Special Purpose Groups: introduction

In Groups > Special Purpose, you may set up Groups of Products to define featured content as used in e.g. slideshows on your client site. They may also have other uses, e.g. to define contact lists used in your public/client site, depending on the specifics of your implementation.

Once the Special Purpose Group has been created (usually during initial setup of your platform), you can manage it just like regular Groups.

For slideshows and other featured Product components, Be sure to only add Products at Access Viewable or higher, else your clients will not be able to see them. Also, each added Product should include at least one image flagged as a Marketing Asset.

For Special Purpose Groups whose contents determine elements such as user-managed public contact pages or sales contact lists used in registration forms, likewise any Users and Organizations should be set to Access Public. For Special Purpose Groups driving asset download pages such as news/press or catalogue lists, the Assets must be Viewable or Public (depending on whether the related page is visible for logged-in clients only or fully public) plus have the Downloadable permssion enabled.

Note that you can use Sort in the Group’s tabs (Products, Assets, Users, Organizations) to determine the order in which the items will appear.

Admins only: To create a Special Purpose Group, click Add New, then enter a Name and Purpose (the Purpose must match that defined in the system in order for the Special Purpose Group to function).

Special Purpose Groups driving white-label client site sliders

If you are using our standard white-label client site, you will find multiple Groups in Groups > Special Purpose mirroring the different sliders available (usually at least a hero slider on the main landing page and possibly genre-specific sliders for the genre overview pages).

With the hero slider Group (this could be called “Home Hero Slider” or similar), you can fill it in two ways:

  • Products: Add Products to the group, bearing in mind that they must be Public or Viewable in order for clients to see them, and that at least one Public or Viewable image asset flagged as a Marketing Asset should be assigned to each Product. Use Sort to determine the order.
  • Assets: Add image Assets to the group, also bearing in mind that they must be Public or Viewable in order for clients to see them, and that at least one Public or Viewable product must be assigned to each image Asset. Furthermore, be aware that once you add image Assets to the group, Assets will exclusively drive the hero slider, and any Products will not appear anymore. An advantage of using this method is that you may define the hero slider image for any product independently of what the product’s default key image is set to. Finally, you can also add video Assets in the same way in order to integrate video playback directly into the hero slider.