Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Product families vs Subjects

I am working on an integration to include product data from a from an eCommerce software. I want to categorize products in dynamics CRM so we can segment based off of product interest. Both Product families and Subjects look to do the same thing. Is there a difference when doing categorization?

So far given that product families have a product number I find somewhat easier to do an interrogation where the name changes might happen but other wise nothing else changes. That way when family name changes it doesn't effect the integration since I can use the product number as a look up families.

Also along with the categorizing products I want to set a family/families to a lead and opportunities via custom field/relationship. Is there a reason a subject would be better?

I would utilize product families for this type of categorization. You are able to do a number of things with product families that you are not able to do with a subject including:

1. Utilize product family hierarchy similar to a base manufacturer product and being able to build off this with inheritance to subclass products in the family, similar to subject tree but not really inheritance but just a parent child relationship

2. Define properties for the product family that can be overridden in the child products (e.g. color, size, etc.) (not possible with subjects)

3. Ability to set a number of additional product attributes at the family level or add additional attributes (not possible with subjects)

Overall I like to leverage product families vs. subjects but maybe others have a different opinion. When I think of leveraging subjects I usually use this in the service side of CRM to classify the service cases as an example.

Thanks,

Quick Links