What Are Itinerary Categories?
Itinerary Categories are, in effect, as simple as they sound. They are simply a way of categorising Itineraries, allowing the developers in the WebRes department to implement custom behaviour based on the categorisation. An example of this would be a different coloured background on a search result, based on whether or not it was a certain tour type – such as a day-trip or attraction.
There are 2 category types when it comes to Itineraries – Category 1 & Category 2. These are two completely separate lists, allowing for the selection of one category of each type against a single itinerary, e.g. Each Itinerary can only have 1 Category 1 & 1 Category 2.
This is where careful planning comes in. Because you can only have a single item from each list against an itinerary, you need to try and avoid scenarios where an Itinerary may qualify for more than one item in the same list. For more flexibility, check out the following article:
Categorise Your Tours – Using Web Categories.
Manage Your Categories
You can manage your Itinerary categories in the Category Manager, found under the Manage Itineraries menu option in your WebRes Admin (pictured below).
You can see here that we have Category 1s in the bottom left, and Category 2s in the bottom right.
In this scenario, we’re using Category 1s to categories based on duration, and Category 2s are categorising based on the type of attraction.
You can add new categories by clicking the respective add buttons, and you can batch delete using the checkboxes down the left of the grid and the Remove Selected button in the bottom right of the grid.
Assign Categories to Itineraries
This section assumes you’re already comfortable with adding itineraries – if that’s not the case, check out this article: Create An Itinerary
Categories are applied halfway down the first page of managing an Itinerary, as pictured below.
Simply select the category that you’d like to apply from each list, then hit Save or Save & Close at the bottom of the form. In the event you have a large number of categories appearing in the list, each one supports searching in the dropdown.
Filter Grids/Search Results Using Itinerary Categories
This section assumes that you know already how to create pages and add feature modules to them – if that’s not the case, check out this article:
Manage Page Feature Modules.
The final part is to use these categories to control how content displays on your site. Whilst you might not be able to manually add the graphical changes, you can set certain search results modules to show tours of a specific nature.
In this example, we’re going to create a landing page specifically for Seaside Day Excursions.
First of all, we need to navigate across to the page we want to alter, having logged in as admin. Once you’re there, look for the “Edit Settings” button, located at the top right of the search module you have on the page. Once you’re there, look for the “Pre-Filter Settings” section, which can be found beneath the “Result Filters”, pictured below.
Here, you want to select the Category items that you would
like to be visible in the search results. For example, if we tick holidays,
only Itineraries with that category will be visible.
This section is multiple-choice, meaning you may select as
many different categories as you’d like. The important thing here is to
understand the checkbox beneath the categories – labelled “Only match results
where the itinerary categories are within your selections above”.
This checkbox changes the logic from an OR to an AND.
To explain, imagine if you have ticked the Holidays Category 1, and the Seaside
Category 2. When a user lands on that page, if the “Only match” checkbox IS NOT ticked,
you will find results coming back for Itineraries that have either:
The Holidays Category 1 OR the Seaside Category 2.
If the checkbox IS ticked, only Itineraries that have
BOTH:
The Holidays Category 1 AND the Seaside Category 2.