02Catalog
Categories per channel
The table matching your categories against each channel's.
A Koalab category is not the channel's: each store has its own tree and codes. This screen is the table of equivalents —one row per category of yours, one column per channel— and it is what Koalab checks when publishing to know where the product goes. In Koalab no category is required; on some channels it is.
Open the matrix
In Products, in the header, the «Categories» button. The first column is «Koalab category»: one row per category, with its parent's path above when it hangs from another («Clothing ›»), because «T-shirts» can hang from two places and be two rows. The other columns are your connected channels. «Back to products» takes you out.
Say what each one matches on each channel
In WooCommerce and Tiendanube the cell is a dropdown with that channel's categories; the first one you open takes a moment to load. In Mercado Libre it is a search: type what the product IS —«running shoe», not your category's name— and it searches in that channel's country. If the category is already on products published on that channel, Koalab first asks you how many it will rewrite, and once you confirm it takes it to them. In Mercado Libre, a listing that is already on sale keeps its category: the mapping counts for new ones. To remove it, choose «Not mapped» or, in Mercado Libre, «Remove the mapping». Shopify has no categories: its column is the «Product type», a text you write; empty, it receives the category's name.
Mock-up: the category matrix, with a channel that demands its own Deal with the amber gaps
«Not mapped» in grey is a gap that can wait. «Missing», in amber, cannot: that channel requires one of its categories to publish. In Mercado Libre, Koalab takes the one chosen on the product page; if there is none, the one from an earlier listing; if not, this column's, and lastly the one it works out from the type. With none, the product stays off that channel. The column header counts how many are missing. A category without an equivalent does not reach that channel, and Koalab tells you when saving the page, when publishing and when changing categories in bulk, with «Associate or create». You can also solve it from the channel: Channels → «Configure» → «Categories» tab lists only the ones it is missing, how many published products carry them and the channel's similar ones. Map it or click «Create on …» (WooCommerce and Tiendanube; in Mercado Libre you can only map). As in the table, it asks before rewriting products already published.
Create, rename and arrange your categories
Top right: «New category», «Inside» —«Top level» or the parent you choose— and «Create». In the row, you edit the name by typing over it; the number next to it is how many products use it. Renaming here does not rename it on your channels; in Shopify, the new name reaches the «Product type» on the next save. The dropdown at the end of the row hangs it from another parent. The bin deletes it after you confirm: its subcategories move up a level and its products only lose that category in Koalab. Nothing changes on your channels at that moment.
Do not confuse it with Mercado Libre's category when publishing
They are two different things. Here you say what a category of yours matches on a channel, for the whole catalog. On a product page, «General» tab, each channel that does not let you create categories —Mercado Libre, Amazon, eBay, Etsy— has its row, and you pick one of theirs for THAT product. That choice belongs to the product and is not saved here.
Details worth knowing
- When you import a channel, its categories are created in Koalab and mapped on their own: Koalab recognizes them by name, reuses one that already exists and notes which one it matches in that store. In Shopify, the category comes from each product's «Product type», not from your collections: each different type becomes its own category in Koalab.
- The mapping is per store, not per platform: two different WooCommerce stores have different trees and are mapped separately.
- Mercado Libre does not hand over its tree to list it, and it would be thousands of nodes per country: that is why there you search. The search runs against the channel's country, because an Argentine category is not valid in Colombia.