Map attributes to a classification
The mapping is what turns your data model into something a customer's procurement system can read. It is declared once per attribute and applied on every export, every time — which is why an hour spent here is worth a week of manual spreadsheet work later.
Load a classification version
- Open the classification screen and add a classification: the standard (eCl@ss, ETIM, UNSPSC), the version, and the languages you need its labels in.
- Import the standard's release file. This loads the class tree, the feature definitions and the fixed value lists.
- Mark one version as active for export. You can hold several — a customer on eCl@ss 12.0 and another on 14.0 — but each export profile names exactly one.
The import is large and it is reference data, not your data. It does not touch your products.
Assign classes per family
Class assignment is the fast half of the job.
- Open a family and find the classification section.
- Assign the class for this family. Every product in the family inherits it.
- Override on individual products only where a family genuinely spans two classes — for example a family of seals covering both O-rings and flat gaskets, which are different eCl@ss classes.
Two pieces of advice from catalogs that have done this:
- Start with your top 20 families by revenue. They usually cover most of what your large customers buy, and a partially classified catalog is deliverable while an unstarted one is not.
- If assignment is hard, the family is wrong. A family that maps to four classes is a family that groups four kinds of product, and it is probably causing you trouble elsewhere too.
Map features
This is the slow half, and it is per attribute.
For each class, the standard lists the features it may or must carry. For each of those features, decide which of your attributes supplies it.
| Situation | What you do |
|---|---|
| Your attribute matches the feature directly | Map it, done |
| The feature expects a different unit | Map it, and declare the conversion |
| The feature expects a value from a fixed list | Map the values as well as the field |
| The feature is mandatory and you have no attribute | Create the attribute, then fill it |
| You have an attribute the standard has no feature for | Leave it unmapped; it stays in your own data |
Map at the attribute level wherever you can, not per class. thread_size
means the same thing in every class that has a thread-size feature, and mapping
it once covers all of them. Only map per class where the standard genuinely uses
the same property differently.
Map values and units
Two mappings, both declared once.
Units. Your measurement attribute
stores a value and a unit from its family. The feature specifies a unit from the
standard's own unit list. Declare which of your units corresponds to the
standard's, and the export converts. 10 bar becomes 1000 kPa if the feature
says kPa, without anyone editing a product.
Values. For features with a fixed value list, map your option codes to the standard's value codes:
your option code → standard value
v4a → (the standard's code for stainless 1.4571)
v2a → (the standard's code for stainless 1.4301)
messing → (the standard's code for brass)
What is mandatory, and what happens when it is empty
The standard marks some features as mandatory for a class. An article missing a mandatory feature will fail your customer's import — not yours.
Decide the policy per export profile:
| Policy | Effect | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| Block | The article is excluded from the export | The customer rejects whole files on any error |
| Warn | The article is exported, listed in the validation report | Most cases |
| Ignore | Exported silently | Never, in practice |
Warn is right for most customers, because a catalog that is 94% classified and delivered beats one that is 100% classified and three months late. But read the validation report — see Export a catalog for a customer.
What to check
- Pick three products from three different families. For each, view its classification and confirm the class, the features and the values are what you would write by hand.
- Check a product whose attribute is in a non-standard unit. The exported value must be converted, not just relabelled.
- Check a product in a second language. The class, the feature codes and the value codes must be identical to the first language; only labels change.
- Run the classification completeness report and note the percentage per family. That is your work list for Classify products.
Next
- Classify products — filling the features you mapped above.
- Catalog export profiles — where the mapping is actually used.