Organize your guides with categories

Guide categories help you manage and organize your guide portfolio, making similar guides easier to find and filter. Use predefined categories to clarify the goal of each guide, such as education (onboarding or new releases), general notifications, or research. You can also create custom categories and category groups that match how you want to organize your guides and layouts.

Before you begin

• Subscription admins can create, edit, and delete custom categories, and create custom category groups.
• Guide editors can apply categories to guides and layouts.

Organize your guides list

Organize your guides list in the Overview tab to avoid complicated naming conventions by grouping guides into their respective categories. Guide categories work like folders where you can group similar guides that share the same goal for easier management.

• Any search you perform in the guides list also searches categories.
• Filter and sort your guides by the relevant category. Add the Guide Category column to understand the goal of each guide.
• Use the Group By Guide Category filter to see your complete guide list sorted into categories.
  
• Use the guide count alongside other filters to see how many published guides you have in each category.
• Use the arrow to show or hide the guides in each category.
  

Assign categories to layouts

You can assign a category to a layout when you save it in the Visual Design Studio. After you select a category, you’ll see recommended layouts from the default layouts or your saved layouts. For more information, see Layouts. 

Assign a category to existing guides

To assign a category to an existing guide, go to the guides list:

1. Select the checkbox of a single guide and then select Apply Guide Category.
   
2. Select a category from the dropdown list and select Save Changes.

To apply a category to multiple guides in the guides list, use the multi-select checkboxes to select the guides and then apply a category to them.

Create a custom category

You can create custom categories to organize your guides and layouts, and optionally group related categories together using category groups. Category groups are useful when you have a large guide portfolio. As an example, if you created custom categories for "Tutorials," "Definitions," and "Tips" you could group them under Getting started to make it easier to find the guides you’re looking for.

After creating a category, you can edit or delete it as needed.

Manage categories from the category dropdown menu in any of the following locations:

• The guide category filter at the top of the Guides page.
• The Category column within the Guides list.
• At the top of a guide’s details page.

Here’s an example of the category dropdown menu in the guide category filter:

From the category dropdown menu, you can create, edit, or delete a custom category.

To create a custom category:

1. Open the guide category dropdown menu from any of the areas listed above.
2. Select + Create custom category.
3. Give the category a name.
4. Optionally, select or add a Category group.
5. Select Create.

The new category appears in the guide category dropdown.

Note: Category groups can't be manually edited or deleted. If you delete all custom categories within a group, the group is automatically removed.

To edit a custom category:

1. Open the guide category dropdown menu.
2. Hover over the custom category name.
3. Select the edit icon.
4. Update the category name or Category group.

To delete a custom category:

1. Open the guide category dropdown menu.
2. Hover over the custom category name.
3. Select the delete icon.

Important: Deleting a category removes it from all associated guides and layouts.