Product categories can be used to create site structure by maintaining parent/child relationships between categories. Any category can become a Parent when chosen in the Parent Category field of another category’s setup page. A category can be both a parent and a child at the same time. The product category system has unlimited categories with unlimited category depth and structure. However, the primary focus of designing your product category structure should be making it easy for your customers to navigate the site.
Product Category Concepts to Understand
Parent Categories – any product category that has another category assigned as a child in the category structure. A category can be both a parent and a child to another category. A parent category may contain products but does not have to contain products.
Child Categories – any product category that is connected to a parent category. They may also include Child Categories or products.
Using the method below, you can manually create categories and build your category structure for the site. Or, you can use our Category Import tool to quickly add many categories at once.
This would also be the time to create the Product Catalog, New Products, and Do Not Display categories.
Product Catalog - this is the holding category for all of your commerce categories. Since it is the parent of all commerce categories, it does not need a parent.
New Products - if you are using the PIM Workflow, this category can be setup and any new products added in your ERP will sync to this category. Since this is just a holding category, it does not need a parent.
Do Not Display - this can be used as another holding category for any products that you do not want updated or used on your commerce site. This category is generally marked not active or "FALSE", and since this is just a holding category, it does not need a parent.
Creating a Product Category
Navigate to “Categories” under the PIM section in the Portal
Select the “Data” tab
You can also select the columns you want to see by choosing the “Show/Hide” icon. If you reference the same columns every time, it may be helpful to save your filter selection for future use.
Looking at the last row on the screen, you will notice that all displayed fields are blank. This is where you will create your product category.
Creating a product category is simple – just click into a field and edit. If you have the option for a dropdown, you will select the correct option for your use.
To create a product category, all that is required is a unique “Code” and “Name”. The other fields below are not necessary but can be helpful when controlling data relating to categories and products.
The basic category columns are outlined below.
Code – the code entered should be unique. Also, keeping the same code format will help streamline this process (i.e., insulation, insulation_unfaced, insulation_rigid, etc.). Special characters may not be used when creating codes.
Name – this is what the customer will see on the commerce site.
Parent Category Code – if you create a parent category, the parent should be left blank. If you create child categories, you will enter the parent of the child category (i.e., insulation = parent, insulation_unfaced = child category).
Active – the category will need to be marked as active to be seen on the commerce site (active = yes; inactive = no).
Order – not always used, but if your product catalog is set up with the “Values Order By” setting of Category Order, you will be able to control the order of your product categories numerically. If you would like to use this option, please contact your account manager for assistance.
Once you have categories created for your commerce site, you are ready to add products to your categories. Updates or additions can be made at any time in the portal. You can also check your category structure by viewing the category tree in the portal.
Product Documentation
