Items on the Website in CustomerGate 365

Why this screen exists

The ordinary item list can show that an item is not on the website. It cannot say why, and that is where every conversation about this starts. This screen puts the reason next to it, in words: Item category STEEL-INT is excluded, or Rule 40: internal items. It is not on the website is not an answer anyone can work with.

The columns

Two columns you set yourself; the rest is outcome and is read-only.

Web Publication

What this item says itself: Default, Published or Excluded. Published and Excluded win from the item category, from every rule and from the policy. Default leaves the decision to those three.

Not Orderable Online

The item is in the catalog, but a visitor cannot put it in a request: price on request. At the counter that refusal does not apply.

On the Website

The outcome. Green means the catalog services hand this item over.

Web Publication Reason

Which step decided it, in words. This is the column this screen exists for.

Item Category

The category. An excluded category takes its items with it, and the categories below it too.

Blocked, Sales Blocked

A blocked item is never on the website, whatever else is set.

The three views

The middle one is the important one.

Not on the Website

Everything that is not on it, whatever the reason. Blocked items are in here too.

Excluded by a Rule or Category

Not on the site, not blocked, and nobody said so on the item itself. This is where a mistake in a rule becomes visible: nothing should be in this list that a colleague says should have been on the website.

On Request Only

In the catalog, but not something a visitor can put in a request. Check here that there are no more of them than you meant.

Over a selection

Three actions work on what you have selected:

Publish on Website

Sets the selected items to Published, whatever their category or the rules say. Blocked items stay off.

Exclude from Website

Takes them off and puts them in the removal list, so a website that had already fetched them removes them as well.

Leave to Category and Rules

Puts the choice back to Default, so the item category, the rules and the policy decide again.

The confirmation names the number. That is not politeness: in Business Central, selecting nothing means you have selected everything under the current filter, and that can be the whole item list. The number in the question is the last place where that shows up before four thousand items leave the website.

The buttons beside them

Recompute Catalog

Recalculates for every item and item category whether it belongs in the catalog, and reports how many changed. Safe at any moment; it changes nothing that is already right.

Publication Rules

Opens the rules that decide about every item that says nothing itself.

Removal List

Opens what the website is being told to remove: everything that has left the catalog and has not come back.

Before you go live

1. Choose the policy and write the publication rules. See Web Publication Rules.
2. Open this screen with the view Excluded by a Rule or Category and walk through it. Everything here is off the website without anyone having said so on the item.
3. Use the view Not on the Website to check that nothing is in it that does belong on the website.
4. Use the view On Request Only to check that the price-on-request list is right.
5. Choose Recompute Catalog, so that you see the outcome and not the previous round.

On the item card and the item list

The item card gets a Web tab with the same four fields: Web Publication and Not Orderable Online to set, and On the Website and Web Publication Reason to read. The item list gets the same two actions over a selection, in the Web Catalog group. So somebody with a single item in front of them does not have to come here.

Those two screens have no Learn more link of their own to this manual, and that is a choice. They are Business Central's own item card and item list, and somebody pressing Help there is usually after something of Microsoft's. The fields CustomerGate adds carry their own tooltips, and the button beside them opens this screen, which does have a page of its own.