Organize products in collections

Understand collections

Collections organize your catalog into a hierarchy that provides a navigational framework for your store. Collections can contain both products and other collections.

Each Commerce catalog includes two root collections. These collections cannot be deleted or made children of any other collections. These are the only two root collections a catalog can contain; you cannot create other root collections.

Storefront Navigation is the starting point in the navigational structure of the catalog. It contains all the catalog’s collections, products, and SKUs.
Non-Navigable contains products and collections, like gift wrapping or monogramming, that shoppers can buy but not browse to as part of the hierarchical catalog on your store.

Collections, except root collections, can belong to multiple catalogs. See Link and unlink collections and products for more information.

To create new products in a collection, see Create products. To link existing products to a collection, see Link and unlink collections and products.

Understand Unassigned Products and Unassigned Collections

Products and collections that are not assigned to any parent in any catalog hierarchy appear in these lists above the collection hierarchy on the Catalog page. Products that are not part of any collection appear in the Unassigned Products list. Collections that have no parent collection appear in the Unassigned Collections list.

Unassigned products do not appear in the navigation for your store and are not returned in any search results. Unassigned collections are not returned in search results.

A product or collection becomes unassigned when one of the following things happens:

It has been removed from all other collections.
It has been unlinked from all parents.
It is imported into Commerce with no parent collection.
You specifically created a product in Unassigned Products.

You can view and work with unassigned products and collections just as you do any others in your catalog hierarchy. You cannot create new collections or drag existing collections in the Unassigned Collections lists. You can link a product or collection to a collection in the Unassigned Collections list. You can create new product in the Unassigned Products list but you cannot link an existing product there.

There are several ways to move an item out of the Unassigned Products or Unassigned Collections lists:

Drag both products and collections to a parent in the catalog hierarchy.
Move both products and collections to a parent in the catalog hierarchy. See
Link collections to a parent in the catalog hierarchy. See Link and unlink collections and products for more information.

Create collections

You can create a collection that is a child of either of the two root collections, Storefront Navigation or Non-Navigable. You cannot create a new collection at the root level of a catalog.

This section describes how to create a new collection. To link an existing collection, see Link and unlink collections and products.

To create a new collection:

On the Catalog page, click the New Collection button and select New from the list that appears.
Fill in the property fields in the New Collection screen.
Click Save.

The following table describes the properties Commerce provides for collections. You can also use the REST APIs to create custom properties for collections. See Create custom properties for collections for more information.

Property	Description
Name (required)	Short, descriptive name that identifies the collection. Collection names do not have to be unique.
Collection ID (required)	The ID that identifies the collection internally. Each collection ID must be unique within your catalog.
Description	A short description to display with the collection.
Long Description	Detailed descriptive text to display with the collection. The long description is created with an HTML editor called CKEditor that you can use to edit and apply rich-text formatting.
Exclude from XML Sitemap	Excludes selected collections from the collections sitemap. The XML sitemap is an index of page URLs on your site that is available for crawling by search engines. It helps search engines to crawl your site more intelligently.
Selected Parents	All the collection’s parent collections. By default, when you create a new collection, it has a single parent, Storefront Navigation. To change a collection’s parents, click the Edit button and select collections from the list. See Link and unlink collections and products for more information. To make the collection a child of another collection, select a collection in the Change Parent list. If you remove all a collection’s parents, Commerce moves it to the Unassigned Collections list.
Status	Specifies whether the collection is displayed on your store. Active: The collection is displayed on your store. Inactive: The collection is not displayed on your store. This is the default setting for new root collections. Inherited from parent: The collection’s status is the same as its parent. This is the default setting for new child collections.

Reorder products in collections

Each product has a specific position in the collection. The page coding in the Commerce layouts and widgets uses the position to control the order in which products appear on the collection pages.

If you reorder products in a collection that is linked to other collections or catalogs, the collection’s product order is the same in all places the collection appears.

To reorder products in a collection:

On the Catalog page, navigate to the collection that contains products you want to rearrange.
You can drag a product to a new position in either Grid View or List View.
To use numbers to move a product to a new position in the collection, click the List View button at the top of the page, then change the product's number.
Enter a number from 1 to the number of products in the collection. If the number you enter is greater than the number of products, rearranging moves the product to the end of the list.
To move a product to the top of a collection, click the arrow icon at the right-hand side of the product’s tile.

Move collections

You can reorder collections by dragging them to new positions in an independent catalog’s collections list: If a collection is linked to multiple parents, the new order is the same in all catalogs. You cannot move a collection to the root position in a catalog. You cannot move a parent collection to one of its children.

On the Catalog page, navigate to the collection you want to move.
Perform one of the following tasks:
- Drag the collection to a new position in the hierarchy and drop it. A vertical line appears at a potential drop location when you hover over it.
- Right-click the collection and click Edit. Click the Edit button next to the Selected Parents field and select a new parent for the collection.

Find products in collections

To learn how to perform custom, rule-based searches for products in collections and catalogs, see Find products in catalogs.

Sort products in collections

To display a collection of products, click the corresponding link in the left column of the Catalog page, and then choose a sort option from the Display Order list. The list includes options for sorting by name, ID, or price, in ascending or descending order.

Note that the Display Order list is disabled for search results.

Delete collections

Deleting a collection that has more than one parent removes it from all parent collections. You can delete only empty collections. If you want to delete a collection that contains products or other collections, remove them first.

To delete a collection:

On the Catalog page, navigate to the collection you want to delete.
Click the edit link.
In the collection’s details dialog, click Delete.
Confirm that you want to delete the collection.

Remove products from collections

Removing products from a collection does not remove them from the catalog. If a product has more than one parent collection, removing it from one collection does not automatically remove it from others. If you remove a product from its only parent collection, it is automatically moved to the Unassigned Products list.

You can also remove a product from a collection on the product’s details page. See Link and unlink collections and products for more information.

To remove products from a collection:

On the Catalog page, navigate to the collection where you want to remove products.
Hover over the product to remove until the remove icon appears.
Tip: To remove multiple products, select all the products you want to remove and then click the remove icon on any of them.
Click the remove icon.

Add images to collections

Use a collection’s Media tab to upload and arrange collection images that will appear on your store, for example, a hero image that appears on a category landing page. You can upload JPG, PNG, and GIF files. Commerce automatically sizes your images for display on different devices, such as laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.

Note: This section describes how to upload images to individual collections. See Manage Media for your Store for information about using the media library, including information about uploading a ZIP file of images and other types of media that are automatically assigned to products and collections in your catalog.

Once you assign images to a collection, you can tag them to specify how they are displayed on your store via the Category Content widget. For example, an image tagged with Hero is displayed as the hero image on the category landing page. For more information about the Category Content widget, see Design Your Store Layout.

To add an image to a collection:

On the Catalog page, navigate to the product to which you want to add images.
On the product’s Media tab, click Add Images and select Add New.
Select an image to upload.
You can upload only one image at a time. If you select a file with the same name as a file you already uploaded, the new file replaces the existing one.
Click Save.

To assign an image to a product from the media library:

On the Catalog page, open the product to which you want to add images.
On the product’s Media tab, click Add Images and select Media Library.
Select images to assign to the product and click Add.
For details about selecting, sorting, and searching for images in the media library, see Manage Media for your Store.
Click Save.

To tag an image for display in the Category Content widget:

On the Catalog page, open the collection whose images you want to tag.
On the collection’s Media tab, hover over the image and click the Tag icon.
Click the Tags field and select a tag value to assign to the image.
You can select Hero, Large, Medium, Small, or Thumbnail.

You can assign the same tag to more than one image. For example, if you assign the Hero tag to several images for the same collection, the images are displayed in a carousel on the category landing page.
Click the check mark icon to save your tags.
Click Save.