Content Categories revisited

[fleetwood]

Always late to the party, here I am playing with my new Act10 toy, and trying out all the things many of you have been playing with for years (yeah, yeah..lots of room for inuendo).

So - Content Categories. I have searched, but can't find any meaningful threads on them. I want to create a sales report that Lee put in the wish list years ago (sales broken down by product type) link and also have a quicker way of sorting my stock records, by type.

Is anyone actually using Content Categories for anything meaningful, and have a lot of the bugs I see mentioned around, regarding them, been ironed out?

Are Content Categories the way to go for sorting stock into type (so that I can filter by stock type in reports for example), or should I just be using a custom variable?

[leehack]

I use CCs a fair amount but not for anything like you mention, i use them principally on variables and tbh i think that is all they are good for. Typical example is a tool website, a site i created had almost 100 different variables for various tool measures. But not all those measures require completing for all tools, most tools in fact had just 5-8 measures that needed completing and thus shown on the product layout.

If you can imagine going to a tab to complete the measures and being presented with a list of 100 variables, that is a long messy list to scroll down and difficult to remember which ones for which tools. So content categories are created for the types of tools, drills, screwdrivers, etc. and the relevant variables are applied to the relevant CC. When you then define a product being within a certain CC, only the relevant measures show, meaning a lot less on screen and more importantly a list of just those you should be filling out on that product.

Universal variables such as 'brand' can be set to cross all CCs, you actually set on each variable which CCs it should show in.

I think you'd need to created your own variable and have some custom reports on that to do what you want.

[fleetwood]

Thanks for the detailed response Lee. I can see their use, but hoped I could use them for more.

As you have made no mention, do I take it you have not had any issues with using CC's.
As far as you are aware, can you change the CC of a product later on, without any knock on effects, or have you just never changed them once set?

[leehack]

The only issues i've personally had is when i've badly planned them in the first place or i have created 'section' CCs instead of 'product' CCs by mistake. It's important to have a default one that all products take and then one for each product type, with that setup, i've had no problems. Nor have I had problems making further adjustments down the line. Moving them around can clear their contents, just backup before you play and have a clear idea of what you need and how to do it. I effed and beed at myself a number of times at the start for planning like a numpty, i use them largely unscathed now.

Their use could/should be broadened IMO, i think in reality very few people even know about or use them though.

[fleetwood]

Can you clarify the difference between Section and Product ones.
Do the products follow whatever the Section one is, unless set, or are section CC's a different beast altogether?

In experimenting just now, I was rather excited (its the sheltered life I lead) by the way custom variables have changed, since I remember them in Catalog5.
Unless I've got this completely wrong, I seem to remember them appearing on a seperate line when you exported your products, which then made it very difficult to sort the rows and do bulk edits.
Now custom variables appear as a new field but part of the same record when exported - yipee.
That should make future plans for sorting and classifying my stock, far more achievable.
This has probably been the case for the last 6or7 years - teach me not to upgrade!

Not that its a great worry, but I couldn't find where the custom variables ended up in the actual database - I couldn't see them in the products table, nor could I see another table called 'CustomVariables'; or similar, but maybe I didn't look hard enough.

[leehack]

Variables can be scoped to sections or products or both, ensuring you create CCs at the correct level makes sure you can do what you want at the level you want. If you need to define a product against a CC then you need a product level CC, there is no use parent facility.

They changed in V8 and yes much easier to work with, they're also exportable and visible in a file-export file, so you can work on them in hierarchicals/excel.