Setting Up Your Website as a Portal
Portals are often much different than retail based websites. Typically, you do not want users outside of the company to purchase or view products, especially to protect your brand. Liftoff allows you to establish a forced login for all visitors with just a couple of quick clicks:
Step 1: After logging in to your Liftoff command center, navigate to “Users” and then to “User Access”.
Step 2: Click “Require login for all pages”. If you don’t want users to self-register for accounts, you may also want to ensure the “Allow new users to register for an account” is unchecked.
Step 3: Click “Save Changes”.
If you’ve performed these items in succession, your website will now prohibit any unlogged in user from entering the website. Going forward you can either upload or manually enter those users that you want to have access to your website.
Establishing User and Ordering Roles
Depending on your needs, you may need to create different roles for your user. For instance, you may want to classify users by office or branch – or even by responsibility. Roles allow you to customize the ordering workflow, setup approval processes and establish notifications for when particular events take place. Follow these steps below to create new roles and assign them to your users:
Step 1: While in your Liftoff site administration panel, navigate to “Users” and then to “User Roles”
Step 2: Type the name of a new role into the “Role” text box. A good example might be “Atlanta Office Employee” or “Purchasing Supervisor”. Click “Add” and “Save”
Step 3: With your roles now created, you can navigate to each user and make a direct role assignment. To start, click on “Users” within the “Users” main menu.
Step 4: Click “Edit” next to the user you wish to assign the new role.
Step 5: Click on the “Roles” tab. Here you’ll see the roles available to add to this user. Please note that you may add as many of the available roles to your user as you deem necessary for their access. Keep in mind that roles have a purpose down-stream when it comes to processing your order.
Creating User Purchasing Budgets
Setting up budgets is quick and easy. They can be customized based on a single user or for your entire website. Below are a few easy steps to accomplishing this task.
Step 1: While in the settings for a user, click the “Discounts” tab.
Step 2: Click “Add Discount”
Step 3: Create a Discount Code and Description by entering those details in the “Discount Code” and “Description” fields
Step 4: Select “Gift Card / Customer Budget Allocation” and set an amount in the “Discount” box. This will be the spending limit you set for your user.
Step 5: If you wish to have this budget allowance to expire, enter information into “Start Date” and “Expiration Date”. If you want this budget to perpetuate, simply leave those fields empty.
Step 6: Determine how you want the code applied. In many cases you may want to have the code auto-apply for your user. If that is the case, ensure that “Discount applied automatically” is selected. If you wish to place a limit on the number of times a user can use the budget allowance, place a numeric value in the “Per User Limit” field.
Step 7: Click “Save & Create”
Now that you’ve accomplished these steps, your user can purchase items and pay with the allotted budget. If they exceed their budget, they can complete the transaction with a credit card for the balance of their order.
Setting Up Workflow and Order Fulfillment Events
Did you know that you can trigger special events to take place when your user performs certain actions on your website? There are currently 3 events you can monitor as your user progresses through your website. These are “Item placed in cart”, “Order Submitted” and “Order Approved”. Each of these work like “If-Then” statements that allow you to inject custom workflow commands at each step. As an example “If a user places an item in the cart and the cart total is under $25 then display a message on the cart page prohibiting the user from checking out”.
For simplicity sake, below is a quick method you can use to enforce that orders are approved by a manager before they’re fully submitted
Triggering an Order to Require Approval
Step 1: Navigate to “Orders” and then “Rules” within your Liftoff site administration panel
Step 2: Click “Add Rule”
Step 3: Let’s select “Order submitted” as the rule we want to create. Give your rule a name in the “Rule Description” box such as “Send Orders For Approval”.
Step 4: Next consider what your “IF” condition should be. Maybe this is a user value or perhaps a trigger based on order total. You may want to enforce that all orders regardless of who is purchasing the item be placed into approval hold.
Step 5: Select what you want to happen when the “IF” is triggered. You can send your item to an admin or a particular user role for validation.
Now when your user submits an order that meets the criteria you established above, your designated approval person(s) will be notified that an order is pending.
Setting up Order Approved Events
So now you’re forcing orders to require approval. That’s great! But, wait – what happens when the approver approves the order? We’re glad you asked. Follow these steps below to ensure that order fulfillment is completed.
Step 1: While in your Rules listing screen click “Add Rule”. We’re going to add a new rule that follows behind the first one that we created.
Step 2: Select “Order approved”. This will be the rule that picks up where the last rule started. Name your rule something specific to this process that is easy to identify if you need to come back later.
Step 3: Select your “IF” condition
Step 4: Select your “THEN” directive based on what you need to happen next.
Technically you could chain multiple rules / events together to enforce a multi-level approval workflow. The power in in your hands to create a workflow that best suits your company or customer’s needs.
In Summary
Liftoff is a very versatile platform geared towards ensuring you have the most customizable solution for your needs. This article only touches the surface of what can be done to setup corporate stores. Please feel free to lean on our active community of users or approved Liftoff website consultants. There are many ways you can leverage the Liftoff platform to create a website completely customized to your almost every need.