Product launch statuses: Coming Soon & Preview

Coming Soon and Preview are two product statuses that give you more control over how and when products appear on your web store. Preview lets your content team build and review product pages privately inside Viskan CMS, while Coming Soon lets you show upcoming products on the storefront and collect customer interest before launch.

Together, they support a complete product launch workflow — from internal preparation (Preview), to public anticipation (Coming Soon), to full availability (For Sale).

Coming Soon

Coming Soon makes a product visible on the live storefront but not yet available for purchase. The product is displayed with a “Coming Soon” badge on both product listing pages and the product detail page, signaling to your customers that it will be available soon. This helps build excitement around upcoming products and lets customers express interest before launch.

How it works

A product is considered Coming Soon when it has the status Not Yet For Sale (status code 0) combined with a publish date in the future, set in Viskan Backoffice.

• A “Coming Soon” badge is shown on listing pages and the product detail page.
• The expected availability date and time is displayed on the product detail page and in listings, so customers know when the product will be available.
• Even if there is physical stock, the product cannot be purchased as long as it is marked as Coming Soon.
• When the publish date passes, the product automatically transitions from Not Yet For Sale to For Sale (status code 50) and becomes purchasable.

Customer interest and notifications

Customers can subscribe to notifications for Coming Soon products using the Back in Stock interest type. When the product becomes available, they receive an email. The notification email is sent only when both of the following conditions are met:

1. The product is published — the status has changed to For Sale.
2. Physical stock is available.

This means that if a product has physical stock but is still marked as Coming Soon, no email is sent. Likewise, if a product is in stock but not yet published, no email is sent. You decide when to publish — only then is the notification triggered.

Preview

Preview makes products visible only within Viskan CMS — never on the live storefront. This gives your content team a way to build, edit, and review product pages before the product is made available to customers.

How it works

A product is considered a Preview product when it has the status Preview (status code 10) in Viskan Backoffice.

• Preview products are only accessible when logged into Viskan CMS and are completely hidden from the live storefront.
• A “Preview” badge is shown on the product within the CMS, making it easy to distinguish preview products from published ones.
• You can navigate to the product detail page of a preview product, but only while logged into the CMS.
• Preview products are excluded from sitemaps, SEO data, and any public-facing feeds.
• Placeholder data (such as temporary prices, images, stock balance, and required translations) is generated automatically so that preview products can be displayed even before all real data exists. The placeholder data is cleared as soon as real data is added or the product changes status.
• To turn off preview for a product, simply change its status (for example, to For Sale). The product status itself controls visibility — there is no separate toggle.

Typical use case

1. A new product is created in Viskan Backoffice and set to status Preview.
2. The content team logs into Viskan CMS and builds the product page: images, descriptions, pricing, and layout.
3. The team finds and fixes missing data, missing translations, and similar gaps.
4. Once everything looks good, the status is changed to Coming Soon (to build anticipation) or directly to For Sale (to make it available immediately).

How Coming Soon and Preview work together

The two statuses support a complete product launch lifecycle. The table below summarizes how each product status behaves:

A typical launch workflow

1. Preview — Work on the product page internally in Viskan CMS.
2. Coming Soon — Make the product public on the storefront and let customers subscribe for notifications.
3. For Sale — The product is live and purchasable, and notification emails are sent to subscribers.

How Coming Soon appears on your storefront

When a product has the Coming Soon status, the Viskan CMS components adapt automatically:

• A “Coming Soon” badge appears in product cards and on the product detail page, with text and styling that you can configure in the CMS.
• The buy button and quick buy are replaced by a notify button that shows the planned publish date and time. Clicking it registers the customer for the Back in Stock email so they are notified when the product launches.
• Attribute selectors, color and size lists, and the back-in-stock component all use dedicated Coming Soon styling and copy, kept separate from the out-of-stock variants.

Note that Coming Soon is distinct from the existing incoming stock concept, which highlights already-purchasable products that are temporarily out of stock with a restock ETA.

API fields

The following fields are available in the product API for building custom integrations or storefront logic:

For product list and product detail requests, the API supports a preview parameter, which must be set to true to include preview products in the response. Preview products are otherwise excluded.

Good to know

• Preview products are not indexed by search engines and will not appear in sitemaps or SEO data. Plan your content accordingly before switching to a public status.
• The Back in Stock integration requires separate configuration to be used with Coming Soon. Contact us if you would like help setting it up.