Cooking Guide — User & Admin Manual

A friendly, end-to-end manual for brand managers, marketing teams, and product admins. No technical knowledge required.

1. What this app does

The Cooking Guide app replaces the small cooking instructions printed on food packaging with a digital, interactive experience. Customers scan a product, pick the cooking method they want to use (oven, microwave, air fryer, etc.) and walk through clear, step-by-step instructions with built-in timers, typed callouts (tips, cautions, "best results", "good to know") and per-appliance variant adjustments.

It is designed for:

• Brand managers who want clearer, richer, multi-method instructions than packaging allows.
• Marketing teams who want to update cooking guidance without reprinting packaging.
• Customers who want a guided, mistake-proof cooking experience on their phone — in their language.

The clever bit: you build reusable guide sets at the facet level, then assign them to products. Many products can share the same guide — perfect for ranges, variants or seasonal launches with identical cooking instructions. Single products can have their own overrides too.

2. Getting started — first-time setup

1. Open the admin console for your collection (your platform will provide the link, which includes the collection ID and app ID).
2. You'll land on the Cooking guides admin shell. The screen is split into three areas:
   • Left rail — browse existing guides. The tabs at the top let you switch between Facet scope (guides shared across many products) and Product scope (guides for a single product).
   • Editor (middle) — the form for the currently-selected guide.
   • Preview (right pane) — a live preview of how customers will see the guide, including the variant picker and starting-state toggle when those are configured.
3. Pick the scope you want to author at — usually start with Facet so the same guide can be reused across a whole product range. Click + New to create your first guide.
4. To create a product-specific override, switch to the Product tab and pick the product from the list.

Tip: Build a facet-level "master" guide first, save it, then preview it on a test product before building product-specific overrides. Product-level guides automatically override facet-level guides for that product.

Assigning products to facets: product → facet membership is managed in the SmartLinks console for now. Once a product carries the right facet, it inherits any guide saved at that facet scope automatically — no extra step needed in this app.

3. Creating records

3a. Creating a guide (left rail)

Pick a scope (Facet or Product), then click + New in the rail. Choose the target (a facet value or a product) and the editor opens immediately so you can add cooking methods. Use the search box at the top of the rail to filter long lists.

3b. Adding cooking methods to a guide

Inside a guide, you can add one or more cooking methods. Each method is a complete, standalone set of instructions for one way of cooking the product. Methods are added via the Add Method dialog, which shows colour-coded method tiles matching what customers see.

The available methods are:

You can add the same method more than once with a different starting state (e.g. one Oven guide for chilled, another for frozen). The public viewer shows a chilled/frozen toggle when both are present.

For each method you'll fill in:

Overview Settings

Variants (appliance grades)

Most methods have a set of sensible default variants customers can pick between — the public viewer shows pill buttons and recalculates times/temperatures accordingly:

You can edit these per guide, set a default variant, and use per-variant overrides on any individual step (collapsed by default; a badge appears when overrides are set). If a variant doesn't change anything for a given step, leave the overrides blank — the base value applies.

Cooking Steps

Add as many steps as you need. Each step has:

Click Add Step to add another. Steps are automatically numbered and renumbered if you delete one.

Tip: Most product guides need 3–6 steps. If you're getting to 10+, consider whether some can be combined.

Legacy single tip / warning fields from older guides are automatically upgraded to typed callouts on load — you don't need to migrate anything by hand.

3c. Saving and editing later

The guide editor saves when you close it. Reopen any guide from the rail to edit, add methods, or change steps at any time. Changes go live immediately.

4. Day-to-day usage (what your customers see)

When a customer scans a product (or opens a product link), they see the public Cooking Guide experience:

1. Method picker — Colour-coded method tiles for each enabled method, with cook time, temperature (if applicable) and a "N settings" pill where variants exist.
2. Chilled / frozen toggle — If a method has both starting states configured.
3. Variant picker — Pill buttons (e.g. "800W", "Fan oven"). Times and temperatures recalculate live.
4. Step-by-step viewer — One step at a time, with:
   • The instruction.
   • A built-in timer if the step has a duration (with haptic feedback on completion).
   • Typed callout cards (tip / caution / best results / good to know).
   • Previous / Next buttons and a progress bar with step pips.
5. Complete — When they finish the last step, they see a celebratory completion screen.
6. Start Over — They can reset progress at any time.

The experience is mobile-first, with smooth animations and large tap targets. It also respects the customer's language (English, German, French) — both the static UI strings and the admin-authored content (product name, overview, step text) are translated automatically.

5. Widgets

You can embed a small Cooking Widget anywhere your platform supports widgets. It shows a quick summary of the cooking methods available for a product with a single tap-through to the full guide.

The widget comes in three sizes:

All sizes include a View Instructions button that opens the full step-by-step experience. The widget honours the lang prop and translates admin content the same way the full viewer does.

The widget pulls its data automatically from whatever guide you've assigned to the product — no extra setup once the guide is live.

6. Managing records

Editing a guide

Click any guide in the left rail to open the editor. Changes save and go live immediately. Every product assigned to that guide updates instantly.

Disabling a method

In the editor, toggle Enabled off for a method. It will no longer appear to customers, but you don't lose the steps — turn it back on any time.

Deleting a guide

Click the delete icon next to a guide in the rail. You'll be asked to confirm. Warning: Any product currently assigned to that guide will lose its cooking instructions until you assign a new one.

Assigning a guide to a product

Product assignment happens via facets — when a product carries the facet value tied to a guide, it inherits that guide. Product-scope guides override facet-scope ones for that specific product.

7. Import / bulk setup

If you have lots of products to configure at once, you can import cooking instructions in bulk via your platform's import flow. Each row in the CSV defines one cooking method for one product.

CSV field reference

Each step inside steps can include: order, instruction (required, Markdown), duration (seconds), temperature, temperatureUnit (C/F), callouts (array of {type, body} where type is tip/caution/best_results/good_to_know and body is Markdown). Legacy tip and warning strings are still accepted and auto-upgraded.

CSV example

productId,productName,methodId,startingState,servings,prepTime,totalTime,steps
prod_001,Margherita Pizza,oven,chilled,2 servings,60,1500,"[{""order"":1,""instruction"":""Preheat oven to **200°C** (fan)"",""temperature"":200,""temperatureUnit"":""C""},{""order"":2,""instruction"":""Place pizza on middle shelf"",""callouts"":[{""type"":""best_results"",""body"":""Place directly on the rack for a crispier base""}]},{""order"":3,""instruction"":""Cook 12–15 minutes until golden"",""duration"":780,""callouts"":[{""type"":""caution"",""body"":""Do not leave unattended""}]}]"
prod_001,Margherita Pizza,microwave,chilled,1 serving,,180,"[{""order"":1,""instruction"":""Pierce film lid several times""},{""order"":2,""instruction"":""Heat on high for 3 minutes"",""duration"":180},{""order"":3,""instruction"":""Stand 1 minute before serving"",""duration"":60,""callouts"":[{""type"":""caution"",""body"":""Filling will be very hot""}]}]"

Tip: Group rows by productId. Multiple methods for the same product are merged into a single guide automatically. Use multiple rows with the same methodId and different startingState values to offer chilled/frozen variants of the same method.

8. FAQ & troubleshooting

Why can't customers see any cooking instructions? Three common causes: (1) the product has no guide assigned (no matching facet or product override); (2) the assigned guide has no methods enabled — open the guide and toggle at least one method on; (3) the only enabled methods have no steps — every method needs at least one step.

I changed a guide. Why don't customers see the update? Updates are live instantly. Ask the customer to refresh the page or rescan the product.

Why do hob, grill and microwave methods not show a temperature? They use variant grades instead — gas mark / electric / induction for hob, medium / high for grill, wattage for microwave. Pick the customer's appliance from the variant pills and times adjust accordingly.

My CSV import skipped some rows. Why? Most likely causes: missing required fields (productId, methodId, steps), an invalid methodId, or malformed JSON in the steps column. Check the import report for line numbers.

Can two products share the same cooking instructions? Yes — facet-scoped guides are shared across every product carrying that facet value.

What happens if I delete a guide that's in use? The guide is removed and any product assigned to it loses its cooking instructions until you assign a new one. The product itself isn't affected.

Can I temporarily hide a cooking method without losing my work? Yes — toggle Enabled off on that method inside the editor.

Do I have to fill in temperatures and times? No. Only the instruction is required on each step. Everything else is optional, but the more you fill in, the better the customer experience.

Does the app support other languages? Yes — English, German and French are supported automatically for both the static UI and the admin-authored content you write. Translations are cached after first fetch.

Why are durations stored in seconds in the CSV but minutes in the editor? The editor uses minutes for convenience. The CSV uses seconds for precision — multiply minutes by 60.

Future surfaces

This app does not currently ship a MobileAdminContainer. The Cooking Guide is a consumer-facing reveal experience — there is no field/operator workflow that requires NFC, RFID, QR scanning or on-device hardware.