Switching Between Unpinning Modes

This article explains how the Athos Commerce system behaves when you switch between the two "unpinning" modes — Autofill and Unpin & Shift — in a merchandising campaign.

Setup

In one scenario, we have a campaign with products 1–15 manually pinned to specific positions. We have also configured an automatic unpinning rule that unpins a product if it goes out of stock.

(In the image below, you can see the pin mode options in the top right.)

Autofill Mode

When a pinned product is unpinned (e.g., the product at position 5 goes out of stock), the system fills that empty slot with whatever product the relevancy algorithm would naturally rank next. The other pinned products stay exactly where they are — only the vacated slot gets a replacement. So the pinned pattern develops "slots" that are plugged by algorithmic picks.

Switching Modes

Later, we return to the campaign and change the unpinning behavior to Unpin & Shift. Under this mode, when a pinned product is unpinned in future, the remaining pinned products to its right will each slide one position to the left to close the gap, preserving a contiguous pinned sequence.

Note: Any slots that were already filled by the relevancy algorithm during the earlier Autofill period will not retroactively shift. Those algorithmically filled positions are treated as settled — they stay put. The shift behavior only applies to unpinnings that happen after you changed the setting.

In the example below, highlighted in red are slots that were created when products were unpinned and filled by relevancy.

Workaround

If you want those previously-autofilled positions to also collapse/shift, you will need to manually re-pin the products in those slots. Then, if they later are unpinned, the "shift" rule will apply to them.

Note: Changing the unpinning behavior is forward-looking only, not retroactive. Past Autofill decisions are frozen in place unless you actively re-pin them.