Creating Category and Product Relationships

You can create product-to-product relationships, product-to-category relationships, category-to-category relationships, and category-to-product relationships. These relationships can be to products and categories in the same catalog, or in different catalogs. For example, in a product-to-product relationship, if you have a user who buys a movie, you may want to offer the user the soundtrack to the movie. This is an explicit relationship.

In a category-to-category relationship, you can have a relationship between categories. For example, you may have categories for CDs and Biographies. If you have CDs by classical composers, you may have biographies of classical composers as well.

Ee824528.note(en-US,CS.20).gif Note

  • Commerce Server Solution Sites do not display relationships. If your site developer used a Solution Site to build your site, you may not be able to create category and product relationships. For information about displaying relationships on your Web site, contact your site developer.

To create a category relationship

To create a product relationship

To create a category-to-category relationship

  1. In Catalogs, click Catalog Editor.

  2. In the Catalogs screen, select the catalog in which you want to create a relationship, and then click Open on the toolbar.

  3. In the Catalog Content - <Catalog Name> screen, in the Categories section, select the category to which you want to add a relationship, and then click Edit.

  4. In the Catalog Editor - <Catalog Name> (category) screen, in the Category Relationships section, click New, and then do the following:

    Use this To do this
    Relationship Type the name of the relationship.
    Item Click the ellipsis button [] to open the Product Picker dialog box.
  5. In the Product Picker dialog box, select the catalog that contains the category with which you want to work.

  6. Select the category from the Categories list to which you want to create a relationship, and then click OK.

    The category you chose appears in the Item box of the Category Relationships section.

  7. Click Accept to save the category relationship.

  8. To save the changes and return to the Catalogs screen, click Save and go back on the toolbar.

Ee824528.note(en-US,CS.20).gifNote

  • You can also use this procedure to create a category-to-product relationship.

To create a product-to-product relationship

  1. In Catalogs, click Catalog Editor.

  2. In the Catalogs screen, select the catalog that contains the product for which you want to create a relationship, and then click Open on the toolbar.

  3. In the Catalog Content - <Catalog Name> screen, in the Products section, select the product to which you want to add a relationship, and then click Edit.

  4. In the Catalog Editor - <Catalog Name> (product) screen, in the Product Relationships section, do the following:

    Use this To do this
    Relationship Type the name of the relationship.
    Item Click the ellipsis button […] to open the Product Picker dialog box.
  5. In the Product Picker dialog box, select the catalog that contains the product with which you want to work.

  6. Select a category from the Categories list, select a product from the Products in Category list, and then click OK.

    The category you chose appears in the Item box in the Product Relationships section. Product appears in the Item Type box indicating that it is a product relationship.

  7. Click Accept to save the product relationship.

  8. To save your changes and return to the Catalog Editor - <Catalog Name> screen, click Save and go back on the toolbar.

Ee824528.note(en-US,CS.20).gifNote

  • You can also use this procedure to create a product-to-category relationship.

Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.