Organize How Customers Access Your Commerce Store

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• List who can access your store.
• Describe the function of a buyer group.
• Describe how buyer groups are organized.
• Explain how to view your data model with Schema Builder.

Understand Buyer Accounts

Maria Jimenez, Ursa Major Solar admin, must now decide who has access to the data. B2B and B2B2C Commerce are organized around buyer accounts because, for B2B stores, different buyers can have different pricing. A B2C store, however, uses one buyer group for all customers. Configuring buyer data is a required step, but largely B2B relevant.

The (configured) lone buyer, representing all the customers of a B2C store, can see all the products and prices associated with the store. This difference is also true for entitlement policies; these define which products a customer can see based on their buyer group memberships—once again, all B2C customers.

Enable Buyer Accounts and Buyer Users

Let’s recap what Maria has in her org at this point. 

• One or two stores
• Products (and associated objects like Price Books)
• Catalogs
• Categories

Now the big question: Who should access all these things? Customers, of course. And what do customers do in B2B and B2B2C Commerce? This is not a trick question: They buy things. In the case of Ursa Major Solar, retailers purchase furnishings and lighting in a B2B world, and consumers purchase solar patio lights in the B2C world.

In a Salesforce org, you organize Commerce buyers using buyer accounts. Buyer accounts simply use the Account object as their backbone. Once Maria enables an account record as a buyer account, she can enable contacts related to the buyer account as buyers.

The Ursa Major Solar org has separate account records for each B2B retailer it sells to. One of these retailers is Ray Solar Solutions, which has stores all over North America. Its account has various contact records associated with it. 

Not all contacts associated with Ray Solar Solutions are able to make purchases from Ursa Major Solar; only Ray Solar Solutions buyers and buyer managers have that privilege. Buyer managers are also able to see the purchases and cart orders of buyers. 

And how can buyers see products and prices? With entitlement policies and price books. Entitlement policies define which products a buyer can see based on their buyer group memberships. Price books determine the prices associated with that product. Let’s take a closer look at buyer groups.

Understand Buyer Groups

Buyers are connected to stores using buyer groups.

Buyer groups help organize similar buyer accounts. Let’s say you have five buyer accounts that all need access to the same store, the same products, the same prices, and the same entitlement policies. You create a buyer group that defines all the settings for the buyers, and simply add the buyer accounts to it. If, in the future, you add a new buyer account that also needs access to the same store, products, prices, and entitlement policies, all you need to do is to add the buyer account to the already configured buyer group. 

You can also associate multiple buyer groups to the same store, and create specific products, prices, and entitlement policies for each buyer group.

The buyer group is a powerful organizational tool that simplifies the life of the admin by allowing a create once, use multiple times method. 

The Schema Builder

Maria wants to dig deeper into these data models to explore their objects and the relationships between them.

• Store
• Buyer Account, Buyer Group, and Entitlements
• Product, Product Catalog, and Pricing
• Product Media
• Cart
• Order and Order Summary

A great way to do that is with Schema Builder.

In this module, we assume you are a B2B or B2B2C Commerce administrator with the proper permissions to perform a variety of tasks. If you’re not a B2B or B2B2C Commerce administrator, that’s OK. Read along to learn how your administrator would take the steps in a production org. 

You can also follow these steps in a Trailhead Playground. To launch your Trailhead Playground, first make sure you are logged in to Trailhead. Then click your user avatar in the upper-right corner of this page and select Hands-on Orgs from the dropdown. Click Launch next to the org you want to open. Or, if you want to create a new playground, click Create Playground.

Here's how to view your data model with Schema Builder.

1. Open the org.
2. In the Quick Find box in Setup, enter Schema Builder.
3. Click Schema Builder.
4. Click Objects.
5. To see the relationships between the various parts of B2B Commerce, filter the Standard Objects. For example, you can display the objects in a predefined layout or you can display just the element names, hide or view relationships, and hide the legend.
6. To see an object’s API name, select Display Element Names in View Options.

Explore the Commerce Data Model

The Commerce data model can be intricate and complex. In this module, Maria has explored these objects. 

• Store
• Catalog
• Category
• Entitlement Policy
• Product
• Buyer Account
• Buyer Group
• Buyer Group Member

There are a lot more objects to look at. Here are some you can explore using the Schema Builder.

Let’s Wrap It Up

You learned about the big picture for B2B and B2B2C Commerce, and saw a list of the objects included in the detailed data model. When setting up a B2B or B2B2C Commerce store, use this knowledge to plan and implement your unique customer experience. 

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Salesforce B2B Commerce and B2B2C Commerce
• Salesforce Help: Design Your Own Data Model
• Trailhead: Trailhead Playground Management