When you publish a book, you must select the values of variant criteria. These values determine which primary objects and variants are published.
Each variant criteria has a list of values that you can assign to primary objects or variants. For example, a variant criteria called Country could have the values Turkey, Australia, and Spain. Assigning variant criteria to primary objects is optional, variants must have at least one variant criteria.
You must assign unique variant-criteria values to primary objects and their variants. You can't create two variants and assign the same variant-criteria values to both, or create a variant and assign it the same values as its primary object.
When you attempt to publish a book, Author-it checks what objects are used by the book (including the book itself, since books can have variant criteria and variants), the variants of those objects, and what variant criteria they have. You then select values for those variant criteria. Author-it compares the values assigned to the objects to the values you selected for publishing. If you've selected the values assigned to the object, Author-it will publish the object. If you haven't selected the values assigned to an object, Author-it won't publish the object.
If the criteria you select match those required by a variant, that variant replaces its primary object.
For example, a primary topic called "Product Description" has a variant called "X1000 Product Description". The variant has the value X1000 for the Product variant criteria:
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An author publishes a book that has the object "Product Description" in it, and selects X1000 as the value of the Product variant criteria. Author-it replaces "Product Description" with "X1000 Product Description".
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The author publishes the book again, and selects X1000 as the Product variant criteria, and USA as the Country variant criteria. Author-it still replaces "Product Description" with "X1000 Product Description". The "1000 Product Description" topic has no Country requirement, and the variant criteria it requires was selected.
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The author publishes the book a third time, and selects X2000 as the product variant criteria. Author-it publishes the primary topic, because the primary topic has no variant criteria, and X2000 doesn't match the variant criteria that the "X1000 Product Description" variant requires.
If a primary object has multiple variants that could replace it, Author-it uses the priority of the variant criteria to determine which variant it will publish.
