The Product Catalog for SharePoint 2013 is a helpful template that allows you to create a site where data can easily be published, using Search, to other sites.  The Product Catalog can be applied to both intranet as well as extranet sites and is easily managed through admin pages.

In our new four-part series, we introduce you to the Product Catalog for SharePoint 2013 and show you how to set up and utilize some of its key features.  Here in part four, we’ll walk you through the steps needed to connect a publishing site to a catalog.

Connect a Publishing the site to a Catalog

1. To begin, go to Central Administration under Application Management, and select Create site collections:

2. Enter information applicable to your new site collection, including Title, Description, Username, and URL.  Under Select, a template, click the Publishing tab and choose Publishing Portal:

3. After you have entered all of the necessary information, Click OK to create the site
collection.

4. Return to your Home. You will see the new Publishing Site that you created:

5.  From the Publishing Site settings options, select Site settings:

6. On the Site settings page, under Site Administration, select Manage catalog connections:

7. Select Connect to a catalog:

8. From the Connect to Catalog screen, you will need to select the catalog from the Available Catalogs list which you wish to connect to your publishing site.  After you have selected a catalog, click Connect.  For this example, I will be connecting my publishing site to the following catalog: BambooProductCatalog – Products to connect.

Please note that before you connect to a catalog, you need to Start Full Crawl (instructions for this are available in part 3 of this series).  If you click Connect to a catalog and have not yet started the full crawl, you will see that you do not have any catalogs available.

9. After you have connected to a catalog, navigate to the Catalog Source Settings page. In the Navigation Hierarchy section, under the Root term of hierarchy, select Bamboo Products.

10. Check the box next to Include root term in site navigation.  Click OK.

11. From the Bamboo Products list, select a product to view. For this example, I have selected the product Bamboo Simple Search:

Check out the rest of the series:

• Part 1: How to Create a Product Catalog Site
• Part 2: How to Create Items for a Product List
• Part 3: How to Use a List as a Catalog and Start a Full Crawl in Central
  Administration