Could Collections Please Show the Chosen Product Merchandising Settings?

[Cat]

When you add a product to a collection through either the product page or when posting it for sale, the product always appears in the collection with the default merchandising settings instead of the chosen ones. There is a work around - if you post it to the collection from the products list in your store rather than from the individual product page, the collection will show your chosen settings, but it totally defeats the purpose of being able to add it to a collection when posting. It would be SUPER helpful if products could maintain their chosen settings when shown in a collection.

Likewise, if you edit the product merchandising settings - like you change the default size or paper etc., those settings are NOT reflected inside of the collection. The only way to get the new settings into the collection is to delete the product from the collection, then search for the product in the products list in your store and add it back from there. It's really a huge time waster for something that should fairly simple and straightforward.

It would be really great if this issue could get fixed.

[Connie]

Yes, I agree. I think eventually the collection indexing DOES catch up, and show the right image, but it takes several days or weeks.

[Cat]

@Connie Do you mean that it catches up if you change the merchandising options? Maybe that part has been fixed, that would be wonderful. I'll run some tests and check it out.

But I've still got thousands of products that appear in the default view rather than the chosen one - and those views where chosen at the time the products were published. Here's what I mean:

The one circled in red has the chosen view set to the one with the stand, and when you open it up it displays correctly:

But the only way I can get it to display correctly inside of the collection is to remove it from the collection and add it back in from the products list. Am I missing something? Like is there some setting that I don't know about or am I not understanding how it's supposed to work?

[Anne]

@Cat Thanks for mentioning this again! I think it has only been mentioned just about a zillion times (cough). This seems to be part of the general downgrade of collections that happened quite a while ago.
@Connie Yes, "But the only way I can get it to display correctly inside of the collection is to remove it from the collection and add it back in from the products list". That is also how I perceive it. And only from the product page.
@Zazzle Thanks for fixing this. Please also fix changing the order of products in a collection at the back end. Products are still flying all over the place and can only be recovered by constantly refreshing the screen.

[James]

Thanks for mentioning Cat. I can try suggest if we can help to improve this flow.

[Cat]

@James I think there may actually be two separate issues here that I have conflated into one.

The first is the display issue where within the collection it shows the default view even if a different view is set. The workaround here is to add it from the products list as I mentioned above.

The second issue is that if you add an item to a collection, merchandising options like size and paper get permanently attached to the product within the collection, so even if you change those options, if the user clicks on the link from within the collection those options will always be appended to the link even if you've changed the default settings through merchandising settings. Here's an example. For this table number, I apparently had the paper set to double thick when I added it to the collection - an error on my part. I have since changed the default paper to matte, but if you click on this product from the collection, is still reverts to the thick paper, and that parameter is appended to the link like this:

https://www.zazzle.com/reflecting_royal_purple_rose_elegant_wedding_table_number-256735702869046073?...

There doesn't seem to be any way to change this other than to remove it from the collection and add it back with the correct merchandising options chosen. The same thing happens with size, cut, etc. It would be lovely if this could be fixed so that updated merchandising options would be reflected within the collection.