Creating Category Aliases 

Use

Sometimes, you may want a group of products to appear in more than one location in the taxonomy tree, so that they can be found in various ways using drilldown search. A category alias provides just this ability, and allows products in a category to be managed as a group in a single location but to appear in two or more locations in the tree. For example, you may want “Drill Bits” to be found in the tree under the category “Power Drills” and also under the category “Accessories”.

When you use the Create Alias command to create an alias of a category, MDM creates a duplicate of the original category that can be renamed and moved to any other location in the tree. Aliases in the tree are highlighted in italics (figure below).

MDM provides commands not only to create aliases but also to find an alias from the original category and to find the original from the alias.

You can turn off the italic display of tree nodes that are aliases (for more information, see Configuration Options).

You can delete a category alias exactly as you delete any other category.

Two aliases of the same category or aliases of two different categories can have the same name if they are not siblings.

When you delete an original category that has aliases from the taxonomy tree, MDM notifies you that its aliases will also be deleted and requests confirmation to proceed.

 

Procedure

To create an alias:

       1.      In the taxonomy tree, select the leaf-node category for which you want to create an alias.

       2.      Right-click on the category and choose Create Alias from the context menu, or choose Tree ® Create Alias from the main menu.

MDM adds a new category named category [Alias] as a sibling of and just after the original category (figure above).

       3.      Press F2 to edit the name of the alias.

MDM highlights the name of the alias for editing.

       4.      Type the name you want for the alias and press Enter.

       5.      Drag-and-drop the alias to move it to the target location in the tree.

 

To find an alias for a category:

...

       1.      In the taxonomy tree, select the leaf-node category whose aliases you want to locate.

       2.      Right-click on the category and choose Find Alias from the context menu, or choose Tree ®  Find Alias from the main menu.

       3.      Select the desired alias from the cascading menu of aliases of the selected category.

MDM immediately changes the selected category in the taxonomy tree to the chosen alias.

 

To find the original category from an alias:

...

       1.      In the taxonomy tree, select the alias whose original category you want to locate.

       2.      Right-click on the alias and choose Find Original from the context menu, or choose Tree ® Find Original from the main menu.

MDM immediately changes the selected category in the taxonomy tree to the original category.

When the selected category in the taxonomy tree is an alias, the linked icons for the attributes that are linked to the original category are highlighted in gray, just like inherited attributes, and cannot be linked to or unlinked from the alias.

 

Category Alias Constraints:

Operation	Constraints
Create Alias	·        Must be in Hierarchy or Taxonomy mode ·        Aliases not allowed on masks table ·        Tree must have focus ·        Exactly one node must be selected ·        Root node cannot have an alias ·        Node cannot have children ·        Node cannot be an alias
Find Original	·        Must be in Hierarchy or Taxonomy mode ·        Tree must have focus ·        Exactly one node must be selected ·        Root node cannot be an alias ·        Node must be an alias
Find Alias	·        Must be in Hierarchy or Taxonomy mode ·        Tree must have focus ·        Root node cannot have an alias ·        Node must have at least one alias