How can we reorder metafields for a logical workflow?

[jake_mitchell]

It would be very useful if we were able to reorder and group metafields. 

For example, as things stand we have product metafields in a logical order from most general to most specific. 

If we want to add a new metafield in it will appear at the very top, breaking that order. Similarly if we want to rearrange them into different logical groupings we can't without deleting them all and starting again, which would be a huge risk. 

See previous question about this. 
https://community.shopify.com/c/technical-q-a/reordering-metafields/m-p/1682915#M98184

User story:

as a content editor I want to be able to reorder metafields so that the teams listing our products are able to follow a logical flow when adding metafields

Acceptance criteria: 

The user is able to drag and move metafields within the metafields setting pane to define the order they will show on product, customer etc. 

As things stand this is a bit of a deal breaker for us to be able to confidently use metafields in a sustainable and scalable way. 

thanks

[Mac]

Hi, @jake_mitchell!

Thanks for reaching out in our Community forums. I’m happy to help out.

I appreciate you taking the time to outline your feedback. I can definitely see how recording and grouping metafields could be beneficial from a content editor perspective. I can definitely pass this feedback along to our development team for review. Hopefully, they can become future features! Keep an eye on the Shopify Changelog for updates on any new developments.

Thanks again! 

[jake_mitchell]

Thanks @Mac . 

It is a bit incongruous that we can't reorder them at the minute. It makes scaling and sustainable use of metafields that may change over time difficult. Hopefully this gets picked up by one of your teams. 

[Jasper7]

This would make meta fields way more useful for my cases as well! I would love to see this feature added.

[Mac]

Hi, @Jasper7 and @jake_mitchell!

Thanks for sharing your feedback and I can definitely understand the urgency for this feature. I have shared these additional details with our developers. While I cannot guarantee the change will be applied, I will say the more requests we get for certain features the more likely they are to be rolled out. 

Stay tuned! 

[jake_mitchell]

Hi  ,  

I'm going to have another go at explaining this one. My previous description made it sound like a nice to have. Having spent the last week trying to work with metafields I realise now that for our use case it is a must-have.  

Let’s say I have these metafields set up.  

They are done in a logical order to help the person inputting values.

What happens if later on we want to add a new metafield between 5 and 6.  

The only way of doing it would be to delete metafields 1-5, add the new one and the re-add everything that we just deleted. Sounds like a waste of time? That's because it is.

Every one of those metafields could contain within it a list of values. They all need to be added again. At least with the value options you can reorder them by dragging (see below). 

So, adding the metafields and all their value lists could take a long time. It should take seconds to reorder the fields.

But it isn't just about inefficient it is. The current set up is also risky. Every time we need to re-add metafield and values it introduces risk of human error. An error here could break Shopify flow automations that work on key business processes.  That leaves key business processes open to significant, avoidable and unacceptable risk. 

All this means is that every single time we want to change the order of metafields we would need to:

1. Stop any new products being added at any of our locations

2. Make the changes to the metafields

3. Regression test every single flow automation that works from metafields

4. Recommence listing

And that would need to be repeated every single time we want to change the order. Scarcely believable how wasteful that is.

Imagine if you had to delete the site navigation every time you wanted to add something new to it. Or imagine that if you wanted to curate the order of products in a collection you would need to delete every single one and add them again in exactly the right order. 

It is far from a nice-to-have for content editors, because metafields are so central to how Shop 2.0 works and how they can underpin key business processes this is a risk mitigation step, a time saver and really a hygiene factor for the use of metafields at all.  

I hope that makes more sense. I know your product teams may work on volume of requests but I felt that I needed to properly explain this one. Shopify has a lot of good points, and metafields were looking to be another one, but for our set up we can’t possibly proceed with using metafields unless this change is made.  If we can't use metafields we can't use filtering as envisaged in Shop 2.0. 

Thanks  

[JDrak]

I agree with this user completely. We continue to find new use cases for metafields, but anything new we add gets put at the top of the list and totally disrupts the workflow. 

[ryanleichty]

This would be really helpful. Nobody wants to be stuck with the order in which you added metafields.

[Mac]

Hi there, @ryanleichty!

Thank you for joining the thread and sharing your input. I definitely understand how not being able to reorder your metafields can be counterproductive. I'm happy to let you know that this feature request has been shared with our developers. Kindly keep an eye on the Shopify Changelog for updates on any new developments.

Thanks again! 

[jake_mitchell]

Hi everyone, 

Hopefully this does get picked up as a proper feature. 

In the meantime, it does seem that you can reorder them by unpinning and then re-pinning in reverse order of how you want them to show in the interface. 

It's not a substitute for proper UI but it will fill the gap for us until it works properly. 

[Mac]

Hi, @JDrak.!

Thank you for joining this thread sharing your feedback. I'd like to confirm that I added your input to the feature request.

As @jake_mitchell mentioned, you can currently organize your Metafields in your Shopify admin by pinning metafield definitions. To provide some additional information, pinning a metafield definition has the following effects:

• The metafield definition is displayed at the start of the list on the Metafield definitions page for that part of your store.
• The metafield is automatically displayed on the corresponding pages in your Shopify admin.
• You can pin up to 20 definitions for each part of your store.

I hope this helps in the meantime as our developers are still taking a look at this request, so kindly keep an eye out on the Shopify Changelog for updates on any new developments.

Cheers. 

[jake_mitchell]

Hi @Mac  - just an update on this one. 

This issue has now been exacerbated by how Shopify defined metafields are showing in the prodcut metafield list

There is no way for me to make my user defined metafields show above these as I already have 20 pinned. 

We really really need a way of being in control of the order of metafields or it just won't be scalable and will be a major drag on our plans. Either that or an increase to the number of pinned MF allowed - that would at least give us the ability to use pinning in order for more than 20. Either way, this is becoming a really big problem for us and a major downside for Shopify as a platform right now. 

[Mac]

Hi there, @jake_mitchell!

I appreciate the additional information. 

While I'm unable to share any details about the progress being made regarding this, I can say that I have added all of this information as feedback to our development team. I can also see how having the ability to either increase the pinning limit to over 20, or having the ability to organize your fields will greatly simplify your workflow. 

I will be sure to provide any updates regarding this here as soon as they are visible on the Shopify Changelog.

Thanks for your understanding. 

[CarloMant]

Hi Mac, I know this is an old conversation but I join to point out that currently it is only possible to reorder pin-locked metafields, but if we have to access the list of all metafields, so even the non-locked ones there is no possibility to reorder them in any way and this causes big problems in data entry.

Could you please report this issue? Thank you

[ferriusj]

+1! We need this feat!

[jimvadams]

+ 1 we really need this, it's a must-have 

[Fabian_fg]

Big MUST HAVE feature, please implement this asap. Should not be too hard to do at all.