Custom URL categories are a useful tool: they group addresses that belong together in your organisation and make rules readable. Their drawback shows over time. Categories are created when there is an occasion, and rarely touched again. After two years the collection contains entries whose purpose nobody remembers. Category Forge bundles their maintenance in one place, so that creating, changing and tidying share the same short route.
Why custom categories are useful
The built-in categories cover the general case. What they do not know are the particulars of your own organisation: the portals of your most important suppliers, the tools of a specific department, the addresses of an application used only here.
That is what custom categories are for. They make rules readable, because they carry a meaningful label rather than a list of addresses. Anyone reading the rule later understands its intent.
The quiet sprawl
The problem does not arise at creation but afterwards. A category is created for an occasion, serves its purpose, and then lies there. The occasion disappears; the category does not.
After a while there is a collection in which active and forgotten entries can no longer be told apart. Nobody dares delete anything, because it is unclear which rule might still refer to it. So the list keeps growing.
This is reinforced by the fact that maintenance is inconvenient. Anyone wanting to extend a category has to find it first. That small hurdle is enough for a new one to be created instead.
What Category Forge changes
Category Forge bundles the maintenance of custom URL categories in one place. Creating, extending, changing and tidying run through the same short route.
The effect lies less in the individual action than in the habit it enables. When maintenance is easy, it gets done. When it is inconvenient, a new category appears next to the old one instead.
Tidying without risk
The delicate part of tidying is the question of whether a category is still in use. An entry belonging to no rule can go. An entry with an active rule attached certainly cannot.
As long as that question can only be answered by checking in several places, tidying does not happen. Bundled maintenance turns a risky task into a manageable one.
Not "do we still need this category?" but "is an active rule still attached to it?". The second question can be answered; the first can only be guessed.
How a category behaves in practice
Maintaining a category is one thing. Seeing how it takes effect is another. The CentaurNexusPlugin browser extension shows the risk rating of an address right where it is opened. What is a line in a list in the administration view becomes visible as a concrete effect.
For maintenance this is more than a footnote: a category whose effect can be observed is more likely to be corrected than one that exists only as an entry.
Frequently asked questions
What are custom URL categories for?
They group addresses that belong together in your organisation, such as supplier portals or a department's tools. Rules become readable because they carry a label rather than a list of addresses.
What does Category Forge do?
It bundles the maintenance of custom URL categories in one place, so that creating, extending and tidying share the same route.
Why do category collections grow uncontrolled?
Because creating has an occasion and tidying does not. Add inconvenient maintenance, and a new category is more likely to appear than an extension of an existing one.
How do I tidy up safely?
What matters is whether an active rule still refers to the category. As long as that is hard to establish, tidying is skipped out of justified caution.
Does this replace the Zscaler console?
No. The management complements the existing environment and makes maintenance clearer. The Zscaler platform remains the executing layer.
Sources
See the workflow in context
Pick the matching role in the demo launcher. The demo uses prepared sample data.
Open demo launcher