If you are new to Creative Force, it might be confusing at first to differentiate the terms Product and Sample in our system. This article will guide you through the definitions and some use cases to help you understand the terms more easily.

You can think Jobs as projects, seasonal collections or batches of items that you need to produce.

To create a Job, you must import a minimum of one Product Request. The Job code must be unique but the Job name can be identical. You can use the same Product Codes and Sample Codes across different jobs, but the Product Code must be unique within one job.

You can use Job properties to enrich the data for your job in the system, the most typical one would be a Job deadline property, for example.

Learn more about Properties here.

Product Requests are the data you ingested to the system, they are the record of everything you need to know about what work needs to be done throughout the creative process. These are used to display the progress of production.

One Product Request must always have at least one sample associated with it. If you don’t assign a sample code to the Product Request when importing it in the system, we will assign the CF Sample Code to go with that Product Request.

If you don’t already use or have the Product Code in your flow, we suggest that the Product Code can be a combination of the Style Code + Color Code.

In the example below, the style code 91587 comes in three different colors, combining these you will have the Product Code.

You can enrich the product data by using the Product properties in CF. For example, brand and gender or color would be typically used as product properties.

Note:

Deactivated Product Requests will not be counted in the Job progress status. You can deactivate a Product Request when the Product Request does not have Done status. If the Product Request is deactivated, its associated samples will be deactivated.

Samples are the physical objects, maybe clothing or accessories, anything that you are going to photograph.

You can think the Samples as a unique data entry for the size level of the physical objects. In the above example sheet, a ‘red’ item of the brand ‘Social’ (the ‘red’ and ‘Social’ is product property) can come in multiple sizes, so it is best to enrich such sample data by using Sample properties. You can then have the Sample Codes as a combination of Product Code + Size.

A sample can belong to one Product Request or to multiple Product Requests if you enable sample pooling. Deleting a sample will not affect the production data, but there are a few scenarios where CF does not allow deleting the sample which you can read more here.

There are four Product Request statuses: Backlog - To Do - In Progress - Done.

Usually, when Product Requests are imported to the system, they will have Backlog status which indicates that the Product Requests are not ready for production. Once the associated sample of a Product Request is checked-in meaning that the physical item is received at the studio, and it is ready to be photographed, the Product Request status changes from Backlog to To do, flagging that it is ready for production. When the sample later got checked out, it will not affect the Product Request’s status.

Note:

However, under Studio Settings, you can decide the Product Request’s status when they are imported.

In Progress: The Product Request is In Progress as soon as the images are started transferring.

Done: The Product Request is Done when all of its work units have Done status.

Samples have two check-in statuses: checked-in and not checked-in, the ‘not checked-in’ status also includes ‘checked-out’ status.

Since a Product Request can have multiple samples and there is also Sample Pooling option to share the samples between Product Requests, only checking in samples that are created at the same time as the Product Request can change the Product Request status from Backlog to To Do.

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