When you are assembling your catalog, you may find it easier to duplicate an existing portion of your catalog tree rather than creating individual assets one at a time. Customers who use custom catalogs may need to create several catalogs that share many characteristics, such as structure and product set, but differ, for example, in price. The duplicate feature is ideal for them.
If you duplicate a category, for example, you create a copy of the existing category and links to nested assets. Although you are basing a new category on an existing one, the two are independent of each other: changes made to one have no bearing on the other. However, nested assets, which retain their hierarchy in the duplicated asset, are links to the assets in the original category. If you change a property value in the original set of nested assets that change is visible in the second set. The reverse is also true. However, when you duplicate price list folders or media folders that have nested assets, their duplicated counterparts remain autonomous.
By default, the name given to a duplicated asset is the name of the original followed by (copy). If you’d like to use a different format to distinguish the original from the duplicate, see Customizing the Duplication Identifier section of the Configuring the Asset Manager chapter in the ATG Business Control Center Administration and Development Guide.
The assets you duplicate can exist anywhere in ATG Merchandising, and you can duplicate as many related or unrelated assets as you like at a time, as long as the originals live in the same view and the resultant duplicates will have the same destination.
To duplicate assets:
Locate the assets you want to duplicate using the Catalog Orphans, Catalog, Media, or Promotions view of the Browse tab or the Search tab. See Locating Assets for instructions.
Click the checkbox beside each asset you want to duplicate. Keep in mind that selecting an asset selects its nested assets as well, even though they don’t appear checked.
Click the Duplicate button to open the Select Destination dialog box.
When the Select Destination dialog box opens, navigate to the asset that will contain the duplicates, and click the radio button beside it.
Click OK.
The Select Destination dialog box closes, and the new assets appear in the specified location, temporarily highlighted in yellow. The new asset uses the name of the original beside
(copy).
Once you have duplicated assets, you should adjust property values, such Name and Discount Amount for promotions, to ensure that the asset is unique and usable. See Modifying and Previewing the Properties of Assets in a Catalog.
