Manage business partners on B2B websites
To add, delete, and edit business partner users on a Commerce B2B e-commerce site and in Commerce headquarters, the organization needs to register to become a business partner first. After the organization submits the registration details, as previously mentioned, it will go through the qualification process and will then be added as a business partner. After they're added as a business partner, the organization user who initiated the request is identified as the administrator user. The administrator user is granted privileges to add more authorized users of the B2B e-commerce website. These authorized users can place orders on behalf of the business partner.
To approve a business partner request in Commerce headquarters, go to Retail and Commerce > Retail and Commerce IT > Distribution schedule in the application. Then, run the P-0001 job to pull all business partner onboarding requests into Commerce headquarters.
After that job has run successfully, go to Retail and Commerce > Retail and Commerce IT > Customer and run the Synchronize customers and channel requests job. After that job has run successfully, the business partner requests will be created as a B2B prospect type in Commerce headquarters. Then, you can go to Customers > All prospects page and select the new business partner's prospect record to open the details page. Then, you can select Convert > Approve/Reject to approve the request. When the confirmation message appears, you'll want to confirm it to continue with the process. After the Status field of the record is Approved, an email will be sent to the requestor's email address to confirm that their organization has been approved as a business partner. A customer hierarchy will also be created, where the requester will be added as an administrator for the business partner. At that point, you can go to Retail and Commerce > Distribution schedule and run the 1010 (Customers) job to sync the new customer and customer hierarchy to the channel database. After those records are synchronized with the channel database, the requestor can sign in to the B2B e-commerce website.
People can use the sign-up flow to define the password for their account. Additionally, you can set up automatic linking to enable Microsoft Azure Active Directory B2C (Azure AD B2C) identity provider records to link with the created B2B customer. For more information, see Enable automatic linking of identity records to customer accounts.
Add existing customers as business partners
If you have existing customers in Commerce headquarters, you can add them as business partners. To do so, select a customer of the Organization type to add as a business partner in Commerce headquarters. Select a customer of the Person type to add as an administrator or user for the business partner. Ensure that their primary email addresses are associated with the customers because the email addresses will be used to sign in to the website. The primary email address needs to be unique for this customer; otherwise, the user won't be able to sign in.
After you've added an Organization and a Person, create a customer hierarchy ID, and in the Name field, enter a name. In the Organization field, enter the business partner organization customer. On the Hierarchy FastTab, select Add, and in the Name field on that tab, select a customer of the Person type. Select the role of Admin for the customer who should be designated as the administrator. You can repeat this process to add more customers to the hierarchy. Run the previously mentioned jobs to synchronize the data with the channel database so that customers can sign in to the e-commerce website with the sign-up flow.
