13. Categories
Although you aren’t required to categorize your items, the Category attribute can help you organize your items throughout the system. You can see it on the main menu and on the Dashboard and as a grouping method on the Item List page. If you log in to the user website, you’ll see that most of the reports allow you to group by category. For that reason, it’s helpful to categorize.
You can filter the results of your Item List or Container List to apply only to certain categories. Do this by clicking on the search field.
The following shows how a report can be filtered by Category.
a. Category vs. Item Type
Besides having categories, items also have an Item Type (referenced as Type on the Item Page). Item Type and Category have different purposes. Item Type indicates the collection of attributes used for that type of item. Here are some scenarios of using Item Type and Category:
1. There is one Item Type, but many Categories
Scanlily provides a default Item Type called “Standard,” which you can tailor. In many cases, that is all that is needed for all items. For example, if your assets are all books, your Item Type might include attributes like “Cost,” “Number of Pages,” and “Publisher.” Your categories might be “Mystery,” “Romance,” “Children’s,” etc.
2. There are multiple Item Types and Categories, and they have the same name
Your assets might include vehicles and appliances. In this case, you might create an Item Type named “Vehicle” and a category called “Vehicle.” Your Vehicle Item Type specifies attributes of “Wheels”, “Horsepower,” “Range,” etc. Then your “Appliance” Item Type might have attributes of “Voltage” and “Weight,” and those items are also in a category called “Appliance.”
3. You have a mix
Some items have the same-named Item Type and Category and other items share an Item Type but are in a different Category. Scanlily is built flexibly to allow this. For example, if we added Books to our Scenario #2, above, then we’d still want to have the categories “Mystery,” “Romance,” etc, but with those items all sharing the Item Type “Book”. However, all the vehicles would have both Item Type Vehicle and be in category Vehicle.
b. How to add or update categories.
You can select or add new categories or manage them by selecting My Categories from the menu:
Or you can navigate to the Dashboard and select a category or Add New from the Category section:
This will take you to the Categories list where you can edit, delete and add new categories:
Then on the Manage Category page, you can click on a pencil to rename or delete a category. Click on Add New to create a new one.
c. Sorting and filtering by categories.
On the Item List page, select Sort By -> Category to group your items by category.
Or you can filter items in your results by category by first clicking on the search bar and then selecting the category filter:
