Autogridding is a process we offer as a service to combine your existing ungridded items into respective grids. This article explains what grids are and how they work. Gridding allows you to see the full run of your linked items. For instance, if you have a sweater you offer in multiple colors and sizes, it allows you to see all the colors and sizes that that sweater comes in. Autogridding is a way to grid items that already exist or that were created in Heartland Retail through, as an example, via importing items (items that were not generated via the grid feature). Auto gridding is typically done when you transition to Heartland Retail and your items are migrated, or imported, into Heartland Retail.

(1) Make sure the grid dimension fields (for example, color and size) are populated

Once you have decided you would like your existing items to be gridded, you will want to look over your items to make sure you are not missing any attributes which you want to be gridded. For instance, if you have a color field, make sure it is filled in for every item that has a color, and repeat that process for any other fields you would like to use as grid dimensions (for example color and size). Any items that are missing a value for the field you would like to use as a dimension, will be skipped and not gridded.

(2) Decide what field on your inventory (maybe style name) will tie your items together to make a grid.

It is also important that you have a single field that links the items together. This is most commonly a Style Name or Style # field where the value is the same across each of the items that should be in one grid. In other scenarios, it may just be that all items to be gridded (into one grid) currently have the same description, in which case we can use that. If neither of those currently exist, a field would need to be created and filled in for each of your items that you want gridded together to tell us that they belong together. The important thing is that all the items you want in a grid together must share the same value in this field. 

(3) Decide what field will determine the name of your grids

Now you'll need to choose a field that will form the name of your grid - and the base of all the item descriptions in the grid. This could be the same field you used in Step 2, or it could be something different. For instance, you might use Style # as the grid group and Style Name as the grid name. All of the items in your grids will have their descriptions changed to fit the pattern: GRID NAME - DIMENSION 1 - DIMENSION 2 - DIMENSION 3.

After you are done preparing your account, you are ready to download and then fill out the below autogridding form (Excel format) and have it reviewed by a member of our customer success team to have your items gridded!

When filling out the form, you will notice there are two tabs to this spreadsheet. The first is an example tab that shows you two examples of how you might complete the form (one footwear example and one apparel example). The 2nd tab is the blank form that you will fill out.

It is important to know when filling out this form that order does matter! For instance if on line 1 you request a one dimension grid using color, then on line 2 you request a two dimension grid using color and size, there would be no grids created from line 2. This is because every item that has a color filled in would have already been gridded during the grid creation for line 1. The standard process is to add multiple dimension grids before the single dimension grids to ensure that does not happen.
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Now that you filled out the form, you are ready to submit the form and request that a member of our support team get your request for autogridding submitted.

You can submit your request by using our chat or by sending an email to HRetailsupport@heartland.us with your account information, the form you filled out, and a little message that you are requesting autogridding.

We will first run the autogridding process in a copy of your Heartland Retail account to allow you to review the autogridding we do prior to it being run against your main, or real, Heartland Retail account. This is due to the auto-gridding process being irreversible so we want to ensure you have a chance to review the autogridding in a test account! It typically takes between 5-7 days for the process to be completed and we will follow up with you via the email/chat you sent to let you know when it is complete!

*Timing will be dependent on amount of data. The autogridding process can also take longer if additional information is needed.