Deactivating Products

[FoodieToo]

Hello,

What is the best way to 'deactivate' a product?

We have several products with the same name (but different GTINs) that are no longer active. This is causing some confusion with our recipients since the name is the same but the GTINs are different. We don't want to delete those products yet. One of our items has a discontinued date of 5/3/21 but our recipient says it is showing as active on their end. So I'm not sure if there is another way we should mark items as inactive?

Also, when searching for items is there a way to only show our active items? So we know for sure which items need to be updated without having to double check GTINs?

[CommunityJedi22]

Hello @FoodieToo and welcome back.  It is always nice to chat with you.  You ask some good questions and there is certainly a best practice for discontinuing items. There are a couple of important things to keep in mind to ensure you are not negatively impacting your trading partners and your reporting:

1) When your Discontinued Date for an item is current (no longer in the future), IM will de-register the item with the Global Registry.  As a result, you should never have an item with an active publication and a current or past Discontinued Date.  

2) You should use the Discontinued Date as a future update for your trading partners for items that are published.  Remove the publication for your items before that date becomes current.  If you need to delete publications for a discontinued item, there is a process we can work with you to complete so this can be done.

When you are ready to remove these items, you can ask us to delete them from IM for you via our GTIN Delete process.  You can simply complete the attached sheet and email it to us and we will process the GTIN deletes.

I am not aware of a way to search by active only GTINs so let me check on that for you and get back to you.

[FoodieToo]

Thank you, @CommunityJedi22 !

Is there a way you can check why Dot Foods is showing our item (GTIN 5613) as active even though the Discontinued date is 5/3/21? Is it because of the Effective Date? (Not sure what the Effective Date is)

[CommunityJedi22]

I recommend you reach out to the DOT Foods Data Sync group as they are very responsive and helpful and may be able to help us understand why they see it as active.  It could be because it is still published to them.  

[amyb]

I also need to be educated on how best to remove discontinued products so that they can no longer be seen as available in 1WS.  Is there a document or training video to walk me through the process?  Thanks for your help.

[CommunityJedi22]

Hello @amyb and thanks for reaching out.  There is a best practice for discontinuing items.  The points above are very important: The concept around dates is impactful if not followed.  If you need to discontinue something immediately with a current date (not future) then delete the publications for it and then Discontinue.  Take a look here and let me know if you have any questions at all:

 There are a couple of important things to keep in mind to ensure you are not negatively impacting your trading partners and your reporting:

1) When your Discontinued Date for an item is current (no longer in the future), IM will de-register the item with the Global Registry.  As a result, you should never have an item with an active publication and a current or past Discontinued Date.  

2) You should use the Discontinued Date as a future update for your trading partners for items that are published.  Remove the publication for your items before that date becomes current.  If you need to delete publications for a discontinued item, there is a process we can work with you to complete so this can be done.

[amyb]

If a discontinued product is brought back, can you reactivate it?

[CommunityJedi22]

Hello @amyb . Yes, there is a process to re-enable an item that was discontinued.  First, please remove the Discontinued Date and Save your item(s).  Then check to see if your item registers about 15 minutes later.  If not, open a ticket with our technical support and we can work on our end to re-register your items.

[kxsRSC]

Hi, I would like a bit of clarification here as we do have numerous items in IM that are no longer active and have been inactive for some time. In addition to parent / child items that are no longer active, we have old parent GTINs where the child is still active under new parent GTINs.  Every time I modify or update the child, we get a lot of hits on the old parent GTINs (still listed as active) and would like to stop this. Do I need to put in a discontinue date on them first before working with you in deleting them completely?  Is there a downside to deleting an item from IM if for some reason we chose to reactivate the item as before - is it difficult to re-register them?   Also gs1.org mentions reactivating an item that has been withdrawn - what is the difference between withdrawing an item and deleting an item?

[CommunityJedi22]

Hello @kxsRSC those are all very good questions.  I will answer what I can here but also ask you to provide me some example GTINs so I can take a look and provide the most accurate answer I can for those example situations.

In general, the best practice to discontinue an item is to add the Discontinued Date with a future date while the item is published.  This notifies your trading partners.  Before the Discontinued Date becomes active, I recommend you delete that publication which will break synchronization on an item that is being discontinued.  If you do not delete before that date is current, you can encounter errors based on whether the item de-registers with the Global Registry.

Withdrawing a publication lets your trading partner know you are temporarily removing the pub to make changes to the item and will send it back over.  Deleting a publication, per the standard, indicates you are breaking synchronization for the item with your trading partner for instances that include it being discontinued. HERE is a recent article that talks more about this.

Yes, we can help you delete items from IM but first request you delete all publications for the items and remove any images.  You would then fill out a spreadsheet (completely for each GTIN) and send it to our technical support team. 

Here is the note I send to customers who ask about removing GTINs:

Hello and thank you for contacting us requesting the removal of GTINs from 1WS applications and the Global Registry.  In order for us to complete your GTIN purge request successfully, please make sure the following is true for each GTIN you need to be purged:

1)      Delete all publications of any hierarchies the GTINs are a part of.  1WorldSync is unable to process GTIN deletes for items that are actively published to trading partners.  Please note, GTIN delete transactions can commence 25 hours from the time the publication deletes are sent.

2)      Remove all images in Digital Asset Management for each GTIN.   1WorldSync is unable to process GTIN deletes for items with images in DAM.

3)      Fully and accurately complete the GTIN Purge Template and send to technicalsupport@1worldsync.com.  Each column must have the correct information for successful GTIN deletion:

• Target Market should be correct
• Information Provider should be the correct, full 13 digit number for the org asking for the purge
• Ensure the GTINs in the spreadsheet are valid 14 digit GTINs

Once you submit the form, the Service Desk will work to purge your GTIN(s) from the Item Management application and then send the request to the Global Registry. Please note, we are setting your ticket request to close at end of business today.  When you are ready to submit your GTINs for deletion, please send your completed form to the 1WorldSync Service Desk at technicalsupport@1worldsync.com. 

We appreciate your patience as we work through this process for you.