You can establish authorizations for product catalog maintenance and access to product catalog data. Users can have authorization for the entire catalog, or for specific layout areas only. In order for authorization checking to take place, you must enter an authorization group in either the basic data for the entire catalog or the specific layout area(s) as appropriate.

For the entire catalog, you can specify authorization checking for the following activities:

• Change
• Display
• Copy
• Delete
• Display changes
• Generate IDocs
• Create layout areas
• Change authorization group

You control these activities via authorization object W_PCAT_MTN. You can also use W_PCAT_MTN to establish authorizations for creating new product catalogs; in this case, the field Authorization group is ignored.

For specific layout areas, you can specify authorization checking for the following activities:

• Change
• Display
• Delete
• Move
• Change authorization group

You control these activities via authorization object W_PCAT_LAY.

In order to change an authorization group either for the basic catalog data or for a layout area, you must have the following authorizations:

• For the existing authorization group: Change authorization group
• For the new authorization group: Change the catalog or layout areas