Groups

Learn how to create and manage customer groups and assign access permissions in Management Dashboard.

The Customer Groups feature serves as a B2B user management tool. With customer groups, you define the relevant access permissions for your end customers from the same organization.

When you create a company in the system, the predefined customer groups are created simultaneously by default:

• Admin – has manage rights for users and checkout data, as well as read rights for orders data.
• Contact – is assigned to the company as a contact person.
• Buyer – can make their purchases up to the account limit defined for the legal entity; purchases above the limit have to be approved by the Admin user.
• Requester – all their purchases have to be approved - the purchases up to the account limit have to be approved by the Buyer or Admin users; the purchases exceeding the account limit have to be approved by the Admin users.

To disable automatic creation of these groups, set predefinedLegalEntityGroupsCreationDisabled to true in System Preferences.

You can also create an approval group for a company in Management Dashboard. When an approval group is defined and has members, it overrides the standard approver roles (Buyer and Admin). Only approval group members can approve approval requests for that company. Users in the Buyer or Admin groups who are not approval group members are no longer eligible approvers.

When a customer selects an approver during checkout or quote acceptance, only approval group members appear in the approver list. This applies to both orders and quotes.

You cannot modify the predefined customer groups. You can only add or remove members in the predefined groups. In case you need different permissions, create a new customer group with the relevant settings.

Predefined customer group notification

When you create a new customer in MD or on the storefront, and assign them to the company, the person is automatically assigned to the Contact group.

The Admin customer group users can manage other users associated with the same organization directly from the storefront, ensuring the right members of their organization have the right permissions.

Management Dashboard allows you to create and manage customer groups to respond more adequately to your needs and those of your customers. You can view the groups that are assigned to each company on the company level. Navigate to the Customer Management -> Company, and view the Customer groups tab.

As customer groups are legal-entity-aware, the information relevant to the company (legal entity) can be read by the customer group.

You can also assign a customer group to a segment. Group members then inherit the segment's products, categories, and coupons automatically.

Customer groups view

Creating a customer group and managing access permissions

1

Choose to create group

In the Management Dashboard, go to the Customer Management -> Groups and choose Create new group.

2

Provide group details

In the Details tab, provide the basic information about the group, such as its ID, name, and description.

3

Assign company

Select the company you are creating the group for.

4

Select site

Choose one or more sites that the group assignment is vald for.

5

Set permissions

In the Customer Access Controls Assignment section, set the access level to the particular entities. Select the relevant access controls and choose Save to create the group in the system.

Create a customer group

6

Assign group members

Go to the Members tab to assign customers to the group. Choose Add members and select the relevant people. The group members get access to the specified entities with the specified scopes.

Customer assignment rules

The Emporix platform enforces rules when assigning customers to predefined groups to ensure role assignments remain valid and avoid conflicts. Within a single company, a user can belong to only one predefined group. Validation applies within the scope of a single company (legal entity) only. It does not extend across different companies or any subsidiaries.

For example:

• If a customer is already assigned to one predefined group (for example, Emporix Admin Group), then it's not possible to assign that same customer to another predefined group within the same company.
• If a customer is assigned to an Admin group in one company (for example, Company A), then the same customer may also be assigned to an Admin group in another company (for example, Company B).
• If a customer is assigned to an Admin group in a parent company (for example, Company A), then that same customer may also be assigned to another role such as Buyer in the parent company’s subsidiary.

The exception is the Contact group, which can always be assigned.

Company contact propagation

As a part of the group assignment you can decide how the contact assignments are shared within a company hierarchy. You can choose from the following options:

• UPWARD – Contacts assigned to a subsidiary are also visible at the parent company level. This is a default setting.
• DOWNWARD – Contacts assigned to a parent company are also visible in all subsidiaries.
• DISABLED – Contacts remain only in the company where they were assigned, with no propagation.

Propagation happens only at the moment of assignment - creating the contact in the selected company also creates corresponding contacts in related companies according to the chosen direction.

To choose the behaviour, choose the right companyContactPropagation setting in the System Preferences.

This setting ensures flexibility in how contacts are managed across parent companies and their subsidiaries.

To see the example use case of a customer group, see the Company Related Orders and Customer Groups.

Audit Logs

The Audit Logs tab shows the history of changes for this group, including what changed and when, with field-level previous and updated values. Actors can include named users, anonymous storefront activity, or system actions.

Group Audit Logs tab

For the tenant-wide audit history, see Audit Logs.