Feature
SAM uses dozens of internal categories and sub-categories to keep stock-keeping clean. Most of them aren't how a customer thinks. Defyn SAM's drag-and-drop mapper lets you collapse them into a handful of storefront-friendly buckets — and route every new artwork into the right one automatically as it syncs in.
Works on Shopify and WordPress / WooCommerce.
Centres that connect SAM straight to WooCommerce or Shopify with a generic catalogue-sync plugin tend to hit the same three problems within a week of going live.
The mapper lives inside the WordPress / Shopify admin. You decide what shoppers see — the plugin handles the routing.
On first run, the plugin pulls the full SAM category tree into a private "sam_cat" taxonomy. Nothing is published to shoppers yet.
On the Category Mapping screen, add the buckets you want shoppers to see. These become public product categories.
A two-column drag-and-drop board. Left: unmapped SAM categories. Right: your buckets. Drop into any bucket; products under that SAM category go there.
Some SAM categories are admin-only (e.g. "Other", "Internal"). Mark them as Hide and they never appear on the storefront, but stay accessible for audit.
Every subsequent SAM sync uses your rules. Add an artwork in SAM under "Acrylic — medium" and it lands under "Painting" on the storefront automatically.
Scenario: Ngukurr Arts had over thirty SAM sub-categories from years of accumulated SKU detail.
Result: Six display buckets (Artefact, Ceramics, Fabric, Painting, Paper, Sculpture) replaced the long list. Bounce rate on the shop landing page dropped because shoppers could find what they wanted in one click.
Scenario: A centre wanted to launch a one-off "Christmas Gifts" bucket curating items across SAM categories.
Result: They added the bucket and dragged the relevant SAM categories in. The seasonal bucket went live without changing anything in SAM itself — and disappeared just as easily after the season.
Scenario: SAM head office created a new internal category "Test Inventory" that the centre absolutely did not want shoppers to see.
Result: On the next sync, the category appeared as Unmapped. The admin marked it Hide. Nothing leaked to the storefront.
No. The plugin uses two separate taxonomies: a private one for SAM categories (read-only, for routing) and a public one for your display buckets (what shoppers see). Anything you manually created in your shop's category list stays untouched.
By default it goes into an Unmapped state and isn't published to shoppers — that prevents accidental leaks. You can configure a default fallback bucket if you'd rather every product land somewhere visible.
Yes. Sometimes a category fits more than one storefront concept (e.g. a SAM category that's both Painting and Limited Edition). Drag it into both buckets; the product appears in each.
Save the mapping as a draft. The plugin only publishes routing changes on Sync, so you can experiment without anything reaching the storefront. Roll back by un-dragging.
Yes — same mental model, same drag-drop UX, slightly different chrome. WordPress uses jQuery UI Sortable inside WP-Admin; Shopify uses a Polaris-native draggable board in the embedded admin.
Want a 15-minute screenshare against your actual SAM data? Send us a quick note or call — we’ll line up a walkthrough at a time that suits.
