Creating Facets

To create a facet:

  1. In a Managing Commerce Assets project, navigate to Search Merchandising and show Facets.

  2. In the Navigation pane, select a location for the facet:

    Sites, catalog folders, products, and SKUs cannot be selected as locations for facets. They are added to the tree for navigational purposes only and appear in the tree only in multisite environments.

  3. In the Details pane, click the Add New button.

  4. Select the property that you want to use as the basis for your facet from the Faceting Property list.

    This list contains all properties that have been indexed as meta-properties in ATG Search. Your ATG Search administrator can modify the properties available as faceting properties. See the ATG Search Administration Guide.

    The search index usually includes both product properties and SKU properties, so the Faceting Property list usually contains both. If a product has two SKUs, each a different color, a color facet will represent the product twice in its selections: once for each color.

    Tip: A facet is useful only if it contains more than one selection. A facet will not be displayed on your Web site if all products it affects have the same value for the faceting property. For example, an On Sale facet will not appear if all the products in the catalog have the onSale property set to True.

  5. Type a descriptive name for the facet in the Name box.

    Depending on how your ATG Commerce site pages are coded, the name you enter here may appear as the facet label on the Web site or it may map to a label in a properties file.

  6. (Optional) Enter a number (0 or a positive integer) that specifies the facet priority. The larger the number is, the lower the priority.

    Priority values determine the order in which facets appear on the Web site page. For example, if a Color facet has a priority 0 and a Size facet has a priority 3, the Color facet is returned before the Size facet. If the page code does not reorder the facets, the Color facet is displayed above the Size facet.

    If you do not enter a priority value, the facet’s priority is set to the default value, which is initially set at 100, but can be changed by your administrator. The default value is not shown in the UI, but it is used by ATG Search when it processes facets.

    If two facets have the same priority set, they can be shown in different order on your Web sites.

  7. Define Selections properties. See Defining Facet Selections.

  8. Under Presentation, select a sort order for facet selections:

    • Numeric/Alphanumeric: Arranges selections in ascending alphanumeric order, that is, 0-9 and A-Z.

      When a number is stored as text and you choose this option, the selections are alphabetized, not listed in numerical order. For example, 12 would appear before 2. In a situation like this, choose the specified order sorting option instead.

    • Value count: Arranges selections in descending order, by the number of search results in each selection. The selection with the most results appears first and the selection with fewest results appears last.

    • Specified order: Arranges selections in the order of faceting property values in the Specified Faceting Property Values list.

      This option is available only if you selected One Faceting Selection for Each Property Value in step 7. See One Selection for Each Faceting Property Value for more information about creating the Specified Faceting Property Values list.

  9. Click Create or Create & Close to create the facet. To cancel your changes, click Cancel.

  10. (Optional) Create child facets that appear when a user chooses a selection from this facet. For example, if a user chooses a price range of $100-$200, a child facet might display more specific price ranges, such as $100-$110 and $110-$120. See Creating Child Facets.