Commerce - bulk edit, workflow, show/hide

[bradl]

I once again had to wade into Commerce to add a slew of products in advance of a project. I was reminded of several workflow aspects of item setup that are cumbersome and painfully "clicky" when dealing with a largish number of items.

• It would be nice to have a bulk edit capability:  to toggle "show in store" for items, to apply a custom field, to apply or remove a payment method, to move within categories, etc.
• Because I can't show-hide at the category level,  I have to create a live future category in order to pre-fill it with "hidden" items. That category  now appears puzzlingly empty to visitors until we actually open the category. The same problem repeats for categories open for limited periods for  annual event-driven schedules. I tried creating the hidden items in an existing category but because many new-category items are near duplicates of items in the existing categories the confusion factor is overwhelming to keep track of minor differences buried in the item setups. 
• A visual indicator of "live" items in the ACP would be very helpful. Coupled with bulk moves it could be something of a workaround to support creating items in the "wrong" category as a means to avoid creating an apparently empty category.
• Tagging could be useful if visible/usable at the ACP list level, and perhaps at the store level. I would not want to lose the ability to arrange store items in a specific order.
• Every new item had to be saved twice. In order for payment method and description values to be saved I had to toggle on "show in store" and save the item, then reopen the item for editing again to toggle "show in store" back off, then  save again. I had to backtrack  and redo a fair number of items after I discovered that I could not count on changes made in the various tabs sticking if "show in store" was toggled off before saving. 

 

[bradl]

It would also be great if, when copying a store item, the new item included the custom field(s) associated with the source item.