Introduction to Categories

Categories allow you to customize the user interface of selected entities.

Because entities like tickets and devices Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Asset, Configuration Item, Installed Asset, Installed Product. can be used for a number of different purposes, workflows, and types of products, Autotask entities can contain hundreds of fields.

EXAMPLE  You may want to use tickets for customer service requests, engineering change orders, and employee on-boarding. For each workflow, completely different fields are required. Devices require different UDFs for tracking a router than an Office 365 license.

Displaying every single bit of information that could prove useful to somebody on an all-purpose entity page means that the page is cluttered for everybody. Using categories, you can create customized interfaces for any workflow.

When you apply a category to an entity, the category controls what the resources working on the entity will see. The following things can be customized using categories:

Page elements

All entities have page elements and body components that can be hidden on items associated with the category. A visual timeline, for example, is optional on tickets, tasks, and opportunities. Refer to Main body.

Fields and how they are grouped

Using categories, you can manage which fields are visible on the New, Detail, and Edit pages of an entity. Are there fields your company just doesn't use?  You can use the category to hide fields that are not necessary, making it easier for your users to get to the important information. Most, though not all, fields can be hidden, and you can also decide how you would like to group fields into custom sections. Refer to Sections & Fields.

Field properties

Each category allows you to configure different field properties. Do you want to set a default value? Do you want to make a field required for a workflow to avoid later questions from another department? Do you want to limit the options users can select from a List type field or a database table? Refer to Configuring field properties.

Insights

Categories also allow you to determine which insights, if any, will provide information from entities related to the item. Do you want the opportunity to provide some details about the related proposal project? Refer to The Insights tab.

Categories are currently available for the following entities:

• Organization Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Account, Business Unit, Client Company, Customer, Site.
• Device
• Opportunity
• Task
• Ticket

You can create up to 100 categories per entity.

To get you started, Autotask provides the following system categories for all entities:

• The Standard category includes all the tools and fields available for the Autotask entity. It even includes all the user-defined fields that your company has created. If the information you need is not included in the Standard category, the category probably provides a link to get to it.
• Standard (non-editable) is identical to Standard. You can copy it to create new categories, but you cannot edit it. This ensures that you will always have a baseline category.

For devices and tickets, additional system categories are available. Refer to System.

Whether you need additional categories for an entity will depend on your workflows and settings. At a minimum, you will want to refine the Standard system category for each entity by hiding any fields your company doesn't use.

For the step-by-step process we recommend, refer to Rolling out categories. For suggestions on different ways to take advantage of categories, refer to Using Categories.

Task and ticket categories only.

Task and ticket categories can play a role in security. If you have external users (such as contractors), or internal users who only need restricted access, you can configure task and ticket categories that are tailored for this purpose and then use a security setting that will render all tickets or tasks using this category, no matter what the assigned task or ticket category is. Refer to Render all Tickets as Ticket Category: and Render all Tasks as Task Category:

Different users may be more likely to create certain kinds of tickets or devices than others. To speed up the creation, users can select a default category for when they create new entities, or identify favorite categories to select from if they are prompted to make a selection. These defaults are selected by each user on the Settings page. Refer to Settings.