The question Families answers

Which families exist and how does each vary, what has arrived that is on no product yet, where does each arrival belong, and what was done here? Families is the desk of the families and attributes engine. It is included with Tightly Essentials+ and Tightly Pro; on Essentials the rail marks it for sale with Essentials+; Lite does not carry it.

Families, joins and arrivals

A family is a group of products that vary the same way. An arrival is something that names a product Tightly does not have yet: a listing from your store, or an order line from an account whose code answers to no product. Placing an arrival is a join: a listing joins a family, and an order line lands on a product, a cell of it, or one SKU. Until an order line is placed, its money plans nothing.

What a join changes: on Tightly Pro the family's shape is the columns of a Commitment's buy grid; where accounts are graded, a style's family is a rung the account grade reads; and Catalogue can name what a product in a family is missing.

What you see on Families

The head reads Families, the attribution run's as-of and New family. Under it, the figure row counts the families, the products placed, the arrivals waiting to place, the order money waiting where there is some, and the order lines unplaced. The search beside it, Find a name or code, theirs or yours, reads your names and SKUs, families, and each account's own codes; / focuses it.

The desk has three panes.

• Families lists each family by name with how it varies, how many arrivals wait on it, and its Products count.
• The canvas shows the chosen family: its name, which you press to rename, its shape, or a not set badge with the engine's reason where no shape is declared. The grid is one row per product and one column per cell, each cell a glyph for its state with the SKU on hover. A row can carry {n} outside the shape, Not in your store, or Not on a book yet. Under the grid, Add a product (Add a colourway where the family varies by colour) brings one in, and What happened here opens every act on the family, newest first, or Nothing yet.
• Waiting for a family lists the arrivals: Arrival, Order money, and Belongs in, the engine's proposed family and cell with its confidence in words: almost certainly, very likely or likely.

What to do on Families

• Place (Enter) puts the arrival where the engine proposes. Where it proposes nothing, the button is Start (N), which starts a family from it.
• Elsewhere (E) points instead: the canvas reads "Placing {name}. Pick a cell.", the arrows and Tab move the target, Enter lands it and Escape cancels.
• A product row's menu offers Move to another family, Make it its own family, Open attributes, and Disconnect for each place an arrival joined it.
• R renames the family. S opens How does this family vary?: Colours only, Sizes only, Colours × sizes, One of a kind, or another way you name, with its steps in order. Every product in the family follows it. A shape that would remove a cell carrying order lines or stock is refused, naming the cell, and nothing changes.
• New family, or N, opens Start a family: the seed, the first product, how it varies, then Create the family. Start blank begins without a listing.

The last act stands in the strip under the desk with Undo (Ctrl+Z or ⌘Z), for example:

Placed on {product} with the evidence. Money lands tonight.

Disconnected. Kept, and waiting in Arrivals.

A refusal never lands in the strip. It renders in the row or drawer it concerns under one word, Not placed, Not disconnected, Not moved, Not made a family, Not saved, Not renamed or Not created, with the served sentence. A viewer reads the desk; a member or an admin acts on it. The desk deletes nothing: a disconnect keeps the record, and folding two catalogue products into one is not an act it performs.

When Families is empty or failed

With no family yet the canvas reads No families yet, with Start the first family. An empty arrivals pane reads Nothing waiting. Where no order book is connected, the pane says so instead:

No order book connected yet.

A failed read says one sentence in place of the panes:

The families read didn’t answer.

A search that fails reads Search unavailable, with Retry; one that finds nothing reads No matches.