The Product Lifecycle setting is used to define when you want your product to be available for sale on your store. You choose a start and end date for the product, deploy it, and the system will hide and show the product based on the dates you have selected.
How Lifecycle Works
The Product Lifecycle settings are an automatic way to define when you want your product to be available for sale (and visible) on your store. Normally you would have to deploy a product when you want it to be available for sale on your store, and retire it when you no longer want it available. Instead of doing these things manually, you can set up the Product Lifecycle settings so that products will appear and disappear from your store when you want automatically.
Start and End Date
The start and end dates are used to control when the product is available on your store. If you set a start date, the product will automatically appear on your store on the date you set (assuming the "Display Product" and "Purchasable" options are also selected, and the product has already been deployed). If you set an end date, the product will automatically be hidden on the end date you select.
Note: When you set a start date in the lifecycle settings you must deploy the product in order for that product to be available on your store when the start date is reached. Products that reach their start date and are not deployed will not be seen on your store.
How Your Time Zone Preference Affects the Start and End Date
The start date and end date you set for a product or variation is converted so that it appears (when you are viewing details about the product) in the time zone preference you have set in your user account (called My Information).
For example, assume you have selected to use CST/CDT time as your preferred time zone in the Command Console (see My Information for information about setting your time zone preference). If you set up a product to start at July 19th at 10:00 AM PST/PDT, when you save the time will be converted to 12:00 PM on July 19th because that is the same as 10:00 AM PST/PDT.
How the Product Status Changes with Lifecycle
As the product moves through its lifecycle, the status changes to reflect its state. The following outlines the statuses specific to a product using the Product Lifecycle settings. To learn more about product statuses including additional statuses a product might have see About Product Status.
| Status | Definition |
|---|---|
| Deployed: Expired |
When a product with variations had different start or end dates for the variation(s) and/or locale(s), this status is used. This status indicates that all the variations or locales have ended. This status is only used when the Product Lifecycle setting is used. See About the Product Lifecycle Setting for more information. |
End of Life Notifications
When a product reaches its end date you can have up to three emails sent to you notifying you that the product is reaching the end of its lifecycle. You can choose to send the notification months, weeks, or days prior to retirement.
Product Lifecycle and Products with Variations
Products with variations that use the Product Lifecycle setting can set a different start and end date for each variation in each locale. If you set a different start date or end date for a variation, a message will appear when viewing the product to remind you that your base product and variation(s) are set to start and/or end on different dates or times.
The following outlines how the lifecycle settings affect products with variations:
- Variations will automatically inherit the lifecycle settings of their base product until you select to override the base product settings and set a specific start date and/or end date for the variations.
- Variations cannot have a start date and time that occurs before the base product start date and time.
- Variations cannot have an end date and time that occurs after the base product start date and time.
- The base product end date cannot occur after the last end date for any of the variations of the base product. If the base product end date is set after the last end date for one or more variations, the end date of the base product will be automatically updated to the last end date of the variations.
Product Lifecycle and Subscription Products
If you use the Product Lifecycle settings with your subscription products and set a specific end date, the subscription product must also have a transfer product so that when the subscription retires, customers will still receive their subscription when it renews. Once you have set an end date for a subscription product you cannot remove the subscription transfer product.
Product Lifecycle and Preorder or Preload Products
There are few rules that dictate how the Product Lifecycle settings work with a preorder and preload product.
- The start date must occur before the preorder and preload dates.
- The end date must occur after the preorder or preload dates.
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