Catalog Filter and Pricing tool

Use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool in Management Center to create and manage catalog filters, price lists, and price rules. Sellers, Sales Managers, and Account Representatives can use the tool's flexible features to implement catalog filtering and pricing strategies that meet the site's business needs over time.

The following screen capture provides a quick look at some of the capabilities of the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool:

1 The left pane lists the types of catalog filter and pricing objects you can create and manage.
Note: To see the Catalog Filters and Catalog Filter Uploads folders, WebSphere Commerce search must be enabled, with the search index structure setup for a specific master catalog.
2 The right pane shows an example of how you can build a price rule by using a graphical editor that is called the Price Rule Builder.

Catalog Filter and Pricing tool at a glance

What you can do with the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool

Here is a summary of tasks you can perform in this tool:


Tasks	Details	For more information
Create and manage catalog filters	A catalog filter defines a subset of a master catalog. Learn how to filter your catalog to a specific set of catalog entries by using various filtering criteria.	Scenarios for creating catalog filters
Upload catalog filters	Upload catalog filters from a CSV (comma-separated value) format file or a compressed (.zip) file.	Catalog filter uploads
Create and manage price lists	Manage the 2 WebSphere Commerce default price lists: Offer Price and List Price. Create as many price lists as you need by using names that make sense for your business. Add, change, or delete price list entries for individual catalog entries.	Working with price lists
Upload and export price lists	Upload a new or revised price list from a CSV (comma-separated value) format file. Note: An administrator can use the Data Load utility to load price list data into WebSphere Commerce. When the utility finishes loading the data, the price list becomes available within the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool. Export a price list to a spreadsheet for easier editing, and then upload the revised price list to Management Center.	Price list uploads
Create and manage price rules	Create price rules to set prices for catalog entries on your storefront. Perform simple or complex calculations in your price rules by using price equations and price constants.	Working with price rules
Use price rules that are stored in an external system	If your site is integrated with the ILOG JRules system as a pricing rule engine, you can create WebSphere Commerce price rules that reference ILOG JRules rule sets.	Integrating IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules BRMS with WebSphere Commerce for pricing

Roles that have access to the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool

Users with the following WebSphere Commerce roles have access to the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool:

Seller
Sales Manager
Account Representative

In addition, Sales Managers and Account Representatives can now access the Catalogs tool; however, they can change only the Offer price value for catalog entries. Sellers continue to have full access to the Catalogs tool.

Pricing-related topics in IBM Knowledge Center use the term pricing manager. This term refers to Management Center users in any of these WebSphere Commerce roles.

Prerequisites for using the Catalog Filter

The Catalog Filter solution depends on the WebSphere Commerce search solution to do the real-time dynamic filtering. If the WebSphere Commerce search is not enabled in some stores (in the search index setup), then the Catalog Filter tool is not enabled in Management Center. To use the Catalog Filter, an administrator must first complete the following tasks:

Deploy and build the search server and index structure.
Note: You do not need to complete the steps in the Index-Building scenario topic unless the catalog entries you want to include or exclude from your catalog filter are from the old product set model.
Change the value for the wc.search.entitlement property in the STORECONF database table to "1".

Limitations

The Catalog Filter and Pricing tool is only available in WebSphere Commerce Enterprise Edition. This tool is not supported in WebSphere Commercee - Express, or WebSphere Commerce Professional editions.
You cannot use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool with the supply chain or demand chain business models.
The Management Center implementation of catalog filtering in not supported in the IBM Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce. If the site uses Sales Center, do not create catalog filters by using the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool.
You can use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool in a workspace-enabled environment only when you are working on approved content. If you are working on a specific task, the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool is not available.