Author Rowan Drew

TOTECS Software Development Manager

Within the Administration Centre of a TOTECS project, under the Stores menu ,within the Images Settings interface, the "Image Import Replacement Mode" setting can either set to "Replace Existing Images" or "Append New Image".

If this setting is to "Replace Existing Images", then within the Products Images Import interface, when the Multiple Images File Uploader is used to import Product Images and the Start Image Uploads button is clicked on, for the first image in the upload list that matches a product it will first delete all the existing images previously assigned to that product. Then for the first new image uploaded it will always be set to the primary image of the product. So the order in which image files are added to the Multiple Images File Uploader dictate which of a product's images becomes the primary image. This is not controlled by the ordering value set within brackets of an image file name.

To make it easier to sort and selecte select product images files stored on a computer in the correct order for the file uploader, it would be best to name all the files with a ordering suffix, ie. product-code-a[1].jpg, product-code-a[2].jpg, product-code-a[3].jpg to allow the file explorer to correct sort the files before being selected. But this is optional.

If the "Image Import Replacement Mode" setting is to "Append New Image", then within the Products Images Import interface, when the Multiple Images File Uploader is used to import Product Images and the Start Image Uploads button is clicked on, the uploader will never delete any existing images belonging to a product, it will only add new images to a product. If a product contains no images the first new image added to the product will be set as the primary image.

For more fine grain control over which product images are set as the primary image for image uploads, as well as setting additional information about images, including image title, description, ordering and active state, it's recommended to use the Connector and its Data Sets feature to manage product images in bulk, or else use have the Connector configured to another data source (such as a spreadsheet) that is managing the image data. Otherwise once product images are loaded to a TOTECS project the title, description, ordering, Is Primary and active state would need to be managed for each product within the Product Editor.

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