Variant structure for a new product based on an existing product with different release version numbering

[Leah Goldman]

We are creating a new product (B) which is really a sub-set of an existing product (A). However, the product will have it's own release version numbers. The user guides for these two products will share many of the same topics. I thought to duplicate or variant the books (not sure which is the better option), remove the topics not needed for product B, variant the topics that are needed but have changes, and add additional topics not relevant to product A. So, I set up my variant structure as follows:

Products:

    Product A

        Version 5

                Version 6

                      Version 7

    Product B

        Version 1

            Version 2

                   Version 3

However, when I filtered my Product B book for version 1, all of my variants for Product A versions 5, 6, 7 were crossed out and didn't publish. So, I'm not sure how to accomplish my goal of using many of the same topics for both the products and being able to variant them but keeping my fallback paths to reflect the version numbering for each product release.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Leah

(Have a happy raining day. It took me 3 hours and 15 minutes to get to work today but I am still thankful for the rain!)