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Linking categories or dispositions with specific products
Answer ID 2306   |   Last Review Date 03/25/2019

How can I have a list of specific categories display for each of my products?

Environment:

Products, Categories, Dispositions, Linking 
Oracle B2C Service

Resolution:

You can use the product linking feature to link products to specific categories and/or dispositions. For example, one of your products may be linked to the first two categories in your list and another product may be linked to two other categories in the list. When linking is used, only specific categories or dispositions are available when you set the product value. This allows you to basically configure distinct lists of categories and dispositions for the products in your site. If product linking is enabled, it is enabled across all interfaces (site wide) -- either product-category linking or product-disposition linking.

For more comprehensive information regarding product/category linking refer to the 'Linking products, categories and dispositions' section in online documentation. To access Oracle B2C Service manuals and documentation online, refer to the Documentation for Oracle B2C Service Products.

Product linking affects product-category selections for incidents, chat requests, and answers as well as product-disposition selections for incidents. When working with incidents or answers, when staff members select a product, only the categories that are linked to that product display. Similarly, with incidents, only the dispositions linked to a product display when the product is selected. On the end-user pages, when users search for answers, when they select the product, only the linked categories can be selected for searching.

The product linking feature allows staff members and users to select appropriate values from a subset of the overall list of categories or dispositions. As a result, incidents and answers are less likely to be mis-assigned to a category that does not really apply for a specific product. Similarly, if dispositions are linked to products, incidents are more likely to be assigned to a disposition that pertains to the product value.

Note: You can select top-level products on the editor, linking occurs only with leaf-level products. If you want to create links for all of a top-level product’s leaf products, you must select each of the leaf products separately instead of selecting only the top-level product. Because linking occurs only between leaf-level products, categories, and dispositions, the links you create while multi-editing do not apply to any top-level products you select, but only to the leaf-level products you select. (However, once you have created links to leaf products, the parent product is implicitly linked.)

Linking categories to products is independent of linking dispositions to products, so you can enable one type of linking, no linking, or both types if you wish. When product linking has not been defined or product linking has been disabled, all categories and dispositions are available for any product that is selected.

Product linking functions in only one direction: from the product to the categories or dispositions. That is, when you select a product, the categories and dispositions linked to that product are available. However, you cannot select a category or disposition to find all the products linked to it. You also cannot link categories to dispositions.

Manual and Automatic Linking

Within Oracle B2C Service, you can either manually define linking relationships between products and the categories or dispositions or you can have Oracle B2C Service automatically generate these links based on current activity and associations in your site. Automatic category linking creates links for every product-category combination in all answers of your knowledge base. Automatic disposition linking creates links for every product-disposition combination in incidents created within the last thirty days.

When product-category linking is enabled, the search features in the administrative pages are not affected. Even with product linking enabled, you can select any product and any category from the Search window. Searching on the end-user pages IS affected since the only categories that will show must be linked to the product selected. Similarly, when saving an answer, you must first specify the product value and you can then set the category based on the linked values that display.

Click the plus sign next to the appropriate heading below to expand that section for viewing.

To Enable linking

  • Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
  • Double-click Products/Categories/Dispositions under Service.
  • To enable product-category linking, click the Enable button on the ribbon and select Product-Category Linking.
  • To enable product-disposition linking, click the Enable button on the ribbon and select Product-Disposition Linking.
  • Log out and then log back in for the changes to take effect.

 To create links Manually 

  1. Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
  2. Double-click Products/Categories/Dispositions under Service
  3. In the Products column, identify the product you want to link. Right-click the product and select Edit
  4. To create category links, click the Category Links button on the ribbon. Select the check boxes for each category that you want to link to the product. Note: If you select a category that has sub-categories, all sub-categories are linked to the product. If you select a sub-category, all levels of its parent category are implicitly linked.
  5. To create disposition links, click the Disposition Links button on the ribbon. Select the check boxes for each disposition that you want to link to the product. Note: If you select a disposition that has sub-dispositions, all sub-dispositions are liked to the product. If you select a sub-disposition, all levels of its parent disposition are implicitly linked.

NOTE: You can link categories and dispositions only to products that are leaf products. If the product you select has sub-products, the Category Links and Disposition Links buttons are disabled by the product editor.

 To create links Automatically 

IMPORTANT!: Creating links automatically will replace all product-category and product-disposition links (including any you have created manually) with the automatically created links. Carefully review this procedure before creating links automatically.

  1. Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
  2. Double-click Products/Categories/Dispositions under Service
  3. To create product-category links automatically, click the Auto-Build button on the ribbon and select Product-Category Links
  4. To create product-disposition links automatically, click the Auto-Build button on the ribbon and select Product-Disposition Links

 To Remove links 

  • Click the Configuration button on the navigation pane.
  • Double-click Products/Categories/Dispositions under Service.
  • On the Products/Categories/Dispositions editor, select the first product you want to link.
  • After selecting the last product, right-click and select Edit. The Multi-Edit window opens.
  • Press the Ctrl key while selecting additional products.
  • To  remove category links, click the Category Links button on the ribbon.
  • To remove category links from the selected products, select the check boxes for each category you want to remove the link from in the Remove Categories column. Click Save
  • To  remove disposition links, click the Disposition Links button on the ribbon.
  • To remove disposition links from the selected products, select the check boxes for each disposition you want to remove the link from in the Remove Dispositions column. Click Save

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