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Managing categories

Manage categories

Last updated: Apr 05, 2025
Manage categories

You create and manage categories to organize governance artifacts and the people who create and review governance artifacts.

Before you create categories, design your category structure. See Designing categories.

Managing categories includes these tasks:

Creating a category

Whether you can create or manage a category depends on the level of the category, your user permissions, and on your role within the parent category.

Restrictions
You have these restrictions when you create categories:
  • The combination of the category path plus its name must be unique.
  • Category names cannot contain the >> characters because they are used to specify the hierarchy path, for example, primary category >> subcategory.
  • You can't create a subcategory to the [uncategorized] category.
  • The maximum number of categories that a user can be assigned to (either directly, or via the user group) is 10000. If you assign more categories to the user, some of them and their associated artifacts might not be displayed correctly.

Some IBM Knowledge Catalog plans have additional limits on the number of categories that you can create.

Creating a top-level category

The following top-level categories are available by default:

  • [uncategorized]

  • Locations

  • Knowledge Accelerator Sample Personal Data - This category is only available if you create a IBM Knowledge Catalog service instance with a Lite or Standard plan after 7 October 2022.

Required permissions
You must have this user permission to create top-level categories:
  • Manage governance categories

To create a top-level category:

  1. Choose Governance > Categories, then click Add category.
  2. Add a name and optional description.
  3. In the Advanced settings section, choose whether to allow reporting on governance artifacts metadata. If this setting is On, the reporting administrator can enable reporting on metadata for governance artifacts in this category and all its subcategories, and store such metadata in an external database.
  4. Click Save.

When you create a top-level category, it has these users by default:

  • The user who creates the category, with the Owner role
  • The Public access group, with the Viewer role

Creating a subcategory

Before you can create a subcategory, there must be at least one top-level category other than the [uncategorized] category.

Required permissions
You must have both user permissions and category collaborator roles to create a subcategory:
  • You must have one of these user permissions:
    • Access governance artifacts
    • Manage governance categories
  • You must also have one of these category collaborator roles in the parent category:
    • Admin
    • Owner

To create a subcategory:

  1. Open an existing category other than the [uncategorized] category and click Create category.
  2. Add a name and optional description.
  3. In the Advanced settings section, choose whether to allow reporting on governance artifacts metadata. If this setting is On, the reporting administrator can enable reporting on metadata for governance artifacts in this category, and store such metadata in an external database. The switch might be disabled if the owner of the parent category disallowed such reporting for the parent category.
  4. Click Save. You have the Owner role in the new category.

To create multiple subcategories under one category, you must go back to the main category each time to create the subcategory. For example, you want to create the two subcategories A and B under category C: From category C, you create subcategory A, go back to category C, and from there, create subcategory B.

You can also add a new category when creating a new artifact. If the displayed list of categories does not meet your requirements, click New category (New category) to create a category in the current window.

Moving a category

You can move a category to any other category or to the top level. When you move a category, you are also moving all its subcategories. The collaborators that were added to this category are also moved if they have the required permissions to access the new parent category. The collaborators that were inherited from the original parent category are not moved, you can add them manually when the category is moved.

Required permissions
You must have both user permissions and category collaborator roles to move a category:
  • You must have one of these user permissions:
    • Access governance artifacts
    • Manage governance categories
  • You must also have one of these category collaborator roles in the parent category:
    • Admin
    • Owner
Restrictions
You can't move a category to its subcategory, to [uncategorized], or to a category that already has a subcategory with the same name.

To move a category, open it and select Move to from the action menu next to its name.

Editing a category

You can edit these category properties:

  • The category name. Select Rename from the action menu next to the category name.
  • The description. Click the edit icon next to the description in the About this category pane.

You can add or remove collaborators in the About this category pane or the Access control page.

Also, you can add or remove tags in the About this category pane.

On the Content tab, you can add subcategories and governance artifacts and, if available, you can edit custom attributes.

Required permissions
You must have a combination of user permissions and category collaborator roles to edit category properties:
  • You must have one of these user permissions:
    • Access governance artifacts
    • Manage governance categories
  • You must also have one of these category collaborator roles in the category:
    • Admin
    • Owner
Restrictions
You can't rename the [uncategorized] category.
You can't change a category's parent category.

Deleting a category

Before you can delete a category, you must delete or move all the primary artifacts from the category and from its subcategories and then delete its subcategories. You can't delete the [uncategorized] category.

Required permissions
You must have a combination of user permissions and category collaborator roles to delete a category:
  • You must have one of these user permissions:
    • Access governance artifacts
    • Manage governance categories
  • You must also have the Owner role in the category, or a custom role with the permission to delete categories.

To delete a category, open it and select Delete from the action menu next to its name.

Changing the primary category of an artifact

You can change the primary category of the published artifacts at any time.

Required permissions
You must have one of these roles in both the original and the new primary categories to change the primary category for an artifact:
  • Admin
  • Owner
  • Editor
  • A custom role with the permission to edit a specific artifact type.

To change the primary category of a single artifact:

  1. Open the selected artifact page.
  2. From the overflow menu select Move to.
  3. Select the new category and click Move.

To change the primary category of multiple artifacts of the same type at once:

  1. Select the artifacts from the list and click Edit > Primary category.
  2. Select the new category and click Save.

Note that moving an artifact to a new primary category also affects the workflow that the artifact is subject to. The workflow configured for the target category is applied.

Adding or changing secondary categories for artifacts

You can add secondary categories to either draft or published artifacts.

Required permissions
You must have one of these roles in both the primary category of the artifact and the secondary category that you want to add or remove:
  • Admin
  • Owner
  • Editor
  • A custom role with the permission to edit a specific artifact type.

To add one or more secondary categories to an artifact, go to the artifact's detail page and click the plus icon next to Secondary categories. Select one or more categories and click Save.

To remove a secondary category from a draft or published artifact, open the artifact and click Remove from the menu next to the secondary category name.

You can add one or more secondary artifacts of a specified artifact type to a category. To add one or more secondary artifacts to a category, open the category and click Add to category. Select the artifact type, and then select one or more artifacts and click OK.

To remove a secondary artifact from a category, open the category and click Remove from the menu next to the secondary artifact name.

Learn more

Parent topic: Categories