Advisories — Configuration Warnings & Blockers
Advisories are rules that watch a customer as they configure a product and speak up when something looks wrong — "that door is too tall for a single panel," "that box is deeper than your slides allow," or "this size can't be built." They're how you bake your shop's hard-won knowledge into the storefront so customers can't order something you can't make.
Availability: Commerce and up (paid plans). Reached from Product → Advisories tab.
What an advisory does
Each advisory is a rule with four parts:
- Conditions — when it fires (based on the customer's field values).
- A severity — how serious it is, from a gentle note to a hard stop.
- A message — the title and body the customer sees.
- Optional fixes and surfaces — one-click corrections, and where the message appears.
You build them on the Advisories tab. Click Add Advisory to build one by hand, or AI Setup / Generate with AI to have TimberCloud write one from a plain-English description.
Severities
The severity sets the tone and, for the strongest level, whether the customer can submit at all.
| Severity | Meaning | Blocks the order? |
|---|---|---|
| Info | Neutral context — shown, but not stressed | No |
| Recommendation | Suggests a better choice (the default for most rules) | No |
| Warning | A real defect or warranty risk — hard to miss | No |
| Blocker | Cannot be manufactured — Submit / Add to order is disabled | Yes |
Important: A Blocker always disables submission when it fires. That's its whole purpose, so its "block on submit" surface is turned on automatically and can't be switched off.
Conditions (when the rule fires)
An advisory fires based on conditions you set on the customer's fields. Conditions are organized into a condition group with an ALL / ANY toggle, so you can express real rules like "over 48″ tall and only one panel."
Each condition compares a field on the left to a value on the right using an operator:
| Operator | Meaning |
|---|---|
> , ≥ , < , ≤ | Numeric comparisons |
= , ≠ | Equal / not equal |
| equals (text) | Matches a text value exactly |
| contains | The field contains a piece of text |
- Set the group's logic with the ALL / ANY toggle: the rule reads "Fires when ALL of these are true" (every condition must match) or "Fires when ANY of these are true" (any one is enough).
- The right side of a condition can be a fixed value (like
48) or another field.
Example — warpage warning:
Fires when height
>48AND panel count=1→ a Warning titled "Tall single-panel door may warp," suggesting a second panel.
The message
Every advisory carries a title and a body. Keep the title short and specific ("Depth exceeds drawer slide") and use the body to explain why and what to do. This is the text your customer reads, so write it the way you'd talk a customer through it at the counter.
One-click mitigations
An advisory can offer one-click mitigations (add them with + Add suggested action) — buttons that correct the problem for the customer in one tap. Each suggested action has a label (e.g. "Add a center rail") and one or more field changes (+ Add another field change) that set fields to the right values when clicked. Instead of leaving the customer stuck, you hand them the solution.
You can add several suggested actions to one advisory when there's more than one sensible way out.
Where advisories appear (surfaces)
You choose where each advisory shows up. These are the surfaces:
| Surface | Where it appears |
|---|---|
| Inline (next to field) | Right beside the field that triggered it |
| Visual preview badge | On the product's live preview |
| Popup notification | A toast that pops up when the rule fires |
| Block "Add to order" | Disables submission until the issue is resolved |
Info, Recommendation and Warning advisories let you mix and match these. A Blocker always includes "Block Add to order" (it's the point of a blocker).
Generate with AI
Writing conditions by hand is precise but slow. The AI Setup button lets you describe the rule in plain English and have TimberCloud build the whole advisory — conditions, severity, message and suggested fix — for you to review and tweak.
For example, you might type:
"If a door is over 48 inches tall and has only one panel, warn about warpage and suggest adding a second panel."
TimberCloud turns that into a working advisory. You can then adjust any part of it before saving. See the AI Advisory Generator for more.
Tip: AI Setup is the fastest way to start. Describe the rule the way you'd explain it to a new employee, generate it, then fine-tune the numbers and wording.
Empty-form dry run
At the top of the Advisories tab, TimberCloud runs a quick self-test: it evaluates every advisory against a completely empty form. If a rule fires when nothing has been filled in yet, you'll see a warning like "2 rule(s) trigger on an empty form — check conditions."
That almost always means a condition is too loose (for example, comparing a blank field to 0). Tighten the conditions so the advisory only fires on real, problematic configurations — not the moment a customer opens the product.
A worked example
Goal: Stop customers from ordering a drawer box deeper than your 21″ slides.
- Go to Product → Advisories → Add Advisory.
- Condition:
depth>21. - Severity: Blocker (can't be built).
- Message: Title "Depth exceeds drawer slides," body "Our standard slides support up to 21″. Choose a shallower depth or contact us for custom hardware."
- Fix action: Label "Set depth to 21″," which sets
depth=21. - Surfaces: Inline + Block Add to order (block is automatic for a blocker).
Now any customer who types a depth over 21″ sees the message inline, can't submit, and can fix it in one click.
Next Steps
- AI Advisory Generator — Write advisories from plain English
- Attributes — The dropdown choices advisories can test
- Line Items — The fields (width, height, depth) advisories watch
- Configurator (Parts & Cut Lists) — Turn a valid configuration into real parts