 10 and 110, and replaces the Item definition created higher up in the hierarchy (Item A definition 1).

Item B​

  1. Item B definition 20 is NOT created on the top level, but for Business Unit Group 20. Hence this item will not be present in any Business Units under Business Unit Group 10; only for Business Units under Business Unit Group 20.
  2. Also note that Business Unit Group 210 have their own definition of Item B. This means that Business Units 2100 - 2102 will have Item B in its assortment with the definition defined on BU-G 210.
  3. Business Unit 2202 will have it's own local variant only for this Business Unit.

Moving a Business Unit​

If a Business Unit is moved from its current Business Unit Group the Item details will be recalculated, and it will receive the designated content based on the new Business Unit Group assignment.

For this to be successful we require that the management of the Business Units is kept up-to-date in the Business Unit Management service.