This article applies to organisations with a 'Hybrid' setup (both On-Premise Appliance and Cloud), as well as On-Premise only and Cloud only setups.
Categories are used to group URLs, domains, search phrases, file types or video IDs to base filtering policies on.
- You can delete any Custom Categories you have set up.
- You can’t delete our built-in Standard Categories, or Custom blocked content and Custom allowed content categories, but you can edit them to add or remove items you have previously added.
If you have a Hybrid setup (both Cloud and On-Premise Appliance), you can manage your Custom Categories and Web Filter Policies in either place. To sync, log out of the On-Premise Appliance, or in Cloud go to Filter > Publishing and select Publish.
On-Premise Appliance
To delete a custom category:
- Go to the Categories section.
- Find the category and select the X icon.
When you use the custom category in a Tenant or Global, can be overwritten Web Filter Policy, the policy updates to remove the category. The policy table will say Deleted category in the What column.
In specific scenarios when a category is used, you won’t be able to delete it, and a message will appear:
- Validation failed because a category cannot be removed when it is still in use - Remove the Category from where it has been used, such as in a Global policy, cannot be overwritten Web Filter Policy or HTTPs Inspection Policy.
- Cannot delete ‘Category name’ because it is in use in ‘Category Group name’ - Remove the Category from the Category Group.
Cloud Filter
To delete a custom category:
- Go to Filter > Custom categories.
- Find the category and select Delete.
- If you have used the category in any Web Filter Policies, a pop-up will show which policies will have the category removed and which policies will be deleted because they are based solely on this category.
- Select Delete to proceed or Cancel if you need to amend your policies.
Important
If the Category is part of a Category Group, you won’t see this pop up but the Category and Web Filter Policies are still edited and deleted.
Image 1: What happens to existing Web Filter Policies when you delete a category.