Categories and reference catalogs are types of custom properties in an AODocs document. Learn more: Create and configure custom properties.
Categories and reference catalogs are composed of a set of values. Examples include a list of products or countries. Users can select predefined category values in a drop-down list when a document is in edit mode.
What are the differences between categories and reference catalogues?
Library level or domain level
Categories are defined at the library level. Library administrators can create and configure categories. Category value managers can configure categories once they've been created by an administrator. Learn more: What are roles?
Reference catalogs are defined at the domain level, so are available in all libraries on your domain. AODocs super administrators can set up reference catalogs on the domain via API. Once reference catalogs are set up, library administrators can create and configure properties, called Reference Catalog properties, at the document class level.
Dynamic or static
A list of category values can be dynamic. This means that contributors can add new values to the predefined list. Alternatively, the list can be frozen and contributors can only select values from the predefined list.
Reference catalogs are never dynamic. Only super administrators can add values to reference catalogs.
What are the similarities between categories and reference catalogues?
Custom properties
Categories and reference catalogs can be assigned to several custom properties in the same document class or in different document classes. Learn more: Assign an existing category to a new property.
Categories and reference catalogs can be required, hidden, or have multiple values. Learn more: Configure custom property settings.
Hierarchical sublevels
Category and reference catalog values can have several hierarchical sublevels. For example, the category Country may have three sublevels: Region, Country and City/Town.
Multi-level categories and reference catalogs let you:
- build nested categories for detailed taxonomies
- ensure consistent metadata across departments
- use cascading lists to streamline and improve data entry accuracy
- align company-wide classification frameworks for uniformity
Learn more:
Outdated values
Library administrators can set reference catalog values and category values as outdated.
Outdated values are not available for selection in the list of values.
If a category or reference catalog is filled with a value that a library administrator subsequently sets to be outdated, the document remains valid. Contributors can save the document without having to change the outdated value.