I have an app that generates complex products that are linked to dates/times/etc. Customers cannot use their own products or edit the variants/options due to this complexity. A big source of frustration is that merchants edit them anyway - despite repeated warnings - and it breaks the integration. Is there any way to not allow the merchant to edit product variants/options for “app-owned” products?
There’s no native way to lock edits to specific product variants or options. You can restrict staff permissions to prevent product editing, but that applies to all products, not just app-managed ones.
The closest workarounds:
- Add a warning to the product page in the admin using Admin UI Extensions
- Subscribe to the
products/updatewebhook to detect edits and then surface warnings in your app’s home screen
Thanks Paige. I do monitor the web hooks, but could do better. The Admin UI extension is a decent idea to surface as much warning as I can. I kindly ask if Shopify can review this request to make products lockable (only locking changing to variant options, adding variants) for future implementation. I think it makes a lot of sense and would provide a better merchant experience.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve also noticed a couple apps use warnings like “DO NOT EDIT OR DELETE” in product descriptions, though that’s not always practical for app-owned products.
I’ve passed this along as a feature request internally. Like most feature requests, I can’t share details on implementation timelines or whether it’ll move forward, but we appreciate you bringing this up.