Auto Fill

Auto Fill is an advanced feature that allows you to automatically fill the contents of fixtures in your planogram based on a fixed set of rules. Auto Fill supports two modes: Fixture Mode fills one or more fixtures entirely, while Region Mode allows you to specify multiple areas of your planogram with different products and merchandising rules.

Auto Fill is particularly useful for:

Saving time that would otherwise be spent manually creating layouts
Updating planograms based on new data (i.e. Quarterly Sales) with a single click
Experimenting with different layout strategies quickly (i.e. filling shelves vertically vs. horizontally)

Getting Started

To get started, select one or more fixtures and press F, or right click and select Auto Fill. The following panel will appear on the left-hand side of the screen:

Auto Fill panel, bound to a single Rack with three shelves

The top line will show the fixtures you've selected for Auto Fill, and they will also receive a yellow-and-black border. If you select a Rack to Auto Fill, it will also select any shelves contained by that rack.

At the top of the dialog, you can use the Refresh button to update the fixtures based on your specified criteria. When you enable the Auto Update setting, fixtures will update in real time as you change the merchandising rules below.

When Auto Update is enabled, the fixture contents will be cleared and redrawn on every change! Make sure your work is saved before using this setting.

Product Selection

Product Selection determines all possible items that can be used to populate the Auto Fill fixtures. You can specify this in three ways:

Via Filters, as in the example below. Similar to catalog filters, you can specify one or more catalog item fields or Store Data fields to compare against.
Via Item Lists. Similar to catalog filtering, you can upload a CSV or XLSX file with a list of SKUs to include in this rule's regions.
Via Assortment. This option allows you to use a custom Assortment file to determine items to fill this rule's regions.

After an Auto Fill update runs, the fixture(s) will populate with the selected items - in this case, the Biscuits/Cookies category.

Target Fixture

The Target Fixture selector allows you to select which type of fixture will be populated by Auto Fill. Use the Shelves setting (the default) to fill out shelved products, and the Racks setting to place products on peg hooks.

If you select Shelves, note that all shelves affected will have their layout set to None.

GoPlanogram does not currently support applying a single rule to multiple fixture types.

Advanced Merchandising Settings

The Advanced options settings in the Auto Fill panel.

In addition to selecting products to include on a fixture, the Advanced Options menu allows you to specify several other merchandising rules to ensure the output matches your expectations.

Rank Products By

In many cases, the items identified by your Product Selection will occupy too much space to fit into the regions you have specified. Rank Products By determines which items will be dropped when there is insufficient space.

You can specify a data field or calculation for this criteria, as well as selecting ascending or descending. If you select ascending, the items with the highest values will be dropped. If you select descending, the items with the lowest values will be dropped.

In the example above, this auto fill will drop items with low values for best_selling, ensuring high-selling items are placed into planograms. This is also the default value for this setting.

If optimizing for Eye Level, this criteria will also determine which items are placed closest to eye level.

Cluster By

Cluster By determines how products are logically grouped -- for example, items in the same Category, or of the same Brand.

It is common to use category, sub_category, or sub_sub_category fields for this option, to ensure that items within a similar category will appear near to each other in the resulting displays. Custom branding fields are often common to ensure products with the same brand remain near each other.

Sort By

Within each cluster, Sort By determines the order in which products will be placed on the region.

Product Spacing

At the top of Advanced Options are the properties controlling where the rule places items and how tightly they are packed:

Horizontal Spacing specifies the space left between adjacent items, in your site's units.
Vertical Spacing specifies the space left between rows of items, on non-Shelf fixtures.
Eye Level causes items with a better ranking value to be placed nearest to the specified eye level, instead of top-to-bottom. The height defaults to your site's configured eye level, in your site's units.
Multi Merch causes every merchandising style of each item is treated as a separate candidate for placement, rather than just the item's default style.

Region Mode

Fixture Mode fills whole fixtures with a single rule. Region Mode instead lets you draw rectangular Regions anywhere on the planogram and give each its own rule, so one bay can mix different product selections and merchandising settings. Click the Regions button at the top of the panel to switch modes; the Fixtures button switches back.

The Auto Fill panel in Region Mode, with two rules

Rules and Regions

Each tab in the panel is a rule. Use to add a rule, to rename it or change its color, and to delete it along with its regions. The Product Selection and Advanced Options below the tabs apply to whichever rule is selected.

To draw a region for the selected rule, click Draw Region, then click and drag on the planogram. Regions take on their rule's color. Click the button again to stop drawing. A selected region can be moved, or resized with its handles, and regions cannot overlap.

Drawing two regions and filling them -- click to watch

Regions and their rules are saved with the plan, so you can reopen the panel later, switch to Region Mode, and pick up where you left off.

Filling Regions

Refresh and Auto Update work the same as in Fixture Mode, but fill every rule's regions rather than a list of fixtures. Each fill first clears the products inside each region, then places the rule's products within that region's bounds. Products outside of any region are left alone.

Filling turns off the Layout setting on any shelf a region places onto, along with shelves connected to it. Segmented layouts are kept, since they don't conflict with fills.

To view the planogram without regions, for example for reporting, enable Hide Regions in the View Options panel.

Region Inspector

Selecting a region shows its details in the Inspector:

Inspector view for a Region.

The region's dimensions and area.
Region Utilization -- the percentage of the rule's products placed in this region.
Rule Utilization -- the percentage of the rule's products placed across all of its regions.
Unused Items -- the rule's products that have not been placed in any region.