How do customers follow updated products in Commerce?

[The Old Man]

Daft question, I'm probably missing the obvious, but aside from manually promoting, how do people follow and get notified when I update products in Commerce?
There doesn't seem to be a Follow option for Products in Commerce, I couldn't find anything in Notifications either.

Scenario:

I add a downloadable theme in my Commerce store, that people can buy.
Later, I update the theme because there is a new version, via Store Products > My Category > My theme > Client Area Settings > Client Area Content (Upload my new version, update the description, changelog text etc).

Outcome:

Clients can download the updated version, but nobody knows its been updated!

It doesn't appear in the Activity Streams. I tried creating a new custom Activity Stream for Products only, selected my product category but it seems to show only new products added, not updated!

[Ryan Ashbrook]

Any reason in particular you are not using Downloads for this? You can link them to Commerce products, and buyers can follow the download to be notified of new versions.

[The Old Man]

Hi Ryan, to be honest, it had crossed my mind! 🤔

I thought it was more confusing and chargeable Downloads were intended for site members to sell their own items they upload (like here in the Marketplace), where as for the site owner the Commerce/Client centre app is what is used? Perhaps I got the idea from how IPS doesn't sell its own products in Downloads here, I don't know? Also, I saw you can generate license keys in Commerce, but I've not tried out that feature yet.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

Yes, you can simply disable normal members ability to post paid files, and then simply link any you post to a corresponding Commerce product. What you are describing is precisely why it was designed this way. 🙂 

Also, fun fact, we did actually use this but when IPS4 was developed and released, we needed a custom build system for it, rather than just offering the same download to everyone.

[The Old Man]

Thanks Ryan, trying this out to better understand how they integrate. I didn't want to lose the functionality Commerce provides. Not that I've had any members yet!

Edited December 2, 2021 by The Old Man