Introduction

Discover the catalog view feature of Intershop Commerce Management. The catalog view feature is the best way to configure different storefronts for different customer groups. Without developing effort, you can make dedicated catalogs, products and services visible and available for every customer.

This Intershop tutorial shows how to configure and integrate this feature into your online shop.

References

Overview - Catalog Views

Video Tutorial

Additionally to this tutorial, you can follow the tutorial tasks in the Guidance section below the video.

Guidance

Tasks

This video tutorial shows all relevant steps to configure and integrate catalog views. This includes the following tasks:

Preparations
Creating a new catalog view
Selecting all including catalogs or subcategories and services
Hiding products, their categories or services
Assigning one or more target groups
Publishing the catalog view and rebuilding the indexes

Walkthrough

Preparations

In our example, we want to offer products at a reduced price for registered students. We entice them with a reduced game console and hope they will fill the basket with more products afterwards.

For this, prepare a customer segment called Students, assign special product prices to this customer segment using a price list and add some of the previously validated Students accounts.

Create a New Catalog View

Go to Catalog | Catalog View in your channel back-office.
It is recommended to define different catalog views for different customer segments.
Click New to add a catalog view.
Enter a name and a description.
As Publishing Interval choose Manual Publishing Only.
It is possible to have catalog views published at regular intervals using a scheduled job to automate this process. The page cache is invalidated automatically as soon as the catalog view is set online or published.
Click Apply.

Select All Including Catalogs or Subcategories and Services

Switch to the tab Catalogs.
When starting catalog view definition, the catalog view excludes everything by default. Therefore, catalogs have to be included manually. To select a specific subcategory or product, open the corresponding category or subcategory.
Select the catalogs Computers, Entertainment, Cameras and Students Special.
Click Apply.
Open the catalog Specials.
Select the categories Gift Cards & Certificates and Top Sellers.
Click on Apply and << Back to Parent.
Select Product Types and Service Types in the Shared Classification Catalogs section and click Apply.

A disabled checkbox means an inclusion on a higher level. A disabled checkbox with an icon right next to it means an inclusion on a lower level.

Hide Products, Their Categories or Services

Switch to the tab Exclusions.
Open the catalog Computers, select the category Tablets and click Apply.
Click on << Back to Parent.
Open the catalog Specials.
Open the category Gift Cards & Certificates and select the Products Gift Card $25 and Gift Card $50.
Click on Apply and << Back to Parent.

A disabled checkbox means an exclusion on a higher level. A disabled checkbox with an icon right next to it means an exclusion on a lower level.

The exclusion of products may have an effect on service types.

Assign One or More Target Groups

Switch to the tab Target Group.
Click on Assign.
Select Students and click OK.

A single customer segment can be assigned to multiple catalog views in parallel. If a customer segment is not assigned to any view, it has no catalog visibility restrictions. In contrast, you have the possibility to assign multiple customer segments to one catalog view.

Publish the Catalog View and Rebuild the Indexes

Switch to the tab General.
Select the checkbox Online under Status.
Click on Publish Now.

Later on, catalog views must be published whenever new categories are included or excluded or whenever the product repository is updated. They can be published together or individually in the overview.

After these steps are done, an already prepared attribute needs to be added to the indexes to trigger the indexing of additional information about the product's visibility in each catalog view:

Go to Mass Data Tasks | Search Indexes.
Open the US product search index product-search-idx-en_US and switch to the tab Indexed Attributes.
Select Catalog View Filter and click on Add.
Please do the same for all relevant search indexes. In our example, we will also apply these steps to the German search index.
Go back to Search Indexes.
Open the German product search index product-search-idx-de_DE and switch to the tab Indexed Attributes.
Select Catalog View Filter and click on Add.
With the Catalog View Filter attribute, each catalog view ID, where the product is visible, is added to the index. At query time, an additional condition is added to the search index query if the catalog filter IDs attribute is present in the index configuration.
Go back to Search Indexes.
Select the US product search index product-search-idx-en_US and the German product search index product-search-idx-de_DE.
Click on Build.

In case catalog view definitions are in conflict, the setting for including categories take precedence over the settings for excluding categories.

Disclaimer

The information provided in the Knowledge Base may not be applicable to all systems and situations. Intershop Communications will not be liable to any party for any direct or indirect damages resulting from the use of the Customer Support section of the Intershop Corporate Web site, including, without limitation, any lost profits, business interruption, loss of programs or other data on your information handling system.

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