Category Collection Manager
All right. In this video, we're going to
cover the category collection
manager. So, if we go to the category
collection manager, here on the homepage
of Datafi,
open it up. What this allows us to do is
create a collection, a smart collection
for every category that we've managed in
the category manager. So you can see
here these are the categories that have
been managed in category manager. So let
me just show what I mean by that. We go
up to category manager
and I expand this out to show all these
nodes. You know this t-shirts for
example has been managed and you can see
that by the darkened icon. And we're
doing with this one is we're keeping the
category. So, as long as we've, you
know, gone into category manager and
decided to keep all the categories that
are there or move them or whatever we
want to do, you have to take an action
here so that category collection uh
creator knows to use those categories.
And if you want to just quickly um you
know set them, you can go show all
without settings and then bulk action
set all categories with no setting to
keep category. And that way you can if
you're happy with you know all of them
are in there you can just set them to
all keep category and then when you go
to the category collections manager
they'll all show up up here. So in this
store we've got you know this many
different categories set. That's 29 of
them um across all the I think it's 133
products. So when we go to create
collections, it's going to create 29
collections. Now the include descendants
is a really good feature. So in smart
collections when you create a smart
collection using a category as uh the
rule you you can have it include the
descendant category. So, um, one of the,
uh, categories in this store is reptile
and amphibian substrates. There's
another one for habitats, right? So, if
we go to the SPT, the Shopify standard
product texonomy. Um, and you don't need
to do this. I just want to illustrate
for you um, how this is working. So,
here you can see the category of reptile
and amphibian habitats has subcategories
of aquariums,
pollutariums, we say that one terrariums
and vivariums right so if in the manager
I select include descendants
the rule for that you know habitat one
will include um
the habitat category and these four
subcategories also um I usually set this
on by default because it's a nice
feature um so here I've got it checked
and then you can say which sales
channels you want to publish it to. For
now, I'm just going to publish it to the
online store. Um, and then you can also
create a navigation menu from this,
right? And the nice thing about the
navigation menu is it's going to respect
the taxonomy that we see in the Shopify
SPT. It's going to respect that
hierarchy. So, what it does, it's going
to give us a menu that we can use as a
starting point uh for these collections.
Now, you're probably going to once that
menu is created, you know, edit it,
change some text, move things around,
but it gives you a nav menu that you can
then go edit. And so, you can see here
in this store, you know, I just want to
show you the most recently edited
collection is plants. We're going to run
the migrator and you'll see all the new
collections show up and we'll look at
those. So, we're going to include the
descendants. We're going to do online
store and we're going to create a
navigation menu and we're just going to
call it categories. So create
collections and nap menus. We go ahead
and do that. Datafi is going to go off
and do the work for us. It'll give us a
little status here. And we are done. All
right. So now let's go look at our
collections.
Do a refresh of this page.
And you'll see we got the 29 new
collections. And we were talking before
about reptile and amphibian habitats, I
believe. Let's see if we can find that
one here.
Search.
So, reptile and amphibian habitats
and you can see
somewhere in here. Oh, here it is. Rep,
you know, it includes the subcategories
of the selected category. So this
checkbox here was the same as that
checkbox that we sent set back before we
ran uh the create collections. So there
we go. We have, you know, a smart
collection for that. Now let's look at
our nav menu to see what that looks
like. And if we go into
content where menus are stored, we go to
menus. And you'll see here, right, we
named it categories. So here's our
categories meta field and we have this
whole hierarchy here of the categories
using the same structure of hierarchy
that the Shopify product taxonomy uses.
So, if we go to the habitats one, we're
looking at
reptile amphibian supplies
habitats.
And what it does, right, because nav
menus only go three levels down. Um, we
can't have any more than three levels in
a navigation menu. So, what we did here
is, and remember the habitats was four
levels down. So was animals and pet
supplies, pet supplies, you know, level
three, level four, and then level five
even, right? So what we do is we give
you all of those collections and we we
we call flatten them out. We put them
all at level three if they're a level
four and a level five. So what ends up
happening a lot of times is stores will,
you know, don't need that top level one,
right? Animals and pet supplies. So
they'll take the live animals and
probably move it up to the top level of
their nav.
Um, so let's just take, for example, pet
supplies and move that to a top level.
And the same thing with live animals,
move that to a top level. And then you
can delete this one here, the animals
and pet supplies.
And then if you go into your your pet
supplies, you know, you can move these
to sub levels now because now they're
they're on level two instead of level
three. So most stores when they use
this, you know, create the menu item,
they're going to edit that menu quite a
bit to get it to be customerfriendly for
their product catalog. So that's how you
can use uh the tool in datafi for
creating smart collections based on your
product categories. Thanks for watching.