Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.uselayers.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
What is a product family?
A product family is a named group of products that should be treated as variations of the same item for merchandising purposes. The most common use case is grouping color variants, material variants, or regional variations of the same style. This way, a collection page shows a broader assortment instead of six near-duplicate rows of the same style. Product families are a building block for other features:- Diversity expressions cap how many products from the same family appear in the top of a collection.
- Future family-aware merchandising features reuse the same groupings.
canonical, which represents “this is the same underlying product.”
Publication status
Every manual product family has a publication status that controls whether the family is active for downstream features like Diversity expressions.| Status | What it means | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | The family is saved but not yet applied to merchandising features. It can contain one or more products. | While you’re still assembling the list of member products, or when you want to stage a family for review before turning it on. |
| Active | The family is live and used by any feature that consumes product families (such as Diversity). At least two unique member products are required. | Once the family is ready to influence how products are ranked and displayed. |
The Publish button is only enabled once a family has at least two unique products. A draft family with a single product will remain editable, but you cannot activate it until a second product is added.
How status affects merchandising
- Draft families are ignored by Diversity expressions and any future family-aware feature. Their members behave as if they had no family assignment.
- Active families are applied everywhere product families are referenced. Unpublishing an active family is the fastest way to temporarily remove its effect without deleting member assignments.
How families are created
Layers supports two sources for a family:| Source | Who manages it | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Manual | A merchandiser, in the Product Families dashboard | When your grouping logic doesn’t map to a single attribute (for example, you want to hand-curate a capsule collection as one “family”) |
| Automatic | Layers, from a product attribute you select | When a reliable attribute (a metafield, vendor, or computed attribute) already identifies the group |
Automatic families from an attribute
You configure which attributes drive automatic families in Settings → Product Families. Each entry points at a single attribute whose value will be used as the family key. Layers supports three kinds of attributes as family sources:- Direct product fields and nested keys - for example,
vendor, a style code metafield, or a named tag. - Computed attributes - any computed attribute that returns a single value. The computed attribute is evaluated per product and its string result becomes the family key.
- Metafields - Shopify metafields synced into your catalog.
Array-valued attributes (like
tags) and metric attributes are not supported as family sources, because a single product cannot cleanly belong to multiple families through one attribute.How automatic assignment works
- Layers reads the configured attribute for each product during catalog sync.
- If the value is non-empty, the product is assigned to a family named
Auto: <attribute>:<value>. Products sharing the same value land in the same family. - If the value is empty or missing, the product is removed from any automatically assigned family for that attribute.
- Families that become empty are cleaned up automatically.
Prerequisites
Before you can configure automatic family sources, the attribute you want to use must already exist and be synced into your catalog. See Attributes and Metafields to add one.Manual families
Manual families are fully editable in the dashboard. A manual family has:- A name you choose (for example, Heritage Tee - All Colors).
- A publication status (Draft or Active) that controls whether the family is applied to merchandising features.
- A list of member products. Drafts can contain a single product while you assemble the group; active families must contain at least two unique products.
Creating a manual family
See the step-by-step guide at Create a product family.Editing and deleting
- Manual families can be renamed, have members added or removed, and can be deleted individually or in bulk from the Product Families list.
- Automatic families cannot be edited or deleted from the dashboard. To change their membership, update the attribute values on your products. Automatic families disappear on their own when they have no remaining members.