Managing Product Categories
FlexNet Operations 2014
Product categories allow you to group, classify, and describe products. Primarily, categories can be used to define access rights to product information for internal users, in large organizations with diverse product offerings. For example, a product manager for a CRM product might be authorized to view products and entitlements for only CRM products, instead of viewing products across an organization’s entire product line. Product categories can also be used on self-service portal sites to ensure that customer users see only the items related to the product categories to which their accounts are linked.
You define access rights by mapping products to product categories and then product categories to publisher organizations or to customer user accounts.
Two special product categories are automatically defined by FlexNet Operations:
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All—Applied to all customer users by default, this category includes all products. When implementing product categories, FlexNet Operations provides the default All category to preserve product access for backward compatibility. Later, this category can be removed and appropriate product categories linked to implement selective product category access for customer users. |
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Uncategorized—Collects the set of products that have not been mapped to a category. FlexNet Operations treats Uncategorized as a separate product category. Customer user accounts that have not been linked to the Uncategorized category cannot see uncategorized products. |
Product categories can be the object of searches. In addition, product categories can include descriptive attributes that can be used to characterize them.
To define a product category
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Click Package Products. |
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Under Products, click Manage Product Categories. |
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Click Add Category. This button opens the Create Product Category page. |
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On the Create Product Category page, in Name, enter the name of the category. |
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In Description, enter an optional category description. |
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To add a product attribute, click Add Product Attribute (optional); otherwise, click Save. |
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On the Create Product Category Attribute page, in Name, enter the name of the attribute. |
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Indicate whether the attribute is required for the category. |
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In Type, select the attribute type, then specify any additional details as needed. |
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Boolean: A pair of radio buttons for mutually exclusive choices, such as Yes or No. |
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Long Text: A text value that can be up to 16384 characters. The value can be typed or pasted into the text box. (The Display Type setting controls how a long text value will be displayed: Text Area or Text Field.) |
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Text: An alphanumeric string. Specify Max Length (a number of characters), Text Type (Single Select, Free Form, or Multi Valued Text), and Display Type (Text Area or Text Field). |
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Number: A numeral, for example, 33452. (Value must be integral.) |
Product categories that have not yet been mapped to a product can be deleted. Likewise, product category attributes can be added to or deleted from a product category provided that product category has not yet been mapped to a product. After a product category is mapped to a product, it cannot be deleted, and alterations to its product category attributes are highly restricted—only the addition of optional attributes is permitted.
To delete a product category
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Click Package Products. |
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Under Products, click Manage Product Categories. |
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Select a product category, and click Delete. |
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Click OK to confirm the deletion. |
To delete a product category attribute from a product category
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On the the Product Categories page, click the product category for which you want to remove one or more product attributes. |
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Select the attributes you want to remove, and click Delete. |
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Click OK to confirm the deletion. |
See Also
Mapping a Product to a Category
Linking Product Categories to User Accounts
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