Create Contact Category node for Joomla

Overview

Create Contact Category is a Step (action) in Contacts. Creates a contact category (#__categories with extension com_contact).

When the flow reaches this step, JOrchestrator executes Create Contact Category against your linked site or an external integration, using the field values you set on General and Design. Downstream steps can read the output payload fields defined for this node.

Why use this node

Create Contact Category is a action step in the Contacts group. Action steps run in the middle or end of a flow. They perform work on your CMS, call external services, or transform data for the next step.

Typical reasons teams add Create Contact Category to a flow:

Create Contact Category on your linked Joomla site when the flow reaches this step
Create contact category based on webhook, schedule, or CMS event data
Integrate Contacts operations with messaging, AI, or database steps in one canvas

Example workflows

Common patterns on the canvas:

Trigger or Webhook → upstream steps → Create Contact Category → Send Email or CMS update
Scheduled trigger → Create Contact Category → Debug (while testing) → production action

How to set it up

Title and optional parent, alias, description on Design.

Good to know

After the run, id is the category id for downstream Create Contact nodes. Returns existing id if an identical category already exists.

Properties panel

The designer shows these tabs for this node:

Tab	Purpose
Info	Plain-language description and output payload fields for downstream steps
General	Canvas label and read-only node ID
AI	Optional assistant to help draft settings from plain language
Design	Node-specific configuration fields

System (automatic — not edited by the user)

These fields are managed by the designer or runtime — you do not type into them directly:

Property key	Label	Type	Required	Visible when	Notes
`_nodeId`	Node ID	`node-id`	No	—	—
`_payloadFields`	Available Fields	`payload-panel`	No	—	—

User-configured — General tab

Property key	Label	Type	Required	Visible when	Notes
`label`	Label	`text`	No	—	Node label

User-configured — Design tab

Property key	Label	Type	Required	Visible when	Notes
`title`	Category Title	`text`	Yes	—	Title or {{placeholder}}
`alias`	Alias (optional)	`text`	No	—	URL segment; auto from title if empty
`description`	Description	`textarea`	No	—	Category description

CMS-backed (options from the linked site)

Property key	Label	Type	Required	Visible when	Notes
`parent`	Parent category	`contact-category-select`	No	—	Select parent (contact categories)

CMS site configuration (not on this node's properties panel)

Credentials, API keys, mailers, SMTP, and integration defaults are configured in the CMS plugin under Node Configuration, not per step on this node. Link the flow to a domain before testing CMS-backed fields.

Output payload fields

After this step runs, later nodes can reference these fields using placeholders such as {{create_contact_category.id}}.

Field key	Type	Description
`id`	string	Primary record identifier.
`title`	string	Title text for the created or updated record.
`alias`	string	URL-safe alias / slug.
`parent_id`	string	Parent category or menu item ID.
`description`	string	Category or contact description text.
`path`	string	Filesystem-relative path (often under /images).
`level`	number	Nesting level in the category tree.
`already_existed`	boolean	True when create found an existing record instead of creating.

Validation rules

Category Title (title) must be filled before the flow can be saved.

Related nodes

Other steps in the same area of the palette:

Create Contact (create-contact) — Contacts
Delete Contact (delete-contact) — Contacts
Delete Contact Category (delete-contact-category) — Contacts
Update Contact (update-contact) — Contacts
Update Contact Category (update-contact-category) — Contacts

Create Contact Category for Joomla