Product Categories

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In Microsoft Dynamics AX you can assign products to the item groups and product categories that describe the nature of a product, for example electronics or clothing. Item groups unlike product categories can be only of a single level, while using product categories you can create multi-level navigation.

Item groups or product categories with the assigned products can be imported from Microsoft Dynamics AX to Sana to automatically create the main menu of the Sana webshop and catalog.

To import item groups or product categories from Microsoft Dynamics AX into Sana, log in to Sana Admin and go to: Setup > Navigation > Configure categories from ERP.

To use product categories, you should create a category hierarchy and assign products to the categories in Microsoft Dynamics AX. Then you should enable product categories and select the category hierarchy on the Webshops form. The selected hierarchy with all its categories can be imported to Sana as navigation items for your webshop.

For more information, see Import Item Categories from ERP.

There are different types of category hierarchies that you can create and use in Microsoft Dynamics AX to group and categorize products. In the table below you can see some of the most used categories in Microsoft Dynamics AX and you can see for which categories product attributes can be configured.

Category hierarchy	1 or more hierarchies per legal entity	Product attributes availability	Retail module
Item group	Not available	No	No
Sales category hierarchy	1	No	No
Procurement category hierarchy	1	Yes	No
Commerce product hierarchy	1	Yes	Yes
Retail channel navigation category hierarchy	Multiple	Yes	Yes
Supplemental retail hierarchy	Multiple	Yes	Yes

 

Create a Category Hierarchy

Step 1: Click: Product information management > Setup > Categories > Category hierarchies.

Step 2: Create a category hierarchy. It can have multiple levels.

The table below provides the description of the fields required to create a category hierarchy.

Field	Description
Name	The name of the product category.
Visible in webshop	This option allows to make the product category visible or invisible in the webshop. If you change product category visibility, you will see the following message: You can change visibility of all products and product variants assigned to the product category. For example, if you make some product category visible in webshop, you can also make all products and product variants that are assigned to this category also visible in webshop automatically. If you make the product category invisible, all sub-categories will be also invisible.
Friendly name	The friendly name of the product category. It can be translated to other languages using Translations. Product category names are imported to Sana based on priority: Translations Friendly names Names

 

For example, if you create the product category "Christmas Sale", set a date when it should be visible, and assign certain products to it, they will all inherit visibility dates from the category.

 

Step 3: When the category hierarchy is created, you should assign products to the appropriate product categories. Open a product and on the Product tab, click Product categories. In the Product categories form, select a category hierarchy and a category that a product should be linked to. You can assign a single product to multiple categories, thus the same product will be shown in the webshop under different navigation items.

Step 4: When a category hierarchy is created and all products are associated with the appropriate product categories, click: Webshop > Common > Webshops.

Step 5: On the Product information management FastTab, enable product categories and select the category hierarchy.