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 functionality that can be exploited to manage
the master catalog. Examples of these functionality include sequencing
of subcategories in a category or the sequencing of the catalog entries
in a category.
Procedure
- Go to the following directory:
WC_profiledir/xml/tools/common
- Make a copy of resources.xml in a
separate directory.
- Make a copy of the CommerceAccelerator.xml file
from the directory relevant to the business model you are using, in
a separate directory. The following list indicates the appropriate CommerceAccelerator.xml file
to use for each business model:
- For Professional and Express Editions, open CommerceAccelerator.xml
- For the consumer direct home page, open CommerceAcceleratorB2C.xml
- For the B2B direct home page, open CommerceAcceleratorB2B.xml
- For the B2B indirect catalog profile home page, open CommerceAcceleratorCPS.xml
- For the B2B indirect home pages:
- Extended sites home pages:
- For the extended sites hub home page, open CommerceAcceleratorHCP.xml
- For the storefront asset store home page, open CommerceAcceleratorMPS.xml
- For the store home page, open CommerceAcceleratorMHS.xml
- Demand chain home pages:
- For the channel hub home page, open CommerceAcceleratorCHS.xml
- For the B2C reseller storefront asset store home page, open CommerceAcceleratorRPS.xml
- For the B2B reseller storefront asset store home page, open CommerceAcceleratorCPS.xml
- For the store for resellers home page, open CommerceAcceleratorRHS.xml
- Supply chain home pages:
- For the supplier hub home page, open CommerceAcceleratorSCP.xml
- For the supplier asset store home page, open CommerceAcceleratorSPS.xml
- For the supplier store home page, open CommerceAcceleratorSHS.xml
- Open the temporary copy of the CommerceAccelerator.xml file
in a text editor.
- Locate the following section:
<node name="CatalogDesign"
component="CatalogDesign"
url="/webapp/wcs/tools/servlet/NavCatCatalogListDialog?displayNumberOfProducts=true
&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
&extendedFunction=(categoryTemplate=false,
masterCatalog=true, sku=false)"
users="catMgr makMgr podMgr seller"/>
- Save your changes.
- Update the copy of resources.xml to point to your customized
copy of the CommerceAccelerator.xml file.
- Update WebSphere Commerce with the updated files. For more information, see the Updating enterprise application files topic.
Ensure that you follow the instructions for updating a partial application
zip.
You will need the following information:
- Enterprise application name
- WC_enterprise_application
- Relative path to file
- xml/tools/common/ original_file_name
- Restart
the WebSphere Commerce Server.
Results
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 functionality
available for your master catalog that you have for the sales catalogs.
However,
because of this added functionality, 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 subcategory of multiple categories.
- You should only do this if you are using the Consumer Direct model.
If you are using any of the contract functionality, you need to 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 subcategory 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 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.