Categories

Categories (and subcategories) are used for classifying resources inside of a space.

An administrator can define them, can be assigned to when creating resources, and then participants can filter the different resources by these categories. For instance, they can be set up in proposals, meetings and debates.

As an example of this mechanism in action you can see it in Propose new functionalities for Decidim software process:

Administrators have defined the categories in the process.
Participants can create proposals that have one category.
Participants can filter by these categories and navigate among all the proposals.

Filter categories in proposals

Select a category when creating a proposal

Once a category is in use it cannot be removed, as there are resources that are using it.

Decidim has other ways to classify resources, for instance Scopes and Hashtags. The main difference is that Categories can be defined in a given space, Scopes are global for all the platform, and Hashtags are defined by the participants.

Categories can be nested, meaning that a category can have subcategories.

Create a new category

For configuring a new category, go to the space admin panel and click on the "Categories" tab.

View categories in a space admin page

Then click in "Add category" and fill the form.

Create a new category form

Table 1. Create category
Field	Type	Description
Name	Required	What is the name for this category.
Weight	Optional	Which order will it have in relation to the other categories. Having a lower number means a higher priority. For instance, if you have two categories, "Category a" with weight "10" and "Category b" with weight "0", then "Category b" will be first when ordering.
Description	Required	A long description explaining what this category is about.
Parent	Optional	What is the parent category.