08/07/2004: "Master Catalog Building"

Help! My catalog is disappearing!

Building custom catalogs is a good way to give specific customers what they need without a lot of unneeded clutter, just as long as you understand the catalog building process.

The Catalog system in the Exelearn LMS gives you the ability to provide a different customized catalog to each organization, including unique product items or special pricing. Most of the time, using the default catalog for an organization is the easiest way to go. If anything about the catalog needs to be different, however, a new catalog needs to be created. This does not mean that one needs to start from scratch, however, due to the modular nature of catalogs. You can build up a new catalog from existing categories, and you can likewise build new categories from existing listings.

REMEMBER, however, that any changes you make to an pre-existing category or listing also affect other catalogs where those items are used. Thus, if you delete listings from a category, change descriptions, change listing information such as prices, etc., these changes will show up everywhere those components are used.

How do you avoid this problem? Just remember the following:

1) Anytime you need to customize anything about a category for a specific catalog, such as the included listings or the description, you should create a new category.

Example: You want to build a catalog that is similar to the default catalog (or any other catalog) but requires that you remove or add a listing to one of the categories.

Solution: You can reuse the existing categories that do not need changes, but you need to create (and add) a new category., which you then populate with just those those listings that are needed.

2) Anytime you need to customize anything about a listing for a specific catalog, you need to create a new listing and put that listing in a new category.

Example: You are creating a new catalog based on an existing catalog where one of the listings needs to be changed (description and price).

Solution: You need to create a new category and then populate it with a new listing. You can link the other listings (from the original category) to the new category. Then, unlink the original category from the catalog.

If you still find this confusing, please contact me.