Organization Administration Console

The Organization Administration Console enables administrators to manage organizations, business users and member groups. Access Control policies can also be managed and approval requests can be processed.

The following screen capture provides a quick look at the Organization Administration Console.

What you can do with the Organization Administration Console

Tasks Details For more information
Work with organizations An organization is a type of member in WebSphere Commerce. Organizations are setup in a hierarchical manner and subscribe to access control policy groups that determine the authorization policies that apply to the assets owned by that organization.

Organizations can be created and modified. Organizations can be configured to have different types of approvals. Roles can be assigned to organizations, which determines the roles that users can have for that organization. The access control policy groups that an organization subscribes to can be modified.

A Site Administrator can manage all organizations. A Seller Administrator, Buyer Administrator and Channel Manager can manage organization where they have the role. A Seller Administrator, Customer Service Supervisor and Customer Service Representative can manage (buyer) organizations that have registered to the (seller) organization where they have the role.

Organizations
Work with users A user is any individual that accesses the WebSphere Commerce system. The Organization Administration Console is intended to manage business users. That is, users that are not under the Default Organization and that have a profile type of 'B'. The system is designed so that B2C users exist under the Default Organization and have a profile type of 'C'.

In the Organization Administration Console, business users can be created and updated. Roles can be assigned to these users. Users can be assigned to Member Groups. Customers can be assigned to a Customer Service Representative, Customer Service Supervisor or a Seller.

A Site Administrator can manage all users. A Seller Administrator, Buyer Administrator and Channel Manager can manage users under an organization where they have the role. A Seller Administrator, Customer Service Supervisor and Customer Service Representative can manage users under (buyer) organizations that have registered to the (seller) organization where they have the role.

Users
Work with roles Roles are assigned to users to give them authority to perform various operations in the site.

New roles can be created in the Organization Administration Console by a Site Administrator. The Site Administrator can also configure which roles can be assigned by users with a particular role. For example, by default the Customer Service Representative role is configured to only be able to assign the Registered Customer role to other users. Roles can be assigned to users and organizations.

Roles
Create and manage member groups A member group is a grouping of users and organizations -- used for various business purposes. You can create member groups for Access groups, Approval groups, Customer price groups, Customer territory groups, Customer service representative groups, Price override groups, Registered customer groups, or Customer segment groups.

Site administrators and Seller Administrators have authority to manage member groups.

Member groups
Create and manage access control policies, resource groups and action groups You can use the Organization Administration Console to make simple changes to access control policies. If extensive changes are required, you should use the acpload utility that uses XML files.
You cannot use the Organization Administration Console to:
  1. Define new actions, resources, attributes, relationships, relationship groups.
  2. Define complex implicit resource groups, and complex implicit access groups.
  3. Assign a new policy to a policy group.
Note: Only Site Administrators can manage Access Control Policies.
Examples: Customizing access control policies using the Organization Administration Console
Work with approvals In WebSphere Commerce, there are five processes that might require approval:
  • contract submission
  • order process
  • reseller and buyer registration
  • RFQ response
  • user registration
A Site Administrator, Seller Administrator, Buyer Administrator, Channel Manager, Customer Service Supervisor and Customer Service Representative can specify the approvals that are needed for an organization.

A Site Administrator, Seller Administrator, Buyer Administrator and Channel Manager are able to process approval requests.

Approvals
For the B2B direct store model, the Aurora starter store includes store pages that Buyer Administrators and Buyer Approvers can use to perform almost all of their administrative and approval tasks. If you adopt these pages for your B2B direct store, you can eliminate the need for Buyer Administrators and Buyer Approvers to use the Organization Administration Console. For more information, see the Aurora starter store site flows: