How To Create and Modify Categories

How to use categories to filter locations by products or services they carry. Categories may also be assigned to territories, if your products/services are sold based on territories.

If your company sells a variety of products or services through stores, there is great value in allowing your customers to search for locations that carry the specific item (category) they want.  Your customers will appreciate this convenience, as it will save them the experience of visiting stores that don’t have the products they are looking for.  

Also see Working With Category Groups for information on accommodating elaborate structures (i.e. if you have multiple product families).  

Bullseye makes it easy to add these categories to your locations.  You can even include subcategories (subcategories address when companies have multiple levels-product families, products etc.). Currently, standard interfaces support 1 top level categories with up to 1 level of subcategories.

Adding these categories to your search requires two steps.  You must first add the category, then assign the category to the appropriate locations. Optionally, you can also create subcategories.

Note: Some companies sell their products or services by geographic territory instead of by location.  If the sales model is structured this way, we can support this by allowing you to assign categories to territories, then assigning territories to locations.  This approach is explained later in this article.

Adding Categories

To add a category to Bullseye, go to Settings>Categories.  Once you get to the Manage Category page, select Add Category.  

You’ll be taken to the Add Category page.  See the example below:

By default, the Category Type will be set to Location, because most companies simply sell their products or services through the locations/dealers.  The Territory option would be selected if you sell products or services based on territory coverage.

Name is the required label of the category that will be seen by the user when they search.  It may be a product, service, ISDN number, etc. Simply type in the name.

3rd Party ID is sometimes used for custom Bullseye implementations, when developers are working with the Bullseye API.  It is typically an internal number that is used as a unique identifier to call the web service. 

If you select the advanced link, you'll get the following additional fields:

Data is used for custom Bullseye implementations with the API, when developers want to include additional information with the categories, such as sales documentation or technical documentation.

Image will allow an image to be uploaded or referenced to represent a category. Referenced image URLs must start with https://. (Currently images may be uploaded, but they are not yet displayed on the search results of the standard interface. Contact us for more information on when this may be available).

Tooltip Content will allow you to provide text that users will see when they hover over the category with their mouse in the Bullseye admin (location admins, general admins, etc.) to provided an explanation of the category if necessary.

When you are done editing your content, at the bottom, you'll see a button that says Assign Locations.  If you select that option, you may assign the category to locations (see below) if you select the arrow to right, you may save the category with edits you may have added.  Select Save and New or Save and Close as needed:

Assigning Categories to a Location

Once you have entered the appropriate information, select Assign Locations.  You will be presented with an option to assign the category to your locations.  It is feasible to assign categories in this fashion if you have a relatively low number of locations (let’s say less than two hundred or so).  If you have thousands, or even several hundred locations, it will be more convenient to assign categories when you upload your locations.

To assign categories in the admin, select the Assign Locations button on the edit category page.  You will see a list of your locations, in pages of 20 records as in the following screenshot.  You can assign the category to the appropriate locations by checking the appropriate locations on the left.  See the example below:

Select the locations that need to be assigned to the chosen category.  Scroll through the pages by clicking on the arrows at the bottom of the page.  You can also search for specific locations by typing in the name of the location, and filter by country and active/inactive status under the advanced search option.

If the category you're assigning locations to has subcategories, you'll see a popup with the option to assign the locations to all subcategories as well. Click "Yes" to assign locations to the subcategories, or click "No" to assign locations to the current category only. 

Adding a Subcategory

Once you have created and saved a category, you can add a subcategory if your company has multiple levels of categories.  Let's say you sell shoes as a main category, but you would like your users to be able to filter down to running shoes and work boots in a subcategory.  Next to the appropriate category, simply select Add Subcategory and enter the appropriate information.  See the example:

The information entered into the subcategory fields is identical to that of categories, with the addition that you can also assign the subcategory to all locations that are assigned to the parent category of the subcategory.  As with categories, the name is the only required field, and the 3rd Party ID and Category Data only applies to API integrations.

Assigning a Category to a Territory

As mentioned previously, some companies sell the products or services they offer based on territory instead of by location/dealer.  

Territory Categories is an advanced feature that supports companies who have sales reps or distributors that may sell different products (categories) to different territories.  It essentially maps a category set to a single territory.  With this model, each location is then assigned to one or more territories and each territory is assigned to one or more products (categories).  

This differs from the Simple Model where a location is assigned to a set of products and a location is assigned to a territory.  Here the assumption is that a location sells all the assigned products (categories) to all the territories where they are assigned.  Below is a simple diagram showing how Territory Categories differ from the Simple Model.  

Here's a possible example to illustrate an example of Territory Categories in Use:

A company with dealers in NJ provides insurance services.   Home insurance is provided exclusively by 1 dealer per county in NJ.  Since there are 21 counties in NJ, they could create 21 territories (each covering a single county as its geographic region). Then they can create a category for home insurance and assign the home insurance category to all 21 territories.  Then they would assign the appropriate 21 dealers to the appropriate territories.  Thus, Bullseye will accommodates the ability for them to show locations that sell home insurance, and the service is sold based on the territory, not location.

The company also sells auto insurance, but auto insurance is sold based on the dealer.  There are simply 50 dealers in NJ that sell auto insurance. In this case, the company can create a single territory, with the entire state of NJ as its geographic region, and assign each of the 50 locations to the state-based territory.  They would create a category for auto insurance, and assign that category to the applicable  locations, not the territory.  

On the front end, when a user performs a search, they will enter a postal code or city/state and can also select either the auto or home insurance category.  Bullseye will return locations that apply to the selected category.  The auto insurance category is assigned to locations, The Home Insurance category is assigned to territories. 

Note that, the scenario above accounts for selecting only one category at a time by the user doing the search.  We can also support the ability to search by more than one category at a time, and return results based on "or logic" (return locations that carry either car or home insurance) or "and logic" (only return locations that carry both options).

When you are ready to create a Territory-based Category, go to the Categories section under Settings.  Here you will see that there is a checkbox for Location and Territory. By default the checkbox for Location is selected and grayed out.  This is because any category is automatically available to be assigned to locations. However, you also have the additional option of allowing a category to be assigned to a territory by marking that selection as true. 

Once you save the category, it will now be available on both the location category assignment screen and on the limit category to territories interface (shown below). After saving each category, select the territory option if the category is to be assigned to a territory.

Assigning Categories to Territories

There are 2 paths which allow you to assign categories to territories.  (1) You can do this from the territory management screen by selecting the category tab (go to Settings>Territories and select the territory.  Select the categories tab, and select which categories are assigned to this territory.  The options for categories will only be those categories that are Territory Categories.

Keep in mind that you will also need to make sure the territory is assigned to the correct location or locations.  If the territory is unique to a location, make sure there is only 1 location assignment. 

(2) You can also assign categories to territories from the territory tab on the manage location screen (go to Manage Locations and select edit on the applicable location).  

Select the “Limit By Category” link and a pop-up will open showing you only categories that are Territory Categories.  

Select the relevant category and assign it to the territory. 

Changing the Order of Categories

To change the order of Categories that users choose when they search, go to Categories under the Settings menu. You can alter the order of the categories and subcategories by selecting the 3 horizontal lines next to a particular category and moving them up or down:

Displaying Categories

If you are using Categories and wish to limit search results to a category, display categories as filters on an interface, or display categories on locations in the search results, you will need to configure the interface you create with those options (go to Manage Interfaces; limit search result to a Category under the General heading, show category filters on interfaces under the Search heading, and show categories on results under the Display heading). NOTE: If you are using Territory Categories, you will also need to assign those categories to the locations to limit or filter results by them, or show them in the search results.