Process: Develop catalog structure
Flow
Objective
Create a hierarchical tree of categories as a taxonomy.
Description
The Product Manager or Category Manager will determine and create the structure and definition of the catalog to organize its products in a taxonomy. The taxonomy organizes products such that management and maintenance of the products is efficient and accurate. Products belonging to a category should exhibit all behavior described in that category. Businesses usually organize their products based on one or a combination of the following:
- Product classification (industry standard or custom classification)
- Products are strictly organized based on what they are and by the attributes they possess.
- Supplier provided classification
- As some businesses may have a limited number of suppliers, managing products based on the categorization provided by their supplier can be more efficient than mapping the categorization to another classification scheme.
- Business policy classification
- Some businesses may manage their catalog based on their own business policies (such as brand names, manufacturers, or business rules) and will organize their catalog to reflect their business policies.
WebSphere Commerce provides a user interface to physically create the categories of the taxonomy in the WebSphere Commerce database. If new suppliers and product lines are added or updated, the taxonomy may require some redesign work.
Features
- Multi-language support for catalog descriptions, images, and attributes.
- Unlimited number of category hierarchy levels.
Customization
- Retrieve attributes from an attribute dictionary. While Websphere Commerce allows you to specify attributes pertaining to products in a category, there is no base support for a structured attribute dictionary. Such an attribute dictionary can be added as a customization by either leveraging an external system or by customizing Websphere Commerce directly.
- Manage taxonomy updates resulting from new supplier product classification requirements
- Announcing taxonomy updates to suppliers
Edition
Professional, Enterprise, Express
Tasks
| Task | Description | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Add category attributes |
Add or modify attributes which describe the Category. This includes images, descriptions and other information in different languages associated with the Category. |
Product Manager |
| Add category hierarchy |
Add or modify the relationship of a Category within the hierarchy of the Catalog / Taxonomy. A Category can be added as a child Category to the root of the Catalog or as a child of another Category. |
Product Manager |
| Create category |
Create a category within the catalog. |
Product Manager |
Business artifacts
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