Exclude Empty Commerce Categories
This information refers to SuiteCommerce or the 19.2 release of SuiteCommerce Advanced or later.
The Exclude Empty Commerce Categories feature lets you omit empty categories from your site when the category branch contains no visible items. This ensure that empty categories are not displayed on the site. An empty category is a category that has no available items and has no subcategories with available items. Item availability has many determining factors. See Item Availability for more information.
The option to exclude empty categories has a couple of important benefits:
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When you have a complex category structure with rotating or inconsistent item availability, category navigation is adjusted automatically based on the availability of items. This saves time by dynamically updating displayed categories and category navigation structure and by eliminating the need for manual category management to reflect item availability.
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If you are using Personalized Catalog Views, then the Commerce Category navigation structure is constructed based on logged-in user and the items available to that customer’s segment assignment. When a customer is not permitted to buy items assigned to categories, the categories are omitted from the site. See Personalized Catalog Views.
Here are three different examples of how category navigation is adjusted based on item availability.
Example 1: No Items Assigned to Category
You have a Closeouts category with subcategories of Men’s Apparel, Women’s Apparel, Children’s Apparel, and Accessories. You have assigned items to the three apparel categories but you have not assigned items to the Accessories category. Consequently, the category navigation on the site appears as follows:
In this example, Accessories is omitted from the category navigation because it is an empty category with no items assigned to it.
Example 2: Out of Stock Behavior
You have a Closeouts category with subcategories of Men’s Apparel, Women’s Apparel, Children’s Apparel, and Accessories. Sales depleted your inventory of all items assigned to the Children’s Apparel Category. Because of the nature of your out of stock behavior, items with no stock are not listed on the site. Consequently, no items are available in the Children’s Apparel category and the resulting category navigation looks like this:
The Children’s Apparel category is omitted from the category navigation because it contains no available items.
Example 3: Category Structure with PCV
You have implemented Personalized Catalog Views, and you have a VIP Items item segment that has items from your Children’s Apparel and Accessories categories assigned to it. ABC Wholesaler is assigned to a customer group that can purchase items from VIP Items. Consequently, when the customer logs in to the site, the category navigation for the Closeouts category reflects this structure:
In this example Men’s Apparel and Women’s Apparel are omitted from the category navigation, because the ABC Wholesaler’s customer segment assignment prevents it from purchasing anything from those categories
To exclude empty categories:
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Go to Commerce > Websites > Configuration.
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Select the Website from the dropdown list.
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Select the Domain from the dropdown list.
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Click Configure.
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Click the Integrations subtab.
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Click the Categories subtab.
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Check the Exclude Empty Categories box.
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Click Save.