Both courses and components can be divided into a maximum of seven categories which you yourself define in Options|Categories. Categories can be used to describe the type of course: basic, middle, advanced or voluntary, for example. For the components, categories are normally students, classes, teachers, rooms, subjects, equipment and so on. Note that component categories are often easy to define (persons, spaces, vechiles, tools, equipment), whereas in case of courses there are often more alternatives, based on teaching level, location etc. In business environments, categories have normally different interpretations.
You can also specify those component types which require conflict checking in timetables. In practice, subjects or similar kind of informative categories are the only component types that are not dependent on the timetable conflict checking, if you have not selected Prevent conflicts for in selection Options|Timetables.
For each category you also include a descriptive letter or digit as an identifier, such as "C:Classes". Categories can be used to sort and filter the data in several ways. You can easily create reports that are limited to a specific set of all codes.
For other fields in courses and components, see