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Creating product families, tags, and categories

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to create product families, tags, and categories.

Creating a Product Family

Product Families enable you to define hierarchical product categories to group and classify product data. You can create multiple product families, with each family consisting of a hierarchical tree of product categories. Each product family can represent a unique category.

In the product definition, you can then assign the product to categories in different product families. You can also bulk-manage category-product assignments from the Product Families workspace by selecting a specific product category and then opening the Products tab in the right pane. On the Products tab for the selected product category, you can view, add, or delete product associations.

The overall process to set up a product family with categories and then associate a product with a category is as follows:

Create a product family.
Add custom tags for the product family.
Create product categories for the product family.
Associate one or more tags with the product family, product category, and/or products.
Associate one or more products with a category.

The application enables you to define tags for a product family and associate each tag with specific product categories. Before a tag can be assigned to a category, it must first be defined for the Product Family within the Custom Tags section on the Details tab. When you delete a tag, the tag is removed from all categories to which it was associated.

Users can include tags when searching for products during the territory alignment process. Tags are an inheritable attribute, so when you assign a tag to a category, all children of that category automatically inherit the tags assigned to the parent. Additionally, products associated with the parent and the child categories inherit the associated tags.

Product Families and Territory Alignment

During the territory alignment process, on the Add Products screen, if the Product Category option is enabled, the application displays the corresponding category tree, as well as leaf-level products.

Once products have been added to a category in the Product Family, the entire category of products can be assigned to the territories within a territory program.

Note

A Territory definition can consist of actual products and/or product categories.

Aligned products, through the Product Category option, can include category information to be included in the alignment object. You must include category information if you require that products are grouped under the corresponding product-category in the Quota Breakdown.

Note that the creation of a new product category doesn't result in automatic creation of product alignments. The benefit of aligning a product category with a territory is that you can set the quota at the category-level.

Creating a Product Family

You can define product category hierarchies to classify your product data.

Create a Product Family

Steps

Navigate to Territory Admin → Products.
Choose Product Families.
Choose Create () on the right of the Product Families View header.
The Add New Product Families screen opens.
Required: In the Standard Fields section, enter the Name of the product family.
Enter a brief Description of the product family.
Enter one or more Business Units.
Required: Enter the Effective Start Date for the record.
Enter the Effective End Date for the record.
Save your changes.
The new product family is saved and is listed in the list of product families.

Result

The fields to create a product family are displayed on the Add New Product Families page.

Adding Custom Tags for the Product Family

Once you've created the product family, you can add custom tags that you can associate with specific categories in the category tree.

Add Custom Tags for the Product Family

Steps

On the Product Families Search screen, use the Name link to reopen the new product family.
In the Custom Tags section of the Details tab, enter a Value for the new tag.
Enter other search terms related to the new tag in the Alternative Values field.
Alternative values are additional search terms that correspond to a tag. If a search is run using any of the alternative values for a tag, the products associated with the tag are returned. The alternative values must be a space-separated list of values.
Choose Add.
The new tag is listed under the Tag field. When you hover over the tag, alternative values associated with the tag are displayed.
Save your changes.

Result

The fields to add custom tags for product families are displayed on the Product Families page.

Creating Product Categories

You can create a hierarchy of categories associated with this product family. Note that the first category that is created for the product family is the parent node for the entire hierarchy.

Create Product Categories

Steps

On the Product Families Search screen, use the Name link to reopen the new product family.
Select the Product Category tab and choose Create (). The Category Details pane opens on the right.
Enter the Name of the category.
Enter a brief Description of the category.
Required: Enter the Effective Start Date.
Enter the Effective End Date.
Search for and select the Parent Category. This step is only applicable if there's at least one category already available for this product family.
Save your changes. The new category appears as part of the category hierarchy on the Product Category tab. To create another category, repeat the steps described in this section.

Result

The fields to create product categories are displayed on the Product Families page.

Associating One or More Tags with a Category

Tags are inheritable, so if you assign a tag to one category, all its child categories inherit the tag.

Associate a Tag with a Category

Steps

On the Product Category tab, select a category to which you want to associate a tag. The Category Details section for the selected category opens.
Select a tag from the Tags dropdown.
Choose Add. The new tag is listed under the Tag dropdown. If needed, continue to add additional tags to this category.
Save your changes.

Result

The fields to associate custom tags with product categories are displayed on the Product Families page.

Create Product Families, Tags, and Categories

Business Example

In this exercise, you'll learn how to create a new product family, add tags to the family, and add the family to a category. Configuring the product families is necessary to have products properly aligned with territories and to allocate quotas accurately.

ExerciseStart Exercise

Associating One or More Products with a Category

You can directly associate a product to a category within the Product Families workspace.

To learn more about product families, tags, categories, and how to create associations, watch the following videos:

Associate a Product with a Category

Steps

On the Products tab of the selected category, choose Create (). The Add Products window opens.
Select the checkboxes for any product you want to associate with this category. You can choose Column Search () to search for a specific product.
Choose Next.
Required: Under Products to Category Alignment Dates, enter the Effective Start Date.
Required: Enter the Effective End Date.
Save your changes. Each product you selected is added to the Products tab of the category.
Save the overall changes to the product family.

Result

The image below shows how Bikes in Motion can associate a single product, in this case kids' gloves, to the Bike Clothing product category.

Several screenshots related to associating products with a category are displayed.

Create Product Families and Associate Products

Business Example

In this exercise, you will perform the steps to set up a new Product Family and create product associations.

ExerciseStart Exercise

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