Member assets
WebSphere Commerce provides a Member subsystem, which includes members or users, and organizations. WebSphere Commerce member assets include data for participants of the WebSphere Commerce system. A member can be a user, a group of users, or an organizational entity. An administrator, such as a Site Administrator, assigns roles to users and organizational entity members. Once a member is assigned a role, the access control component authorizes the member to participate in activities. For example, an organization can be a Buyer or a Seller, or both. A user can also be assigned multiple roles. An administrator can create member groups, which are groups of users categorized for various business reasons. Use the WebSphere Commerce Administration Console to create and work with organizations, users, roles, and member groups.
Business logic for the member assets provides member registration and profile management services. Other services which are closely related to the member assets include access control, authentication, and session management.
The following diagram illustrates the WebSphere Commerce member assets.
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- Member
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A member in WebSphere Commerce can be any of the following:
- An organizational entity. This can be an organization, such as "IBM" or an organizational unit within a large organization, such as the "Electronic Commerce Division" within IBM.
- A user (either registered or non-registered). A registered user has a unique identifier, and a password, and is required to provide profile data for registration purposes. Registered users can be classified according to their profile type: type 'B' denotes a business user (or a
B2B direct customer) and type of 'C' denotes a retail user (or a consumer direct customer).
- A member group. This is a group of users categorized for various business reasons. The groupings can be used for access control purposes, for approval purposes, as well as for marketing purposes (such as calculating discounts, prices, and displaying products).
- Store entity
- Each store entity (that is, a store or store group) is owned by a member. A WebSphere Commerce online store is consists ofa set of HTML and JavaServer Pages files, as well as tax, shipping, payment, catalog and other database assets, which are contained in a store archive. A store also contains store data, which is the information populated into the WebSphere Commerce database to allow a store to function.
- Member attribute and member attribute value
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A WebSphere Commerce member has a set of attributes and each attribute has a value associated with it. A basic user profile for a member incorporates registration information, demographics, address information, purchase history, and other miscellaneous attributes.
A business user profile contains the same information as a basic user profile, as well as employment information, such as an employee number or a job title, or a job description. During registration, business users should identify the business organization to which they belong. Profiles for organizational entities include this additional information, such as organization name and business category.
Access control rules enforce user authority for performing profile management. Member profiles can contain a variety of personal and business-related attributes (such as roles, payment information, addresses, preferred languages and currencies, and pervasive computing devices). Attributes can be store-sensitive. These attributes are supported for users and organizational entities, but not member groups.
- Role
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The WebSphere Commerce system provides the following set of default role types:
- Business relationship roles
- Customer service roles
- Marketing roles
- Operational roles
- Organizational management roles
- Product management and merchandising roles
- Technical operations roles
A Site Administrator can assign these roles, as well as any new roles created by the Site Administrator, by organizational entity; that is, users who belong to an organizational entity can assume roles assigned to that organizational entity.
- Member role
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Each user can perform one or more roles in an organization. A Site Administrator assigns a role or roles to each member. For example, as a member of the IBM organization, John Smith's role as a Customer Service Representative means that John performs tasks on behalf of IBM customers and assists them with inquiries or concerns regarding their registration information, orders, or returns. John may also have the role of a Customer Service Supervisor, who has all the responsibilities of the tasks described above, as well as approval and supervisor authority over other Customer Service Representatives.
When a user is assigned a role, the role is scoped to an organizational entity. This can be any organizational entity; it does not have to be one of the user's ancestors. However, since roles are inherited, the user will play the assigned role in any descendant of the organization for which the role is assigned. For example, if a user is given a role in the Root Organization, then the user will play that role for all organizational entities.
WebSphere Commerce roles can be assigned manually through the Organization Administration Console, and automatically through the registration and session management commands. This automated role assignment is based on the configuration specified in the MemberRegistrationAttributes.xml file. WebSphere Commerce provides the MemberRegistrationAttributes.xml file, which can be modified to suit particular registration requirements.
- Organizational entity, organization, and organizational unit
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A member in WebSphere Commerce can be an organizational entity. This can be an organization, such as "IBM". This can also be an organizational unit within a large organization, such as the "Electronic Commerce Division" within IBM.
- User
- A member in WebSphere Commerce can be either a registered or non-registered user. A registered user has a unique identifier, and a password, and is required to provide profile data for registration purposes. Registered users can be classified according to their profile type: type 'B' denotes a business user (or a
B2B direct customer) and type of 'C' denotes a retail user (or a consumer direct customer). - Member group, member group member, and member group type
- A member in WebSphere Commerce can be a member group, which is a group of users categorized for various business reasons. The groupings types can be used for access control purposes, for approval purposes, as well as for marketing purposes (such as calculating discounts, prices, and displaying products).