A question we encounter quite often is “how do we restrict product availability for a sales agent or on a certain channel?”
Well, the honest answer is, with TourCMS, we can’t restrict product availability based on the agent, only based on the channel. We’ll show you here in 7 simple steps, how you can easily use product filters to achieve the desired result.
[At this point I must mention, that our esteemed colleague Mrs. Blanca Castillo wrote a very good help article about the general use of product filters in TourCMS. If you've never worked with product filters, then the following article will help you a great deal: Product filters]
Before we can enable product filters we must create Categories & Groups. Imagine a group being a certain aspect of a tour and the categories being the various characteristics that can be found within that aspect. An example of a typical group (=aspect) that is found in many customer accounts is “location” with different places listed as categories (=characteristics).
Now let’s exploit this logic to our advantage:
Step 1:
- Go to Homepage > Configuration > System & Setup > Categories & groups (besides Product Filters)
- “Activate” a new group and “edit” it
- Enter “Sales channel” as the Group name
- Always hit “Save changes” after every entry
- Enter the Name of your first channel
- Enter the Name of your second channel
- ….
When you’re done you can head back to Categories & groups. There you should now see something like this:
Continue to “Configure product filters”.
Step 2:
- Enter a “Product filter name” with the name of your first Channel. In my case, this is Channel OTAs.
- Hit “Create a new product filter”
- Your new product filter should appear in the box above, hit “SETUP”
- Now we must teach the Product filter which categories in what groups it has to filter
- Since the purpose of our Product Filter Channel OTAs is to filter tours that carry the category “Channel OTAs”, we move that category to the right like this:
- Hit "Save changes".
Back on the Product Filters overview, you can see that the filter entry changed but that still no tours match the criteria of this filter.
Let’s change that!
Step 3:
- Head over to Homepage > Tours > Setup (of one of your tours) and click on the tab “Categories”
- You guessed right! Now you have to - once again - move the category “Channel OTAs” to the right and hit “Save changes”
Step 4:
-
Head back to the Product Filter. After a few minutes, you should see that the Product Filter now matches one Tour (Tours Web & staff). Very well. That proves the Filter itself is working!
Step 5:
- Repeat step 2 for every channel you want to have this functionality for.
- Repeat step 3 for every tour you want to distribute. Please be aware that you can push multiple Channel categories to the right; after we’re finished the tours will be sold accordingly to all the channels in the right box.
Step 6 (DO NOT DO THIS STEP WITHOUT FINISHING STEP 1-5!):
- Check if the Filters give you the desired number of tours. IF NOT; STOP!
- Go to the Channel manager (Homepage > Channel manager)
- Choose the channel you want to activate the Product Filter for (top-right)
- Push the matching Product Filter to the right
- Tick on the box “Restrict product on web sale by product filter”
Step 7:
- Head over to the TourCMS marketplace (Homepage > Partners > Data Quality) and check your success. It might take a few minutes before the effect of the Product Filters is visible (as processes on the server have to run first).
DISCLAIMER:
If you’re already selling your products over the TourCMS marketplace, the process mentioned here is not without dangers. As always in TourCMS it pays to act carefully and deliberately.
If you are not sure you’re doing the right thing, write us an email to support@palisis.com and ask for our expert opinion.