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Why Self-Service Procur. Catalog needs to be connected to a Purchase Category Assortment when it seems that it is not used for anything with the catalog

 

Hi Matti!

The category assortment structure is used in the self-service portal (webshop) for the end-user to be able to find products in a category structure. Just having everything in a long list in the portal without any categorization would not make it easy for the end user to find what they are looking for.

When adding parts to the self-service catalog they are automatically categorized according to the categorization dimensions used in the procurement category assortment.

You could argue that if you do not want any categorization to show up in the portal you should not need any category assortment connected, but there are some technical reasons related to how this is implemented that makes it mandatory to have a category assortment connected to the catalog or the portal will not work.

Just get back to me if you have further questions.

Best regards,

Henrik


Thanks but I don’t see the Assortment as field here. What am I missing?

 


If you have defined a category assortment structure and the product lines are categorized according to any of the dimensions, there should be a Sub Categories group on the page where the user can navigate into the different categories (see below).
 
If none of the products are categorized then no categories will show up in the portal.

This is how the portal looks with Sub Categories:
 

 

You could also check the lines in the self-service catalog if they have any values in the field Category Assortment Node:
 

 


Why is this screen then showing parts not belonging to this category? Some of those belong to no category?

 


A bit hard to say without seeing the data, but I can give a best guess.

First - All parts that does not have a category are shown on the top node of your category assortment structure. If you would not see them there, they would never show up at all and the top node cannot really be considered a category.

It seems to me that you either do not have any sub categories in your structure (since both the sub categories group and the buttons to go up and down in the category structure are missing) OR none of the products in your catalog have any connected category. Then the portal shows the top node in the category assortment and all products shown below that node.


ok thanks


Hi @Henrik Sjöström,

 

I have a question about the functionality about updating the catalog within the self-service procurement portal. 

Currently as I see it, it is only possible to update via these settings?
 

 Is it possible to update the catalog with the parts connected to the assortment only?
It means a lot of extra administration if you need to connect new agreements just because of the “update catalog function”.

 

Thanks in advance for your answer :)


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