Group partners by categories

Use partner categories to group partners in a way that suits your needs. For instance, you can add categories representing geographic regions and then assign partners to the applicable regions.

There are two types of partner categories:

• Regular categories – After grouping partners in regular categories, you can search for partners in one or more categories to view lists of the partners or take actions such as changing the partners' community. Click Partners on the top toolbar to display the Partners page. Use the partner search panel to set filter conditions. See Use the partner search tool.
• You also can build user roles based on partner categories to restrict users' access to data for specified partners. See Partner restrictions for roles.
• Collaboration categories – You can use collaboration categories the same as regular categories, but there is one significant additional feature. A community can use a collaboration category to apply custom collaboration settings for outbound messages to many partners simultaneously. See Manage community-to-category collaboration settings.
• Collaboration categories are recommended only if your community wants to apply custom collaboration settings to multiple partners. If not, use regular categories instead.

How to use categories

To use categories, first you create one or more categories, and then you add partners to the categories.

A single partner can be added to multiple regular categories, but a partner can belong to only one collaboration category at a time. You can add regular categories in a parent-child hierarchical relationship. Parent-child relationships are not allowed for collaboration categories, as conflicts between categories could occur.

Add a category

1. Select Partners > Manage categories to display the Categories page.
2. Click Add a category to open the Add a category page.
3. Enter the new category name.
4. Select the level on the category tree where you want the category to reside.
5. Click Add.

Delete a category

1. Select Partners > Manage categories to display the Categories page.
2. From the list of available categories, click a category to open the Change category page for that category.
3. Click Delete this category.
4. The category and any dependent subcategories are deleted.

Add a partner to a category

1. Select Partners > Manage partners.
2. From the list of partners, click the name of a partner to display the Summary page for that partner.
3. In the navigation graphic at the top of the Summary page, click Categories to open the Choose categories page.
4. Select a category by clicking a category checkbox, and click Save changes.

Related topics

• Add a partner
• Community trading partners
• Add a partner to a community
• Partner data form
• Modify a partner
• Delete a partner
• Use the partner search tool