Purpose

This help article contains instructions regarding how to create the new categories you need before you can import new products into your transactional Impact catalog.

Prerequisites

• Completed instructions in Stage 1: Planning your New Categories
• Completed instructions in Stage 2: One-Time Set Up for Product Imports
• Your list of the new categories (by level) that are needed for the products to be imported
• Your Impact Admin login credentials for Elastic Path

Steps

Step 1: Prepare

1. Log in to your Elastic Path account {{{link}}}
2. Click “Merchandise” in the left margin
3. Click “Hierarchies” in the left sub-menu

Step 2: Which Hierarchy Container

All categories created by you or by anyone else within your Impact catalog should be created within the “Dealer-Hierarchy” container.

The “Orgill Hierarchy” container holds all of the Orgill categories that Orgill loads into all Impact catalogs. This data is automatically refreshed (repopulated) every day by Orgill. Most of the data within this container is protected and cannot be updated. However, if you do update any of it, your updates will be lost when the Orgill portion of your catalog is reset during the next daily refresh.

Step 3: Review Existing Categories

Clicking the angle bracket (“>”) before a Hierarchy or a category will toggle the display of the categories defined under that “parent” node.

Click the angle bracket (“>”) before the “Non-Orgill Hierarchy” to see any categories defined below it. Continue clicking any available angle brackets (“>”) before those categories to see any subcategories defined below those “parent” nodes, and so on.

Compare all of the available categories within the “Dealer-Hierarchy” container with your prepared list of the categories that are needed for the non-Orgill products to be imported, to determine which of these needed categories already exist, and which need to be created.

If all needed categories already exist, and none need to be created, then you are done with this help article.

If some or all of the needed categories do not exist yet, continue with Step 4 until the end.

Step 4: Create Needed Categories

Any created categories will not be seen in your public catalog until at least one product has been added to a given category. This allows you to safely create a group of new categories without them showing up online until they contain products.

For each of the needed categories that don’t yet exist in the “Dealer-Hierarchy” container, use the following instructions to create each such new category node:

1. Click the existing “parent” category of the category to-be-created, to make the parent the active category. To create a top-level category, click the “Dealer-Hierarchy” container to make it the active category.
2. Click the [+New node] button near the top.
3. In the “Name” field of the pop-up form, enter the name of the category to-be-created. Enter the name in title case with a space between each word, e.g., “Building Materials”, not “Building-Materials”, not “BuildingMaterials”, not “building materials”.
4. Do not populate or change any of the other fields.
5. Click the [Create] button near the top of the form.
6. You should see a small pop-up confirmation message saying ‘New node “_____” created successfully…’.
7. Repeat the instructions in this Step for each new category that needs to be created.

Step 5: Publish the New Categories

Once all of the categories that are needed for the new products to be added have been created in the above Step, we will need to publish the updated catalog before we can use these new categories.

1. Click “Catalogs” in the left sub-menu.
2. Find the category entry named “PROD-SBT-nnn”. It is usually the first or last category entry in the list.
3. On the far right side of the “PROD-SBT-nnn” entry, click the “...” menu and select the “Publish” option.
4. In the “Publish Confirmation” pop-up window, click the [Publish].
5. In the bottom-left corner, click the Activities bell icon (above the Settings gear icon):
   
6. At the top of the Activities pop-up window, if the “Activity Type” drop-down is set to [Jobs], then change it to [Catalog Publication].
7. Click the “PROD-SBT-nnn” entry to display its details.
8. Find the “Latest Release” heading, which should be the instance at the top of the list.
9. Its current status is displayed on the right side of the instance and will be one of the following values:
1. [PENDING] - The publish request is waiting in a queue to execute (it has not yet started)
2. [IN PROGRESS] - The publish request is currently executing and can run for between 10 minutes and two hours; usually 10-15 minutes once it starts.
3. [PUBLISHED] - The request is done, and the changes have been published.
10. The “Activities” pop-up status will not dynamically refresh over time. Periodically, close the “Activities” pop-up window ([X] or [Esc]), and re-open it by clicking the Activities bell icon in the bottom-left corner to check the updated status of the Latest Release until it becomes [PUBLISHED].
11. Once the new categories are published, close the Activities pop-up window ([X] or [Esc]).