Create an option
Options let you sell the same service in several configurations without building a separate service for each one.
An option describes what can vary within a service — processor, memory, storage, colour. Each option holds one or more variants, which are the values a customer actually picks. One service, many shapes.
On the provider side, options do more than shape the marketplace listing. They decide what the customer pays, what you have to deliver, and what can still be changed after delivery.
Options, variants, and how many you really want
Take a notebook in your portfolio. You might define three options:
CPU — Intel Core i5, or Intel Core i7
RAM — 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB
Storage — 256 GB SSD, or 512 GB SSD
That is one service in your catalogue, and twelve possible configurations for the customer.
It is worth pausing on that number before adding a fourth option. Each option multiplies rather than adds, and every combination a customer can order is a combination you need to be able to deliver. Three options are comfortable. Five get unwieldy fast.
You create options on the Options tab of a service, using Add option. Each option appears as its own card, with its values listed underneath and Add option value to add more. Alongside the name you can give an option a brief description and a display order, which controls the sequence the customer sees.
Mapping configuration type
This is the most consequential setting in the dialog, and the least obvious.
Mapping configuration type defines how the option behaves in the service mapping module. There are two values:
Variant combination means the option depends on the others. CPU, memory and storage are not separate things a customer adds — together they define which device is being ordered. Every combination of the selected variants resolves to one specific bill of materials.
Additive means the option is an independent addition. An accessory, an extra service, a cable. It brings its own components alongside whatever else was selected, without depending on the other options.
Choosing the wrong type here does not break anything visibly on the Options tab — the consequence shows up in the mapping, where the option either produces variant combinations or does not.
Mandatory options and default variants
Mandatory means the option is always included in the order and cannot be deselected. A notebook has to have a processor.
Each option also carries a default variant, marked with a green check in the variant list. The default is what the customer sees pre-selected, and it is usually the entry-level configuration. To change it, open the variant menu and choose Set as default.
Defaults matter more than they look. Most customers accept what is already selected, so the default variant is effectively the version of your service that gets ordered most.
What can change after delivery
Three toggles decide how flexible the option remains once the product is in the customer's hands. They are easy to skip past when setting up a service, and awkward to explain to a customer later.
Can be booked later allows the option to be added after the product has been delivered — someone orders a notebook without the docking station and adds it three months in.
Can be cancelled later allows an option to be removed after delivery. A mandatory option cannot be cancelled, so the two settings are mutually exclusive.
Variant can be changed retrospectively allows the customer to switch to a different variant of the option after delivery, with the change booked accordingly — a memory upgrade partway through a term, for example.
Whether these make sense depends entirely on what the option represents. A licence tier can plausibly change mid-term. Soldered memory cannot.
Active
Active controls whether the option can be ordered at all. It only takes effect if the product itself is also active — an active option on an inactive service changes nothing.
This is the switch to use when you want to retire an option without deleting it and losing the configuration behind it.
Pricing per variant
Each option value carries its own Recurring price and One-off price, and both are set per offer. The Prices displayed for selector at the top right of the Options tab controls which offer you are looking at — so a 36-month leasing offer can carry different surcharges than a purchase offer of the same service.
In practice this means an upgrade is priced as a surcharge on top of the base offer rather than as a separate service. In the notebook example, the i5 sits at €0.00 while the i7 adds €10.00 recurring, and 16 GB adds €2.50 against the 8 GB baseline.
Each value also has a Description, shown in the list alongside the prices — useful for making clear at a glance which value is the baseline and which is an upgrade.
Leaving the prices empty for a variant disables it in that offer. This is a practical way to publish the same service to different customers with different configurations available, rather than maintaining separate services per customer.
How variants are displayed
Each option has its own Display type, which controls how its variants are presented in the marketplace. The setting changes nothing about pricing or logic — only what the customer sees.
Standard shows each variant as its own selection card. This works well when there are few variants, when they are visually distinct, or when you want the customer to compare at a glance.
Compact puts the variants in a dropdown. Better when there are many variants, when they are similar in nature, or when the selection area would otherwise become long.
Because the setting sits on each option individually, you can mix both within one service: a compact dropdown for a long list of processors, standard cards for two storage sizes.
Option values can also carry their own marketing text, editable from the value menu, for cases where the name alone does not explain the difference to the customer.
What happens next
Defining options is only half of the setup. The service now knows what a customer can choose, but not yet what you deliver for each choice. That connection is made on the Mapping tab, where each variant combination gets its own bill of materials.
Last updated
Was this helpful?