Member Subsystem

A WebSphere Commerce member can be a user, a group of users, or an organizational entity. Members can be assigned roles which allow them to participate in the activities associated with the role. It also allows us to create member groups, which are groups 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.

Types of Organizations

Root Organization

•     Located at the top of the hierarchy
•     Automatically assigned all roles
•     Default MEMBER_ID is -2001 and should not be changed

Default Organization

•     Used when a user is registered without a specific organization
•     All guest customers and all Consumer Direct customers are registered under
•     the Default Organization
•     Default MEMBER_ID is -2000 and should not be changed

Sub-organizational entities

•     One or more exist under the parent organizational entities
•     An administrator can add as many child organizational entities as necessary to support their business

Types of users

Generic user

•     Common user ID to save resources

Guest user

•     Automatically converted from generic user upon performing an operation that requires a unique identity
•     Implicitly belongs to the Default Organization, and has no roles
•     May be able to do other operations depending on business model and access control policies

Registered user

•     Has a unique login ID and password
•     Provides profile data for registration purposes
•     Typically assigned Registered Customer role

Member groups

Implicit

•     Contains users that share common attributes
•     Specifies criteria that must be satisfied in order for a user to belong

Explicit

•     Users are specifically added to the group
•     Both an implicit member group can have users explicitly included or excluded from the group

Organizations are managed using the organization administration console. Member groups are managed with the organization administration console.

Member group types

•     Access groups
•     Approval groups
•     Customer price groups
•     Customer territory groups
•     Customer service representative groups
•     Price override groups
•     Registered customer groups
•     Customer segment groups

 Features

•     Member registration
•     Profile management services
•     Access control
•     Authentication
•     Session management