Use the Sales Catalog tooling on the master catalog

WebSphere Commerce Accelerator provides two sets of tools to manage catalogs. The Catalog Management tooling available from the Products menu can be used to manage the master catalog and the Sales Catalog tooling available from the Merchandise menu can be used to manage the sales catalogs.

However, the sales catalog tooling offers many functionalities that can be exploited to manage the master catalog. Examples of these functionalities include sequencing of sub-categories in a category or the sequencing of the catalog entries in a category.

Do the following to enable the management of the master catalog using the sales catalog tooling:

1. Go to the following directory:

   WC_profiledir/xml/tools/common

2. Make a copy of resources.xml in a separate directory.

3. Make a copy of the CommerceAccelerator.xml file from the directory relevant to the business model you are using, in a separate directory.

   This file should never be directly modified. For more information, refer to XML configuration directory.

4. Open the temporary copy of the CommerceAccelerator.xml file in a text editor.

5. Locate the following section:

   <node name="CatalogDesign"
   component="CatalogDesign" 
   url="/webapp/wcs/tools/servlet/NavCatCatalogListDialog?displayNumberOfProducts=true
           &amp;extendedFunction=(categoryTemplate=false,
   masterCatalog=false, sku=false)" 
   users="catMgr makMgr podMgr seller"/>
   

   and modify it to set mastercatalog=true such that the section looks similar to the following:

   <node name="CatalogDesign"
   component="CatalogDesign" 
   url="/webapp/wcs/tools/servlet/NavCatCatalogListDialog?displayNumberOfProducts=true
           &amp;extendedFunction=(categoryTemplate=false,
   masterCatalog=true, sku=false)" 
   users="catMgr makMgr podMgr seller"/>
   

6. Save your changes.

7. Update the copy of resources.xml to point to your customized copy of the CommerceAccelerator.xml file.

8. Update WebSphere Commerce with the updated files. See the Updating applications topic in the WebSphere Application Server Information Center for instructions. Ensure that you follow the instructions for updating a partial application zip.

   You will need the following information:

   Enterprise application name

   WC_enterpise_application

   Relative path to file

   xml/tools/common/ original_file_name

9. Restart the WebSphere Commerce Server.

After the changes are complete, when you access the sales catalog tooling, you will see the master catalog listed as one of the sales catalogs. This ensures that you have the same functionalities available for your master catalog that you have for the sales catalogs.

However, because of these added functionalities, you should be aware of the following restrictions and limitations:

• Be careful not to delete your master catalog.

• You can now have catalog entries under multiple categories or a category as a sub-category of multiple categories.

  • You should only do this if you are using the Consumer Direct model. If you are using any of the contract functionalities, preserve the structural restrictions of the master catalog and a product in multiple categories break one of the structure restriction. Also having a category as a sub-category of multiple categories breaks one of the restriction.

  • Even in the Consumer direct store by having a product in multiple categories, you will put limitation on the following tool:

    • If you use the the Category tab in the product notebook to change the parent category, one of the many parent categories will be changed.

    • You will not be able to use the Category tab in the Product Management tool to change the parent category. You will see a list of categories to which the product belongs.

    • To work around these issues, the Sales Catalog tool needs to be used to manage the relation between categories and catalog entries.

Related concepts

Sales catalogs

Related tasks

Listing catalog entries in a category
Designing a sales catalog