Use filters and collections to find products in Optimizely PIM

Overview

Filters allow you to find specific products that require your attention. Use filters to narrow your product list to a manageable group of products you want to focus on at that time. If you find yourself reusing a filter over and over, you can save that filter as a collection for easy access. Collections can be global or private, and the products in a collection dynamically change as more products are imported that meet the filter logic.

B2B Commerce Storefront View

Filters and collections are internal to Optimizely PIM - they are meant for your team's organizational purposes. Filters and collections cannot be seen by the individuals using your website.

Best Practices

Pin commonly used collections to add them to the dashboard collections widget A pre-configured content holder ISC_Content user roles may use to add content to website pages without having to develop page elements. and the product list collections section. The dashboard collection widget lets you jump to the product list filtered for the selected collection. The product list collections section lets you quickly toggle collection filters with one click the product list.

Multiple collections can be used together as long as the filters in them do not conflict. This means you can create more generic collections for things like product statuses used in conjunction with other collections to find specific products. For example, as an approver I may use a generic collection for products with status “ready for approval” that I can use along with collections for products assigned to specific templates to review and approve specific types of products.

Use Case

Members of Carrie's team each manage different sets of products, based on their responsibilities at their company. Carrie is primarily responsible for Plumbing products, and she wants to focus on those products that need help before they can be published. 

She clicks the Filter button over the product grid, and enters the template name "Plumbing" in the field above the Template Name column. She also selects "Incomplete" in the Status column to see just products that are unfinished. This narrows her list to exactly what she needs.

Knowing she wants to return to this list multiple times, she decides to save this filter set as a collection. She clicks the Create Collection button next to the filter bar, and then gives her collection the title "Incomplete Plumbing Products" and a brief description.

When Carrie wants to review her list of collections or edit the titles and descriptions, she clicks the Collections icon in the navigation bar. From the collection list, she can also pin the collection which will add it to her dashboard collection widget and to the collection section on the product list.

Filter the Product List

  1. On the Products page, click Filter.
  2. Use the selection options that appear underneath the Header row to enter specific words or select options from a drop-down list, if available.
  3. Continue to add additional filters in each column as necessary.

Save a Collection

  1. Use the filtering process above to sort your products into a view you will use frequently.
  2. Click Create Collection.
  3. Add a collection name and description.
  4. Click the Pin icon to pin the collection to your dashboard and Product list page.
  5. Select whether the collection is Private or Global. Global collections can be seen by everyone at your organization, while Private collections are visible only to you.
  6. Click Save.

View, Edit, and Pin Collections

  1. From the navigation menu, click Collections.
  2. You will see a list of collections. Hover over a collection and click the pencil to edit.
  3. From the edit menu, you can change the title, description, and the private or global settings.
  4. When finished, click Save.

  5. To pin a collection to the product dashboard, click the pin icon. When you click View Collections on the product page, this collection name will appear above the grid for easy access. Only pinned collections will appear here; to view unpinned collections, return to the Collections area.

  6. To delete a collection, hover over the collection name and click Delete.