Your products may have additional information that is not covered by the standard fields in the product catalog. In fact, you can store any arbitrary information in the Extension field hidden from customer view. This extended information is useful for record keeping and it becomes available in your business rules to change the behavior of the product.

Some example uses of the Extension field include:

• Record the type of material that you don't necessarily want the customers to see. The type of material (e.g. percentage of gold) is calculated by your price modifier rule to adjust the price.
• Use the Extension field to record the email address for each different product that you drop ship. The Place order action rule can be written to read the extension field and automatically send out the email to the manufacturer to fulfill.

You must first enable the Extensions feature under Configuration > Product. Once enabled, you'll be able to enter your own extension data. The Extension field can hold data in any XML format. We recommend keeping the format simple, for example:

<data>
  <material>gold</material>
  <composition>0.5</composition>
</data>

In your other business rules (e.g. place order action rule, price modifier rule, availability rule, email templates, etc.) you can query the data stored in the Extension field to make determinations that affect the behavior of the product.