Customize site navigation

Article
01/04/2023

This article describes how to create a customized online navigation hierarchy to organize your products for browsing on your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce site.

Online storefronts typically let customers discover and browse products by navigating through product categories. This capability is usually provided by tabs at the top of the page or by a navigation bar on the left. In Dynamics 365 Commerce, you can create and manage the hierarchical structure of your category navigation and the products that are included in the various categories.

To create a channel navigation hierarchy, follow these steps.

Go to Retail and Commerce > Products and categories > Category and product management.
Select Category hierarchies, and then select New.
Name the hierarchy.

Note

The topmost category that you create is the root category node. It won't be shown on your site. To create a category hierarchy where a single top-level node is shown on your site, create and name the category as a child of the root category.
Select New category node, and name the category.
Continue to create sibling and child categories as you require.

You can now assign products to each category that you created under the top-level category.

Customize the order of categories

By default, the categories that you define will appear in alphabetical order on your site. However, you can also customize the display order of categories. For more information, see Configure the display order for categories in the product hierarchy.

Assign a category hierarchy type

Go to Retail and Commerce > Products and categories > Category and product management.
Select Category hierarchies.
On the Action Pane, on the Category hierarchy tab, in the Set up group, select Associate hierarchy type.
Select New.
In the Category hierarchy type field, select Channel navigation hierarchy.
In the Category hierarchy field, select the channel navigation hierarchy that you created earlier.

To make your navigation hierarchy available to your online storefront, follow these steps.

Go to Retail and Commerce > Channel setup > Channel categories and product attributes.
In the tree on the left, select your online store.
Select Publish channel updates.
Go to Retail and Commerce > Retail and Commerce IT > Distribution schedule.
In the list, find and select Job 1040.
Select Run now.
Repeat steps 5 and 6 for jobs 1070 and 1150.

Show categories on your site

To show your category hierarchy on your online storefront, you must add the navigation menu module in the appropriate location in a template or fragment. The navigation menu module will then show your navigation hierarchy, provided that you've published your navigation hierarchy to the channel that your site is bound to.

Note

The navigation menu module that is included in the module library lets users navigate only to categories that don't have subcategories. If your customers should be able to navigate to categories that have subcategories, you must customize the navigation menu module.

On your navigation menu, you can add navigation options that aren't part of your product category hierarchy. For example, at the end of the list of product categories, you can add a Contact Us item that points to a contact page that you've built for your site.

To add custom navigation options to your navigation menu, follow these steps.

In the template or fragment that you want to customize, select the navigation menu module.
In the property pane, on the Data tab, select Add item to create a new content management system (CMS) navigation item.
Enter link text and a URL.
Repeat steps 2 and 3 to add more custom navigation options.
When you've finished, select Save to save the template or fragment, and then select Finish editing to check it in.