Planning a Timed Product Release

Overview

If you are planning an upcoming product release to launch at a specific date and time (for example, a product has On Sale time of 10AM on Saturday, June 22), Aspenware recommends using the “Available Start Date” feature in Aspenware Commerce. This enables you to set up your product well in advance of the sale (e.g. several hours or days) so it will automatically become available on your site at the designated date and time. This feature allows you to avoid updating admin configuration at the time of the sale and any corresponding concerns around the configuration propagating to all app service nodes on a scaled-out site.

With the below approach, the product(s) will not be visible to guests on the site until the On Sale time. At the on sale time, upon page load or refresh of the category page, the product(s) will then appear. If a guest attempts to browse to the direct URL of the product prior to the Start Time, they will be taken to the standard “Product Not Found” page.

Detailed Setup

1. Review the Scaling for Flash Sales article to review the scaling guidelines and reach out to your Aspenware Service Agent if you anticipate that your product launch will require scaling.

2. If you anticipate a very high volume of traffic, consider using Queue-it to enable a virtual wait room to manage spikes in traffic.

3. Identify the category to which your product will be assigned. If the category is already published on your site, you simply need to enter that category in the Categories field on the product. If you are creating a new category that will only become visible when this product goes on sale, create this category and uncheck Published on the category editor if you do not want this category to be visible on the site.
   
   

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4. Set up your product as usual (see Product: Configuration for more information) and add a date and time in the Available Start Date field. You may also enter the Available End Date if you know that a product should be taken off sale at a particular time on a particular date.
   
   

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3. On the day of your sale, if the product will be released in a category that is already published, there is nothing for you to do. If the product will be added to a new category that was not previously published, at least one hour before the sale, go into the category editor and check the Published checkbox to ensure that the category propagates to all nodes (see Site Cache Guidelines for more details). An empty category with no products will be visible to users for a period of time until any products in the category reach their Available Start Date & Time.