The question Analogs answers

Which new products could launch on a past product's demand history, does the case for each pair hold, and which pairs are already in place? Analogs is a Product page of the families and attributes engine. It is on the Tightly Pro rail; on Essentials and Essentials+ the rail marks it for sale with Pro; Lite does not carry it. The reads behind it are included with Essentials+ and Pro, so a read the plan does not include is refused with one sentence that names Essentials+:

This organisation's plan does not include Analogs. It is sold with Essentials+.

An analog is never a forecast

An analog is a past product whose selling shape stands in for a new product's until the new one has sales of its own. A pair is per sales channel. What each state feeds:

• Proposed. Where no analog is declared for the channel, proposals you have not dismissed are the comparable past styles a never-sold product's borrowed forecast can blend; see Forecasts for products that have never sold.
• In place. Your declared source takes precedence over automatic proposals for that channel; other channels keep their own selection. The buy reads the new product's demand from its analog, and says from an analog. Choosing a source does not retire it or stop its forecast. On Essentials+ and Pro, the account grade reads an account's sell-out of the analog first.

Proposals are made each night at 04:30 UTC, for a tenant whose own subscription names Analogs. Accepting and dismissing both survive that run; neither is undone by it.

What you see on Analogs

The head reads Analogs, the run's as-of, and Declare an analog. Two views ride a segmented control, Waiting on you and In place, beside Search titles and SKUs. The engine's sentence appears under the head only where there is something to act on.

Waiting on you is one row per proposal: New product, Proposed analog, Channel (Channel not named where none is), Confidence and Evidence. Each side shows the title with its variant and SKU, or No variant or SKU.

In place lists the pairs declared: New product, Launches on, Channel. Both views page a hundred rows at a time: {shown} of {total} · Page {n}, with Previous page and Next page.

The evidence and the confidence words

The engine weighs six pieces of evidence, always in this order: Same product type, Same vendor, Attributes line up, Your own fields agree, Priced the same, They look alike. The Evidence column counts only what was compared, {held} of {compared} checked, or Nothing compared.

Confidence is a word, counted off the five text checks and never the image: four or five agree is High, three is Medium, fewer is Low. Medium and Low carry these sentences on hover:

Enough agrees to be worth a look; check the pair before accepting.

Thin evidence. Accept only if you know these two behave alike.

The pair drawer

Press a proposal, or Enter on the highlighted row, to open it. Its head reads "{new product} launches on {analog}'s demand history." Two sides, The new product and Its proposed analog, show each image (No image on this product where none), a title that opens the product page, and a SKU that opens the variant room. The badge reads {High} confidence, with the channel beside it. The evidence table lists the six, each Agreed, Disagreed or Not compared; a disagreed one is struck through.

What to do on Analogs

• Use as the analog (A) puts the pair in place. The strip reads "{new product} now launches on {analog}'s demand history." with Undo.
• Not this one (N) maps nothing and the pair is never proposed again: "{new product} will not be proposed with {analog} again." No Undo.
• The arrows move between proposals.
• On In place, a row's menu confirms "{new product} goes back to its own demand history." with Keep it or Break this link.
• Declare an analog takes New products and a Channel, then an explicit past SKU for each selected new SKU. Check the size matches before declaring; every selected SKU needs a source. The batch is saved together. The receipt distinguishes queued, running or unavailable recalculation from the saved mappings. Open forecast keeps the new SKUs and channel selected so you can check the result.

A new product has one analog per channel: declaring a second is refused until the first is broken. A refusal reads Not accepted, Not dismissed, Not broken or Not declared with the served reason. A viewer reads Analogs; a member or an admin changes it. On Pro, the Commitments desk takes, rejects and clears the same pairs.

When Analogs is empty or failed

Waiting on you with nothing in it reads No pending analogs; In place reads No analogs. A search that matches nothing reads "No proposal matches “{search}”." or "No pair matches “{search}”." with Clear search. A failed read is said as one, with Try again:

The proposals read didn't answer.

The in-place read didn't answer.

A drawer whose pair left reads "This proposal is no longer waiting."