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Product News & Updates

Show Me the Features: Creating User Accounts and Roles

May 25, 2016 | msarandi

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In our previous blog post, we discussed how OroCommerce lets the seller set up different corporate account hierarchies and structures. Each structure is delegated to the front-end of the application enabling the buyer to set his/her exact company account structure, regardless of its complexity.

As important as the corporate account setup is, however, completely controlling and managing the selling and buying processes also means that users must be assigned the appropriate account user and role. The account user, role and permissions provide users with access to data and the ability to perform tasks based on their business responsibilities and the company guidelines.  The ability to do this is crucial for both the buyer and the seller, as it helps support the various operations of their businesses. OroCommerce comes out of the box with the capabilities to allow buyers and sellers to specify the exact roles and permissions each account user requires in order to do their job as efficiently as possible, eliminate mistakes and save money.

Let’s see how OroCommerce can give your business this level of control, starting with the seller-admin.

Seller Experience

Creating Account Users

To create an account user, the seller-admin should navigate to the customer tab located in the top menu and click on “Account Users.” The first thing the seller will see are all the account users already entered into the system. He can easily edit these by selecting a specific record and clicking edit.

Creating User Accounts and Roles

To create a new record, the seller should click on the blue button labelled “Create Account User.” The image below shows some of the fields the seller needs to fill out in order to create the account (fields can easily be added or deleted using configuration files), including which account this user will belong to, their password, their role, etc. If there are no roles are available yet, the seller can just save this record and come back when at least one role is available in the system.

Admin Create Account User 1- Account Users - Customers

Creating Roles

To create a role, the seller will need to navigate to the customer tab located in the top menu and click on “Account User Roles.” In the image below, we’ve already created three different roles: Administrator, Buyer, and Role1. To begin the process of creating a new role, simply click on the blue button labelled “Create a New Role.” The form will then take the user through the necessary steps in a logical way.

Once the seller has entered in the name of the role and the accounts this role belongs to, he will go through the steps of assigning the action permissions and access levels for each entity (e.g., account, account user, account address, etc.) by clicking on the blue “None” link and allowing/disallowing access. Obviously, this entity list can be modified and other actions can be added or deleted using configuration files. In a similar way, the seller can assign capabilities and then assign account users to this role. (Note: This only works if account users were already created. If not, the seller should save the record and go back to it after the account users have been entered into the system).

 

Role - view - Customers

Buyer Experience

Create Account Users

Account users can be created in two ways. For instance, a buyer-user can log into the system via the front-end, and the system will then immediately assign a default Customer Group and an Account. Alternatively, a buyer-admin can initiate the process. In both cases, the buyer-admin will have to complete the process in his admin panel.

To create an account user, the buyer-admin (in this case, Amanda Cole from Company A) will click on the “My Account” link located in the top navigation bar and choose Account Users. She will then see all the other account users under her management who are already in the system (in this example, they are Brenda and Lois).

To create a new account user, Amanda will need to click on the black button labelled “Create Account” and complete the form you see below. This includes entering in any personal information and a password, as well as assigning them a role from a predefined list (created for her by the seller-admin).

FE-Account Users view - My Account

Creating Roles

Like the seller-admin, the buyer-admin (Amanda) can create new roles and/or modify existing roles. To create a new role, Amanda will need to choose “Account User Roles” and then click on the black button labelled “Create New User Role.” We’ve designed the form to be simple and intuitive so that buyer-admins can quickly go through it. While Amanda will need to enter in lots of information and assign access levels to different entities and capabilities, this will all provide her with the flexibility she needs to set the exact accounts and roles she needs for her company.

In this phase, it’s important to note that she will also need to determine which addresses this role and the account users assigned to this role can use for shipping or billing, which address books are allowed, audit account history , etc. The last step is to assign account users to the appropriate role.

2016-05-24 15_00_22-Create Account User Role - Account User Roles - My Account

Conclusion

Setting up the appropriate account users and roles in support of the company structure is a crucial capability, since it drives how each company does business. Without it, the seller and the buyer will not be able to support the various complexities of the buying and selling process. The OroCommerce team understands this and has designed the capabilities that allow both the seller and the buyer to build out their processes according to their company’s exact needs.

Few other eCommerce platforms provide this amount of flexibility and features, including eCommerce and online marketplace features out of the box. If this is a capability that is crucial to your organization, OroCommerce will undoubtedly be the platform to use.

You can test this feature, as well as the rest of OroCommerce, by logging into our demo. We are always eager to get your feedback, so please either comment on this blog or send us a question or comment via our forum.

Thank you!

The Oro Team

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