Populating your office’s Favorite Products Library

Favorite Product Libraries are a collaborative archive of your organization's recommended products. Admins can manage which Members can add products to or delete products from the organization’s Favorite Product Library. Discussions, pricing information and uploaded documents automatically transfer to the product’s listing in the Library. Anyone can see who added the product, as well as any notes that person supplied, to help with their own evaluation or know who at the organization can tell them more about their experience with the product. This serves as critical (and billable) research for how to include reliable, proven choices for other projects.

Also, because the Transparency Catalog contains live data, product disclosures and links to manufacturer websites with more detailed product information are always up-to-date, no matter when you added the product to a Favorite Products Library.

Every Member of an Office account has a personal Favorite Products Library in addition to access to their organization’s Library. 

Once a product has been added to an organization's Library, only an Account Administrator or a Member with organization Favorite Product Library privileges may edit or delete it.

• Saving a product to a Library
• Editing or deleting a product in a Library
• Best practices for populating your organization's Library

Saving a product to a Library

Starting from a Favorite Products Library

• Use the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) at the top left of any screen to navigate to the Favorite Products Library you want to populate – your organization's Library, or your own. 
• Within the Library, click the blue Search for products button at the upper right.

• The Transparency Catalog will load. Search the Catalog for the product(s) you want to add and click the dark blue Add products button at the top of the search results when done.
• You will be returned to the Favorite Products Library, which now contains your selected product(s).

You can also copy products from an organization's Favorite Products Library to your own:

• Open accordions by clicking on the plus symbol, or use the open/close all links to open divisions or the entire page, to locate the product(s) you want to copy from the Library.
• Check the box to the left of the product(s) you want to copy. Or, if you want to copy all the products in a section, you can click the Select all checkbox above the first product in the section.

• Open the blue Actions pulldown menu at the right side of the screen. (You may need to scroll up to see it.)
• Select Copy to my Library.

• The products will be copied to your personal Library, along with any notes, descriptions, basis of design information, substitution information, comments, pricing information and uploaded documentation.

Starting from a Project or Template

• View products on a Project’s Products tab, a Manufacturer Brand List page, a Template you or a colleague has created or a Manufacturer Template.
• Click the star icon to save the product to your personal or organization Library.

• A window will appear to confirm or cancel your recommendation. The window includes an optional text box where you can provide up to a 50-word explanation about why you’re adding this particular item to your organization’s Library. This note will appear in the Notes field displaying below every product in the Library.

Editing or deleting products from a Library

You can always edit or delete products in your own personal Favorite Products Library. However, only Account Administrators and Members to whom they've provided add/delete privileges may edit or delete products from the organization's Favorite Products Library.

Editing a product within a Library

Within any Library you are able to edit, you can update the following:

• The product notes field explaining why the product was added to the Library
• The description field to specify color, SKU and any other information identifying the product variation
• Whether the product is considered basis of design
• Whether substitutions are allowable
• Notes on pricing (estimated or actual)
• More detailed pricing information
• Uploads

Deleting products within a Library

• Open accordions by clicking on the plus symbol, or use the open/close all links to open divisions or the entire page, to locate the product(s) you want to delete from the Library.
• Check the box to the left of the product(s) you want to delete. Or, if you want to delete all the products in a section, you can click the Select all checkbox above the first product in the section.

• Open the blue Actions pulldown menu at the right side of the screen. (You may need to scroll up to see it.)
• Select Delete selections.

• A window asking you to confirm your deletion will appear. Click Delete to delete the product(s) or Cancel to cancel.

Deleting products while in a Project or Template

• Click the star icon to toggle it off, thereby deleting the product from your personal or organization Library.

Best practices for populating your organization's Library

Identify one or more people who:

• Have product knowledge in each MasterFormat® division
• Are responsible for material selection guidelines, criteria and goals
• Are the office librarians

These people should be responsible for populating the office’s Favorite Products Library. They may select products to add from:

• The Transparency Catalog
• Manufacturer templates
• Projects for which they have access

Multiple people within an organization can favorite the same products. People assigned to curate your organization’s Favorite Products Library should periodically review saved products to ensure everything is up-to-date and remove any unwanted or duplicate entries.