Reference Manager

Reference manager is a tool that allows you to bulk apply references to your existing Metaobjects for selected items (products). This feature is ideal for merchants who manage large catalogs and need to quickly update references without manually editing each item individually.

What is the Reference Manager used for?

A Metaobject reference acts as a bridge, linking your items to data stored in your shop’s Metaobjects

Imagine you run an online clothing store with separate size charts for men's, women's, and children's clothing. Before Reference Manager, adding the men's size chart to each product had to be done manually, one by one. Now, with Reference Manager, you can assign it to all relevant men's products in one go.

Simply select all the men's products and apply the men's size chart Metaobject to them in one action. In just a few clicks, every product displays the correct sizing information. It's designed to handle simple and complex references.

To access the feature, simply navigate to the sidebar within your Shopify admin, and click on Reference Manager under the Accentuate app section.

Working with the Reference Manager

Step 1: Select Items

In the left section, you can choose which items (products) you want to edit. You have two options:

1. Manually Select Products: Browse through your product list and select one or more products.

2. Utilize Advanced Search filters: Use Accentuate’s advanced filtering feature to select products based on specific criteria such as tags, collections, or attributes. This is especially useful for bulk actions.

Step 2: Select Reference Metafield you want to edit values for

On the right section of the screen, under References, you'll find a dropdown list of reference Metafields for the selected scope. These include:

• Metaobject References

• Mixed References

Mixed references allow you to reference Metaobjects from more than one definition

These references are taken directly from the Metafield definitions on your store.

If needed, you can create a new Metaobject or mixed reference Metafield directly from this page by clicking the "Create New Reference" button.

Step 3: Select Metaobject Entries

After selecting the desired reference Metafield, the Reference Manager will display all available entries for the chosen Metaobject definition. You can:

• Select one or multiple entries, depending on whether the Metafield is configured to accept a list of values.

Each item can reference up to 128 entries for any given reference. This is a Shopify platform limitation, and attempting to exceed this limit will result in an error when saving your changes

Once you’ve selected your entries, press Save to apply these values to the selected products or all products within the chosen filter.

For large numbers of items and Metaobject entries, this operation might take some time. To ensure smooth processing, Accentuate sends this bulk operation to the Activity Log, where you can track the progress of the update in real time.

There’s no need to wait on the page for the process to complete - simply continue with other tasks while the system handles the bulk editing in the background.