Categories: How to

Locating Categories

Categories are accessible under “Master Data > Categories” section. There are two primary options:

• Product Categories
• Store Categories

Within each menu, you will have visibility of all existing categories, including:

• Automatic categories (e.g., families, countries)
  • The content of these is populated from the Product Master and Store Master created by the customer’s IT team. 
  • As a consequence, they can not be modified in Nextail - their content can only be accessed for visibility purposes. Any change needed on these categories has to go through the customer’s internal systems/ERPs.

• Manual categories 

• These are created when needed by the users - usually when they need a particular group of products or stores that is not included in any of the automatic categories.
• As a consequence, they are filled up, edited and maintained by the users. 
• For example, if there is an event that impacts only 3 stores, the user could create a manual category and fill it up with those 3 store codes so that when adding the Event in the platform, the scope was the right one.

Let’s go over how to create a new manual category.

Creating a Manual Category

1. Select a manual parent category.
2. Click on the right-hand side to add a new child category.
   1. To create multiple child categories at once, separate them with a comma.
3. If you want the child category’s KPIs to appear in BI, check the option “Report Available for BI.”

Filling up your brand new Category

After creating a category, it will be empty. The user will have two options to fill it up: doing so in bulk (most common) or by manually selecting the items to insert (category edition). Here below both options explained:

Bulk Category Assign

1. If you have a list of product or store references, go to Master Data > Product (for product categories) or Master Data > Stores (for store categories).
2. On the right-hand side, click the “Bulk Category Assign” button.
3. Copy and paste the list of references you want to include in your new manual category, then save.

Now that you have added your list of products/stores into your new Category, you can verify that the process went through successfully by using this same screen.

Go to the “Filters” button on the right-hand side of the screen and select the product or store category you just filled up. Once you click on “Apply filters”, the content of the category will show up.

Category edition

If the user needs to modify the content of an existing category, there are two options:

• When the need is simply to add more products or stores, the fastest way is to use the “Bulk category assign” button again and include the extra refs/codes.
  • This action will add new items without overwriting the existing ones.

• When the need is to remove stores or products from the category, go to “Master Data > Product Category Items” (for product categories) or “Master Data > Store Category Items” (for store categories).

1. Select the manual category you want to edit.
2. At the top of the screen, you’ll see the products or stores already included in that category.
   • To remove an item, click on the check-box on the left.
   • To clear the entire category, check the top selection box to select all items.
3. Confirm changes by clicking Category Changes on the right-hand side.

• This screen will also allow you to add extra products or stores to the category (although it’s faster through the “Bulk category Assign” option explained above). 

At the bottom of the screen, you will see the full list of products / stores available (full catalogue available in Nextail platform).

1. Use the filter on the right to search within a category for specific references or stores.
2. Or, use the search bar if you have the exact reference or store code you need to add. Once it appears, select it.
3. Confirm changes by clicking Category Changes on the right.
   

You now know how to view, create, fill up and update product and store categories within Nextail’s platform!