Introduction

This guide describes the out-of-the-box storefront functionality of the Intershop Progressive Web App (PWA) for B2B customers.

For the Responsive Starter Store, refer to Guide - B2B Storefront Functionality (valid from 7.10.17).

Permissions and Roles

The B2B storefront supports the following roles and permissions:

Role	Description	PURCHASE	MANAGE USERS	ORDER APPROVAL	MANAGE OWN QUOTES	MANAGE COST CENTER
Buyer	can place orders and quotes
Approver	can approve orders of buyers
Cost Center Manager	can manage cost centers of the customer organization
Account Admin	can manage all aspects of the customer organization

My Account - Dashboard

The My Account overview page provides a dashboard for B2B users. The displayed information depends on the user's assigned role. The following sections may be available:

• My Budget
• My Requisitions
• My Cost Centers (only available for Cost Center Manager / Account Admin)
• My Approvals (only available for Approver / Account Admin)
• My Quotes
• My Order Templates
• Most Recent Orders

My Account - Navigation

The navigation section of the My Account area contains the following information:

• The customer which the currently logged in user belongs to
• The role(s) of the currently logged in user
• Separate sections based on user roles

Quotes

Quotes are used for price negotiations between the customer and the merchant.

Flow

While there are more complicated processes possible, the current implementation is intentionally kept simple.

Storefront

The current implementation recommends that the user is logged in before doing anything. After logging in, the user can:

• Create new quotes (only one active new quote is allowed at a time, the quote behaves like a shopping cart).
• Submit / delete / refuse a quote.
  
• See/manage the list of quotes in the My Account section.
  
• See the quote request details in the My Account section.
  

  

Commerce Management Application

The current implementation supports the following administrative tasks:

• A quote manager can see a list of quotes.
  

  

• The quote manager needs to be assigned to the customer to see a customers quotes.
  

  

• The quote manager can reject/edit/submit a quote.
  

  

Limitations

In the ICM standard implementation quotes and recurring orders are incompatible.

Generally, a recurring order is a one-time triggered, but periodically executed purchase of certain products or services. In subscription-based business models, consequently, customers pay periodically to use or receive a defined set of products at a regular base.

The B2X edition of Intershop Commerce Management supports subscription models via recurring orders.

Registration in Storefront

When a new user registers in the storefront, they are prompted to enter the name of their organization. The system then creates this organization, and the user is assigned the role of Account Admin.

As an account admin, this user can add additional users and assign them specific roles in the User Management section of the My Account area.

User Management

The B2B storefront contains a management section for users of a customer organization, where administrators of the organization can create and manage users.

Creating Users

Administrators can create new users of an organization from the user list. New users will receive an e-mail in order to provide a password and login.

Managing User Roles and Budgets

In addition to creating and deleting users, you can manage the roles assigned to an individual user.

User Roles

The roles assigned to a user define what a user is allowed to do in the storefront. The buyer role is always assigned to a user. Additional roles can be assigned to perform specific tasks, such as approving orders or managing cost centers.

User Budget and Order Spend Limit

User budgets and order spend limits can be defined separately for each user. If defined, these values are used to decide whether an order requires approval or not. An approval is necessary if one or both values are exceeded. If no values are defined, orders can be placed without approval. For more information, see Order Approval.

There are jobs which are created with the purpose to reset the user budgets at the end/start of each period. The following budget types are available: yearly, half-yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly.
The names of the corresponding job configurations are: ResetYearlyBudgetsSpentJob,ResetHalfYearlyBudgetsSpentJob,ResetQuarterlyBudgetsSpentJob, ResetMonthlyBudgetsSpentJob, and ResetWeeklyBudgetsSpentJob. They can be found in the Intershop System Management's Schedules | Scheduling menu item under root domain:

By default these jobs are disabled. This can remain as it is if user budgets are not used. If user budgets are used, these jobs need to be configured once. To do this, click on the desired one to enter the job configuration details page:

On the job configuration details page:

• Select the Enabled checkbox.
• Choose the Recurring Interval option.
• Configure the desired interval when the job is planned to run (e.g., for weekly on Monday, 01:00:00 am; for monthly Every 1 Months; for quarterly Every 3 Months).

This way, resetting of user budgets will be performed automatically at the desired time. It is not necessary to configure all three jobs if, for example, only one type of budget period is used. For example, if weekly is the only type available, then ResetYearlyBudgetsSpentJob,ResetHalfYearlyBudgetsSpentJob,ResetQuarterlyBudgetsSpentJob, and ResetMonthlyBudgetsSpentJob can remain disabled.

Activating and Deactivating Users

In the Edit User Profile dialog it is possible to activate and deactivate a user. Deactivated users are not able to log in.

Deleting Users

Administrators can delete users, e.g., in case they left the company. This can be done from the user list by clicking on the delete icon.

Cost Centers

Cost centers allow customer organizations to track purchases according to their internal cost accounting and ensure purchases align with defined budgets.

Customer organization administrators can create, edit, and delete cost centers. They can also assign a cost center owner and buyers to each cost center.

Cost centers can be activated and deactivated to adapt to changes in a customer organization's accounting.

Cost Center Management

Cost centers can be managed in the Cost Centers section of My Account. Administrators and Cost Center Managers can create, edit, activate/deactivate, and delete cost centers here and get an overview of the amount of orders and spent budget per cost center.

Create Cost Centers

Cost center managers and administrators can create new cost centers from the Cost Center list. A cost center must have a unique ID within the customer organization, a name, and cost center manager defined that approves or rejects all orders placed for this cost center.

Delete Cost Centers

Administrators or Cost Center Managers can delete cost centers that are no longer needed by clicking on the delete icon in the Cost Centers list.

Deactivate/Reactivate Cost Centers

Cost centers that are not needed now but should be saved for later use or to see all orders placed for this cost center later on, can be deactivated and reactivated again by clicking on the on the deactivate/reactivate icon in the Cost Centers list.

Add Buyers to a Cost Center

Adding buyers to a cost center can be done in the Add Buyers dialog. To open the dialog, click Add in the buyers section of the cost center details page.

Edit Buyer Budgets

Editing a buyer's budget is achieved by the Edit Budget dialog. To open the dialog, click the Edit button next to each buyer in the cost center details page.

Assigning Orders to Cost Centers

Buyers can select a cost center for their order in the shopping cart. 

If a buyer has cost centers assigned, the selection of a cost center for an order is mandatory. Otherwise, an order could be placed without providing a cost center.

Cost Center Budgets

Budgets can be defined for the cost center itself and specifically for each buyer of the cost center. Budget periods can be set to yearly, half-yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, or fixed. Recurring budgets are automatically reset at the end of the defined period.

Interactions of Budgets and Recurring Orders

Generally, a recurring order is a one-time triggered, but periodically executed purchase of certain products or services. In subscription-based business models, consequently, customers pay periodically to use or receive a defined set of products at a regular base.

Cost Center Approval

When an order is assigned to a cost center the approval from the cost center owner is required, regardless of the cost center budget or the user-specific cost center budget. The cost center owner receives information about already spent total cost center and user-specific cost center budgets in context of the order approval. Based on this, the order can be approved or rejected. The reason for a rejection can be captured by a comment.

Order Templates

The order templates feature allows the customer to collect products in a special product list to order them later or more than once. Adding products to an order template always requires selecting an order template by name or creating a new one. Order templates can be managed (create, update delete) in the My Account section. They can be added to the cart completely. And the cart can be saved into an order template.

Order Approval

B2B customer organizations can use order approval to check orders before they are placed. The approval contains two checks, one for cost center specific approval and one to check orders against a user's budget and order spend limit. Using the order approval is optional. If no budgets and spend limits are defined for users and no cost centers are defined for a user, orders are placed without approval.

Whenever an order requires approval due to exceeding the user's spend limit or budget, an e-mail is sent to all users with either the Approver role or the Administrator role. These users also see all orders requiring approval in their Dashboard and Approvals section of My Account. Approvers can either approve or reject an order. If an order is approved, it is placed automatically. If an approver rejects an order, a reason for the rejection can be provided.

Users can see a list of pending, approved, and rejected orders in the My Account section.

Particularities for the Approval of Recurring Orders

Generally, a recurring order is a one-time triggered, but periodically executed purchase of certain products or services. In subscription-based business models, consequently, customers pay periodically to use or receive a defined set of products at a regular base.

The B2X edition of Intershop Commerce Management supports subscription models via recurring orders.

Recurring orders have different approval rules compared to one-time purchases.

• The user-specific order approval is always required irrespective of the configured budget.
• The approval page for the approver shows the recurrence information, so that the approver is aware to approve a recurring order.
• The responsible cost center manager must also approve the recurring order.

Quick Order

It is possible to add multiple products to the cart or a quote request at once by entering product ID and quantity via the Quick Order functionality.

By default, the user can add five products. Clicking Add 5 more rows extends the form by five additional lines, each with input fields for product ID and quantity.

Using the CSV import, you can import a customizable number of products in one step, just by providing a CSV file (encoding UTF-8). Find a sample CSV import file in the following zip file: quickorder.zip

The quick order functionality was also implemented at the cart page with the restriction of only one product at the time.

Order Search Enhancements

The order search in the Order History of My Account enables you to search by order number, product ID, buyer name, and/or a specific time frame.