Define Item Attributes for Item Variants

The public preview for Dynamics 365 Business Central 2026 release wave 1 (BC28) is now available, and there’s a feature in this release that many of us in the BC community have been waiting for. You can now define item attributes at the item variant level. It sounds simple, but if you’ve ever worked with variants in a real-world scenario, you know how much this changes things.

Let me walk you through what this feature does, how it works, and why it matters.

The Problem This Solves

Item variants have been a great way to keep your product list manageable in Business Central. Instead of creating a separate item for every color, size, or material variation, you set up one item and define the variants underneath it. A t-shirt in five colors? One item, five variants. Much cleaner than five separate item cards.

But here’s where it used to fall short: item attributes. Until now, attributes were only defined at the item level. So if your base t-shirt had an attribute of “Color: Blue,” all your variants inherited that same value. The red variant? Also said “Blue.” Not ideal.

You either had to live with inaccurate attribute data on your variants, or you gave up on variants entirely and created separate items just so each one could have the right attribute values. Neither option was great.

What’s New in BC28

With this release, you can assign attribute values that reflect the specific variant at the item variant level. Variants still inherit attributes from the parent item, but you can now adjust or remove those inherited values when a variant needs different information.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Key Capabilities: •      Assign attribute values directly to individual item variants •      Variants inherit attributes from the parent item automatically •      Adjust or remove inherited values per variant as needed •      New Item Variant Attribute Values page accessible from the Variants List or Variant Card •      New Update Variant Attributes action on the Item Card to force sync from item to variants

How It Works

Attribute Inheritance

When you add a new variant to an item, the attributes defined for that item automatically transfer to the variant. This is the inheritance part. If you’ve already set up attributes like Material, Weight, or Color on the parent item, your new variant gets all of those right away.

One thing to note: if no attributes are defined on the parent item, the variants will also be empty. The inheritance only works when there’s something to inherit.

Editing Variant-Specific Attributes

Once the attributes are inherited, you can open the new Item Variant Attribute Values page to review and edit them. You can get to this page from either the Item Variants List or the Item Variant Card. From there, you update or delete the inherited values so each variant shows the correct details.

So back to our t-shirt example: your parent item might have Color set to “Blue” (the default). When you create the “Red” variant, it inherits “Blue,” but you can immediately go in and change it to “Red.” Simple, clean, accurate.

Syncing Attributes with Update Variant Attributes

There’s also a new Update Variant Attributes action available directly from the Item Card. This lets you force a sync of attributes from the item down to all its variants. It’s useful when you’ve added or changed attributes on the parent item and want to push those changes out to existing variants without going through them one by one.