I see that Shopify changed the process for adding a new product, which is seriously messing with my workflow. Specifically, this:
The product status on newly created products is set as draft by default.
Can we NOT do that, please? I would like to have it default to active. How can I change this?
Chris
Hi, @Chrisjigsaw !
Iâm Miles from the Social Care team at Shopify. Thanks for your feedback around the new products workflow. The new feature was designed around feedback from merchants who have requirements for a product not be listed when they create it. The old workflow would publish a product straight away which caused some headaches for merchants who added in products so we made this change to give a default option of draft. I can appreciate this has impacted your own workflow. When creating a new product or duplicating an existing product, you have the choice of assigning a âdraftâ or âactiveâ status, but it will be set to draft and hidden from sales channels by default.
Iâve added a feature request on your behalf to ask the products team to consider the option of allowing merchants to change the default setting for new products to their own preference. This doesnât guarantee a change, but if we do receive consistent feedback around this, itâs something we can consider for future releases. I do appreciate you bringing this up to us.
One potential workaround in the interim would be adding your products via CSV imports. Products created with a CSV or API upload will be set to âactiveâ by default. This is the only option at launch, but the ability to specify draft status will be added later. This is especially helpful if youâre adding products in bulk.
Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.
Yeah, I totally get why some merchants would prefer that, but it really doesnât work for me, and makes things a little harder. I really appreciate the feature request, though; would love to see this addressed, as unfortunately, the bulk editor REALLY doesnât work for what I do!
Chris
I totally agree they make these defaults without any consultation or any effort to at least let us choose which default we want. So many times new products arenât live because of this stupid feature. Thereâs so many things could improve instead they try to make things difficult, the most tonedeaf company Iâve ever dealt with
Chris
Hi Miles it could also be useful if the âdraftâ status/archived were a different colour to the âactiveâ status - just a suggestion
Hi,
Any news on this update?
A default active / draft is definitely needed.
Hi @MrAlfie , @musicwharf123 and @Happy_Valley !
Thanks so much for your extra feedback on this recent change. We can only get better with this kind of feedback, so please know that it is appreciated.
Iâve added this to the request I raised for @Chrisjigsaw . Unfortunately, Iâm not able to provide a timeframe for this. As I mentioned in an earlier response, this is purely a feedback request and doesnât guarantee a change will be implemented. Many hands make light work, so the more feedback we get on this change, the likelihood of an update increases.
Please know that your feedback has been taken on board and our team will consider it for future releases.
To summarise the feedback Iâve received so far, Iâve included some points below:
Lastly, Iâd like to reiterate that this change came on the back of a large volume of requests we received to implement this. We know that not every change we make is going to be popular with everyone. But with over 1 million merchants, we do want to make sure the changes we do implement are going to help as many businesses as possible. Our job is to help you make money.
Thanks again for the feedback. Please keep it coming.
So to clarify, what happens when a product is uploaded via .csv with âPublishâ set to TRUE or FALSE respectively?
My previous workflow was to modify my products in csv in a large file, uploading the entire list but the portion that iâm currently making available to publish, those not available to not publish. If all products uploaded in any way via csv are set to active and thereâs not currently a way to upload as draft, what does publish do? Are there ways to set available channels via .csv import (website, ebay, amazon, google, etc.) to active or disabled also?
Hi, @Evyl !
This is a brand new feature weâve recently launched, so itâs still not fully functional. Below, Iâve listed some of the limitations that currently exist for product statuses:
Weâve got some great guides to help you navigate through this change. I recommend checking out product availability and adding and updating products to get you started.
As I stated in my post above, feedback is always welcome, so please let me know if you have any feedback on this new process at all.
Iâm another extremely unsatisfied customer that encountered problems with my workflowâŠ
itâs terrible to donât have anymore as default that products are immediately active after saving
this is causing problems to my workflow
it MUST be implemented a setting where i can choose which default option i wantâŠ
this shouldnât be a difficult task in my opinionâŠ
so i hope that others merchants will post here this request otherwise it will not be added soon
kind regards
Iâm just here to upvote this thread⊠I can understand how this new feature might be helpful in some use cases, but there should definitely be an option to change the default status to active instead of draft. Suddenly I have a bunch of draft products that we thought were published, as the team who is in charge of uploading products has been doing the same process for months. Now I have to train everyone again so they donât forget to change the status before saving, and I am 100% positive we will still have a few products marked as a draft when we thought they should be published as this is something easy to forget when you are already used to a certain workflowâŠ
Perhaps, instead of having to select between Draft and Active from a dropdown list, you could just have two buttons at the very top right of the page. A gray one âSave as draftâ and a green one âSave & Publishâ. IMO that would be a lot more user friendly and intuitive, without disrupting anyoneâs workflow.
Hi, @capocopa and @soymarketing !
Thanks so much for adding your thoughts on this change. I wonât repeat too much of what Iâve already said above, as I assume youâve already read through it. Iâll be happy to add both your comments to our feedback process on this change.
In the meantime, you are able to change the product from draft to active when creating it. I understand this is still an impact to your workflow in the interim, but this is one way to make sure your products are not submitted as drafts.
If you upload products via CSV, at the moment, these will all be added as active, so thatâs another way of working around the change. To learn more about uploading via CSV, please take a look at this guide.
Thanks!
100000000000000% Agree.. please give us the option. it may be good for some merchants that add multiple products at once, but for me that I add a few here and there, this is just one extra step for me!
Hi- I too think that when you list a product it should default to âactiveâ and let the merchants choose âdraftâ or give us the choice to change the default.
This is also really slowing down things for my shop. I also find myself having to go back and find products that were accidentally added as drafts that should be active.
A simple option to just change the default status would be great.
This is annoying, surely making products active should be the default! Iâve just spent days setting up my website from scratch and couldnât work out why so many of my items are drafts! How do I change them to active without reposting them as that would take me days again! Thanks 
@systemF Go to products â drafts (along the top) â select all using the checkbox on top left â edit products â add fields â status
then you should be able to select a whole bunch of them at once and change the status to active, rather than doing them one by one!
@SteamboatMusic thanks a lot appreciate that! Iâm Still getting to grips with things!
Has anyone had trouble with a lag time when changing products from draft status to active status? Last time it took about 5 hours for the product to populate on the site. Having the same problem today with one of the twenty some products in my collection appearing about an hour after I changed the status from draft to active. Thanks
