Define category trees and categories in Optimizely PIM

Overview

Use category trees and categories to organize your products and create taxonomies for customers to browse one or more of your websites. Use a clear category structure with products assigned to the proper categories to ensure that customers can find products on your website easier. Your category attributes enable filters on your product list pages in Optimizely Commerce. You can maintain multiple category trees, if needed, to support multiple websites.

Build category trees by adding categories. Include basic category information on the Details tab and use the Products and Attributes tabs to assign these items to a category. You can manually assign products or set up dynamic rules for product assignments on the Products tab, and assign relevant attributes to the category on the Attributes tab.

B2B Commerce Storefront View

See Review How Optimizely PIM Data Appears to Customers for more details.

Best Practices

Categories in Optimizely PIM function the same way as categories in Optimizely Commerce. If you are using PIM, you should create and manage categories only in PIM. This ensures that PIM is your one source of truth. Communicate this expectation to anyone managing categories in PIM.

If you have multiple websites that share the same category structure, you do not need to create a category tree for each. Only create category trees for websites with distinct taxonomies.

Use Case

Carrie knows that Victory wants to set up their website to show they sell both kitchen and bathroom faucets within their Plumbing product offerings. To mirror this structure, Carrie goes to Configure > Categories and first creates a Victory category tree by clicking the More Options icon. She then creates a Plumbing category and a Faucet subcategory with two additional subcategories for Kitchen and Bathroom.

Carrie was considering adding a further level of faucet types under Kitchen (Pot Filler and Bridge) and Bathroom (Sink and Shower), but decided to stay with three levels for now and watch customer shopping patterns to see if she needs to add more granularity later.

Carrie needs to wait to assign products to her new categories until she has imported them. At that point, she would go to the Kitchen category, select the Products tab and enable the Use Dynamic Rules toggle. She would then select a property of Product Template, an operator of Equals, and a value of Kitchen Faucets. Once she clicks Save, the assigned product list automatically populates with every product that uses the Kitchen Faucets template. She then repeats these steps for the Bathroom category, selecting the appropriate template.

Because the Enable auto-assignment of category attributes toggle on the Configure page Settings tab is enabled, the category attributes for the new Kitchen category are automatically assigned based on the properties mapped as an attribute for the products in the category. Carrie knows that she does not want the filter options for the Kitchen category to contain all of the mapped attributes for her faucet products on the B2B Commerce site. She returns to the Kitchen category, selects the Attributes tab, and clicks the Assign icon to deselect the Auto assigned attributes checkbox. She now selects from the available list the attributes that she wishes to include in the Kitchen category filter options.

Category List Page

Use the Category list page to search for, filter, and select categories for editing, assigning properties, and assigning to products.

You can sort data by clicking column headers, and filter records by clicking the filter icon to expose column header filters. Edit individual categories by clicking on the name, which takes you to the Category details page. If a category is active, the Deactivate On cell is empty.

Category Tree Navigation

Select Category Tree - Select the category tree with which you wish to work from the drop-down list.

Filter by Name - Enter a partial or full category name to narrow the results across the selected category tree folders.

Expand all and Collapse all - Click to expand or collapse the entire category tree.

Select folder - Select a folder in the category tree to apply a parent category filter. The selected folder and its sub categories display in the category list results.

Category List Navigation

Editing - Click an individual category record to view and edit its details.

Search by name - Enter a partial or full category name to narrow the results across all folders in the selected category tree.

Filters - Click the Filter icon to enable or disable column filters. This adds a row below the column headers with options for filtering each property. Filtering also updates the count of records and paging options. Click a filter to open a window to change the filter option or value. Depending on the column's property data type and control type, you may see the following options:

• Search operator of Contains, Does not contain, Starts with, Ends with, Equals, Does not equal, or Reset

• Property value of Yes, No, Is Empty, or Is Not Empty

Pagination - By default, 25 categories display in the list, with options to view 50 or 100 per page. Go to other pages using the pagination controls under the list.

Organize Category Trees

Create a Category Tree

1. Click Categories in the navigation menu.
2. Click the More Options icon next to the drop-down list and select Create Category Tree.
3. Enter a Category Tree Name.
4. Select a website from the Assign Available Websites list. Websites with category trees already assigned cannot be selected. Be sure to assign a website to each category tree, since this setting will help make categories available in Optimizely Commerce once you publish products.
Note: If a website that was created in Optimizely Commerce does not display, you must run the PIM: Sync Setup Job in the admin console.
5. Click Create.

Edit a Category Tree

1. Select a category tree from the category tree drop-down list.
2. Click the More Options icon next to the drop-down list and select Edit Category Tree.
3. Edit the name and websites in the same window where you created the category tree. 
4. Click Save.

Delete a Category Tree

1. Select a category tree from the category tree drop-down list.
2. Click the More Options icon next to the drop-down list and select Delete Category Tree.
3. Click OK when the confirmation message appears.

Organize Categories and Assigned Products

Add Categories

You add categories to category trees. Categories then appear as folders within each category tree. 

1. Select a category tree from the category tree drop-down list.
2. Click the Add Category icon.
3. Select a Parent Category, if applicable, and enter a Category Name and a URL Segment on the Category Details page.
4. Enter dates on which to activate and/or deactivate this category.
5. Flip the toggle to Exclude From Dynamic Product Recommendations if you do not want to include products in this category in dynamic recommendations on your website.
6. Enter a Category Description.
7. Add a category image from the Asset Drawer if desired.
8. Add the Page Title, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords to enhance the category's metadata if desired.
9. Add the Open Graph Image, Open Graph Title, and Open Graph URL if you want the category's preview link to display attractively when shared on social media. If these fields are left blank, the category's small image (Category Images section), name, and URL (Category Details section) display instead.
10. Click Save.

You can expand or collapse all categories using the links at the top of the category list.

Delete Categories

1. Select a category tree from the category tree drop-down list.
2. Use the category tree navigation options to locate the category you wish to delete.
3. Hover your cursor over the category and then click the Delete icon that appears.

Add Products to Categories Manually

1. Click the Products tab for a Category.
2. Click the Assign Products icon.
3. Select the products you want to assign in the Assign Products window. You can sort or filter products, or use the toggle to see only products not assigned to any categories.
4. Click Assign when you finish selecting products.

Add Products to Categories using Dynamic Categories

If you want to ensure that products are automatically assigned to a category when they meet certain criteria, you can use the Dynamic Rules option. Dynamic Rules are dependent on properties and product templates, so you will want to ensure your properties and product templates are set up before trying to implement Dynamic Rules.

When published products are added or removed from a dynamic category, their status is automatically updated to Approved. All other product statuses remain the same.

1. Click the Products tab for a category.
2. Flip the Use Dynamic Rules toggle.
3. Define the rules for this category:
1. Choose whether the category will include products that match ALL ("and" operator) or ANY ("or" operator) of the rules
2. Choose a property on which you want to set a rule.
Note: You can select a product template as a property as part of the dynamic category rules.
3. Choose the operator - given operators are Equals, Is Not Equal To, Matches, and Is Included in List. The operators that are available will vary based on the control type used by the property.
   • For the operators Equals and Is Not Equal To, select the corresponding value from a drop-down list or enter the value in a text box. If the property from which you are pulling is a multi-select property, you will have the ability to select multiple values from the drop-down list. If you select multiple values here, each product must match all values in order to be added to the category ("and" operator).
   • If you choose Is Included in List, select the corresponding value from the drop-down menu. If you select multiple values here, products that have any of the selected values will be added to the category ("or" operator).
   • If you use Matches, enter the match value in the text box. You can also use a * wildcard to make any number of characters and ? as a wildcard for a specific character.

4. Click + Rule to add another rule. Note that products assigned will either match ALL ("and" operator) or ANY ("or" operator) of the rules you add depending on your initial selection.

5. Click the Delete icon to remove a rule.

4. When you are finished, click Save. The products that meet your rule requirements populate in the grid below.

If you would like to stop using dynamic categories, toggle Use Dynamic Rules to the off position. This removes any existing rules and no products will be auto-assigned to this category moving forward.

Unassign Products from Categories

You can unassign a single, multiple, or all products from a category that does not have dynamic rules implemented.

1. Click the Products tab for a category.
2. Use the various search and filter options to locate the product(s) you wish to unassign.
3. Select the checkbox beside each product you wish to unassign, or select the checkbox in the header row to select all products on the current page. When you select any number of products, you can click Select all products in this category in the footer bar to select all products across all pages.
4. Click Unassign. The products are no longer assigned to the category.

Organize Category Attributes for B2B Commerce

Assign Attributes to Categories Manually

In PIM, an attribute refers to any property that is mapped to an attribute in B2B Commerce. Attributes assigned to a category can be used as filters on the category-specific product list.

1. Click the Attributes tab for a Category.
2. Click the Assign Attributes icon.
3. Select the attributes you want to assign in the Assign Attributes window. You can choose to view all attributes, or show only the attributes that are related, based on the products assigned to the category you are currently editing.
4. Click Save when you finish selecting attributes.

Auto-Assign Category Attributes

It can be a lengthy process to manually assign attributes to categories in PIM. To save time, users can set up an auto-assignment process for category attributes. This process takes any attribute on a product included in a certain category and sets it as an attribute for that category, removing the need for users to do this work manually.

Turn On Auto-Assignment of Category Attributes

1. Log in to PIM.
2. Go to Configure > Settings.
3. Click the toggle under Enable auto-assignment of category attributes to flip it to the active position.
4. A warning displays, which indicates that attributes will be assigned based on the products in each category and unrelated attributes will be unassigned. To proceed, click Auto-Assign.
5. The toggle will turn blue, indicating that auto-assignment is active.
6. Click Save.

When this setting is active, any new categories created manually or through imports during this time will include the auto-assignment of attributes feature.

Auto-assignment of category attributes will not take place instantly; the auto-assignment process runs with the B2B Commerce integration job. When the Publish Approved Products job runs, every property mapped as an attribute on products in a category will be assigned as a category attribute for any category that has auto-assignment enabled.

In cases where you want to use auto-assignment of category attributes for most categories but have specific categories you want to manage manually, you can disable auto-assignment for these categories.

Disable Auto-Assignment for a Specific Category

1. To remove auto-assignment for a particular category in PIM, go to Categories.
2. Click the category from which you want to remove auto-assignment.
3. In the category menu, select Attributes.
4. Click the link icon in the upper right.
5. To remove auto-assignment, uncheck the Auto assigned attributes checkbox.
6. Click Save.

Import Categories

You can import categories and their tree structure in bulk. Use the provided import template to add new categories or update details for existing categories. If you have the Auto assigned attributes checkbox selected, all categories added through import will include the Auto-Assign Category Attributes feature.

1. Click the Import Categories icon in the top right.
2. If you have not already formatted your categories according to the template format, click Download Template.
3. Once you have a formatted template file, click Choose File.
4. Locate your category file and click Open.
5. Click Continue. If you receive any validation errors, please resolve them before attempting to import again. You can download the provided file to view error messages that are specific to each row.
6. View your import progress at the top of the Categories list page or click Cancel to stop it. A log of the import displays on the Imports page.

Export Categories

You can export the category information for all categories, a filtered list, or selected categories.

1. If you wish to export only selected categories, ensure you have them selected.
2. Click Export, and then select either Filtered list or Selected assets.
3. Click Continue. The export window appears in the lower right corner.
Note:Do not close the window before the file is ready for download.
4. Once the file is ready for download, the Download exported file link appears. Click the link to download the file.