Rob and Team 

2 questions

1. is which tab in personalization do I add product attributes too?


2. Is there a way to sort Product Attributes in the properties window into a custom order?
  I have customized a number of features to eliminate double data entry. For example my panel header and footer engraving  pulls it values from the attributes for system and a custom attribute I added for destination.  Is there a way to sort the properties attribute list so it display in an a custom order.  I have noted the move up and down arrows in the personaliazation window but they dont appear to do anything to the order in the properties pane  

Hi Toby,

To add an empty Attribute placeholder - i.e. just an Attribute name whose value will be filled in when you're working on the project - use Tools | Personalization | Settings.

To add an Attribute with a pre-populated value - e.g. pricing, whose value will be set in the Product Attributes spreadsheet - use Tools | Personalization | Product Attributes.

Regarding sorting of of the Properties Grid: this is not supported.  The layout of the Properties Grid is fixed and cannot be customized.  Having said that, within the Properties Grid the ordering of the Attributes collection is alphabetical, so you could add a prefix, e.g. 1..., 2..., 3... etc, to your custom Attribute names to enforce a sort order within the collection.

The Up/Down arrows in the Personalization interface define the order in which the Attributes are added to ProductInstances, so this order is respected in, for example, the Products View; the columns in this view match the order of the Attributes in Personalization.

I hope this helps to answer your questions.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

Thanks Rob 

I worked out I could use numbers as a prefix to sort the list, having said that will that not cause issues with the reports as I use report by System and type and if I add a number i assume they will no longer function in the reports 

Hi Toby,

Yes, that's correct - if you change the Name of an Attribute it will not appear in the report that uses the original Name.

[edit] Having said that, from the Products View you can use File | Export to generate a spreadsheet that contains all the data for all Products and Attributes (even custom/renamed ones) that would otherwise be used in Reports, and in Excel you can do anything you want with that data.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com