Categories are high-level logical groupings of products, affecting the way the Sales rep sees them for selection on the Product Catalog. A category can be created for browsing products in the Catalog page or they can be created for creating options groups for a Bundle product. Products are associated to a category through a category hierarchy. Category hierarchies are maintained using the Hierarchy Manager. They are also used to group the total price of the products belonging in a category on the Cart Summary.

Navigating the Categories Page

When you launch the Categories page on the UI, all the existing categories are listed on this page along with their details. There are various functionalities available for you to manage the categories.

Categories Search

You can narrow down the categories list using the search feature. You can either define search criteria to search for a range of categories or use the categories search option.

Basic Search

In basic search, you can search for a category using keywords. For example, you can search using the name of the category. 

  1. In the Search this list field, enter a keyword related to your category details such as category name.
  2. Click the search icon  or press Enter. CPQ returns all categories that contain that keyword in the category details.

Advanced Search

In advanced search, you can search for a category using a search query.

  1. Click the Advanced Search icon . The Advanced Search pop-up is displayed.
  2. Enter the following details: 
    1. Field: All category fields are available in the drop-down list such as Category Name, Label, Parent Category, Leaf, Modified Date and Created Date.
    2. Operator: Operators that are available for selection helps create the filter expression. Operators are displayed based on the field types. For example, a picklist value will display equal to and not equal operators and a text field will display equal to, not equal to, starts with, contain, does not contain operators. If it is a multi-value picklist, the application displays include and does not include operators.
    3. Value: Enter a value.
  3. Click Add Criteria if you want add more criteria in the advanced search.
  4. Turn the Logic button on if you have more than one criteria and enter a value in the Logic field.
  5. Click Apply to enable the search filter. CPQ returns all categories that match the criteria.

Sorting Categories

You can sort the categories by clicking the column names. The categories are sorted in descending order using the last modified date. Every time you click the column name, the sorting switches between ascending and descending order. You can adjust the column width by dragging the columns. Hover near the column boundaries till two-way arrow appears. Click when the arrow appears and drag left or right to adjust the column width.

Actions available on this page

  • Click Create New to create a main category or sub-category .
  • Click the ellipsis icon  next to the product name to edit or delete a category.
  • Click the category name link to open the category details page.

Items per page

At the bottom of the page, you can see the total count of categories available. You can control the number of categories to be displayed on each page. You can select the number of categories from a predefined list. You cannot configure this list. By default, you see 20 records on each page.

By default, you can sort 10, 20, 30, 50, and 100 categories per page using the Rows per page drop-down. This feature works in association with the search and filter functions to display search records per page. You can use the < and > buttons to move to the next or the previous pages. You can also jump to a certain page using the page search component.