Automatic Category Creation

Omnium can automatically create and maintain product categories based on product data. This is useful for retailers with many brands or seasonal collections where manually creating categories would be impractical.

Overview

Two scheduled tasks handle automatic category creation:

Both tasks follow the same pattern:

1. Scan all active products
2. Extract unique season/brand values
3. Create categories for values that don't exist yet
4. Assign the categories to the corresponding products
5. Update modified products

Season Categories

Use Case

Season categories are ideal for:

• Fashion retailers with seasonal collections (Spring/Summer, Fall/Winter)
• Products with seasonal availability
• Time-based product organization

Configuration

1. Create the parent category for seasons:

   {
     "categoryId": "seasons",
     "name": "Seasons",
     "parentId": "catalog",
     "language": "en"
   }

2. Set the tenant configuration:

   "ProductSettings": {
     "SeasonCategoryId": "seasons"
   }

3. Ensure products have season data:

   {
     "productId": "shirt-001",
     "season": "Spring 2024"
   }

How It Works

When the CreateCategoriesFromSeasonScheduledTask runs:

1. Loads existing categories under seasonCategoryId
2. Iterates through all active products
3. For each product with a Season value:
   • Creates a new category if one doesn't exist for that season
   • Adds the season category ID to the product's categoryIds
4. Saves all new categories and modified products

Example result:

Seasons (seasons)
├── Spring 2024 (spring-2024)
├── Fall 2024 (fall-2024)
└── Spring 2025 (spring-2025)

Brand Categories

Use Case

Brand categories are ideal for:

• Multi-brand retailers
• Brand landing pages and navigation
• Brand-based filtering

Configuration

1. Create the parent category for brands:

   {
     "categoryId": "brands",
     "name": "Brands",
     "parentId": "catalog",
     "language": "en"
   }

2. Set the tenant configuration:

   "ProductSettings": {
     "BrandCategoryId": "brands"
   }

3. Ensure products have brand data:

   {
     "productId": "shirt-001",
     "brand": "Acme"
   }

How It Works

When the CreateCategoriesFromBrandScheduledTask runs:

1. Loads existing categories under brandCategoryId
2. Iterates through all active products
3. For each product with a Brand value:
   • Creates a new category if one doesn't exist for that brand
   • Adds the brand category ID to the product's categoryIds
4. Saves all new categories and modified products

Example result:

Brands (brands)
├── Acme (acme)
├── Widget Co (widget-co)
└── SuperBrand (superbrand)

Enabling Scheduled Tasks

Scheduled tasks are configured in tenant settings under Settings → Scheduled Tasks.

Task Configuration

{
  "scheduledTasks": [
    {
      "name": "CreateCategoriesFromSeasonScheduledTask",
      "isActive": true,
      "interval": "0 0 2 * * *"
    },
    {
      "name": "CreateCategoriesFromBrandScheduledTask",
      "isActive": true,
      "interval": "0 0 3 * * *"
    }
  ]
}

The interval uses cron syntax. The examples above run:

• Season task: Daily at 2:00 AM
• Brand task: Daily at 3:00 AM

Recommended Schedule

Processing Details

Active Products Only

Both tasks only process products where isActive = true. Inactive products are skipped even if they have season/brand data.

Category Naming

Categories are created using the product property value as both the categoryId and name:

The category ID is typically normalized (lowercased, spaces replaced with hyphens).

Language Handling

Categories are created in the default product language. If multi-language support is needed, you'll need to manually create additional language versions of the automatically created categories.

Batch Processing

Products are processed in batches to handle large catalogs efficiently. Modified products are saved as each batch completes.

Combining with Other Features

With Parent Category Addition

When isProductCategoryParentsAdded is enabled, assigning a brand/season category also assigns the parent category:

Configuration:

"ProductSettings": {
  "BrandCategoryId": "brands",
  "IsProductCategoryParentsAdded": true
}

Result: A product assigned to "Acme" brand category will have:

"categoryIds": ["acme", "brands"]

With Category Enrichment

When isProductCategoryEnriched is enabled, the product's productCategories array is populated:

{
  "categoryIds": ["acme", "brands"],
  "productCategories": [
    {
      "categoryId": "acme",
      "name": "Acme"
    },
    {
      "categoryId": "brands",
      "name": "Brands"
    }
  ]
}

Monitoring and Troubleshooting

Checking Task Status

View scheduled task history in Settings → Scheduled Tasks → History to see:

• Last run time
• Success/failure status
• Number of categories created
• Number of products updated

Common Issues

Manual Execution

Tasks can be run manually from the Omnium UI:

1. Navigate to Settings → Scheduled Tasks
2. Find the task (e.g., CreateCategoriesFromBrandScheduledTask)
3. Click Run Now

This is useful for:

• Initial setup after configuration
• Testing the configuration
• On-demand synchronization after bulk imports