If you use the multi-location option, BRM can store the Home location of your bikes.
But depending on your multi-location mode, this data will be stored at different levels in your product hierarchy.
1. global availability
In this mode, BRM doesn't do any clever location-based filtering when your customers book online. So we can store your home location on each Item. It is really just for your information so you can manage your bikes better.
So you can have more granular Home locations. Meaning we store at the Item level:
2. location-based-availability
If you are using this mode you are asking BRM to intelligently make decisions about which bikes can be rented and where based on their Home location.
This means the data needs to live at a particular place in your hierarchy so that the Online booking experience can work.
This place is the Product Family.
As you can see from this diagram of Online Booking operating in this mode, the data needs to live at the Product Family level, because it is Product Families which we show (or hide) based on the user's selection and their home location.
The implications of this are as follows.
Imagine you have two identical Santa Cruz Tallboys. Lucky you.
Because they are identical you'd normally put them in the same Product Line and hence Product Family.
But if you want your clients to be able to only book the right bike from the right location you are obliged to put your bikes into two Product Families.
- Santa Cruz Tallboy Canterbury
- Santa Cruz Tallboy Whitstable
See Also