VirtueMart comes with an extended User Management compared to Joomla's User Management Features.

{typography icon type="alert" boxstyle="float: none; margin: 5px;"}Always use the VirtueMart User Manager for Adding / Editing and Deleting Users to / from your Joomla! site! If you use Joomla's built-in User Manager you will run into trouble, because required database table entries are not created for such users. So for the other case: When you delete Users with the Joomla! User Manager from the site that have been added with the VirtueMart User Manager, useless entries remain.{/typography}

VirtueMart also provides the ability to create any number of addresses for a particular user. Not only can a user have separate bill to and ship to addresses, but addresses for home and business as well.

{typography list type="arrow_blue"}Shopper Groups{/typography}
{typography list type="arrow_blue"}Users{/typography}
{typography list type="arrow_black"}User Groups{/typography}
{typography list type="arrow_black"}User Registration Fields{/typography}

Shopper Groups

VirtueMart offers the ability to assign users to a Shopper Group. This enables Storekeepers to create Shopper Groups for whatever need (e.g. site access, customer rating, tax display, etc.). These shopper groups can then be used to provide special services, discounts, or access to a specific group of users. Because users and shopper groups are associated to a particular vendor, it is important to create your vendor records before creating the user and shopper group records.

{typography icon type="alert" boxstyle="float: none; margin: 5px;"}There's only one "default" shopper group. Whatever shopper group you set as default, its settings are used for new customers. New customers are automatically assigned to the default shopper group.{/typography}

Adding or modifying a Shopper Group

You can add and modify shopper groups in VirtueMart using the Shopper Group List, which can be accessed through the menu: "Shopper" ⇒ "List Shopper Groups".

VirtueMart Administration: Shopper Group List

Figure 4.58. VirtueMart Administration: Shopper Group List


To add a new shopper group, just click on the "New" button in the toolbar. In the following shopper group form just fill out the necessary fields.

VirtueMart Administration: Shopper Group Form

Figure 4.59. VirtueMart Administration: Shopper Group Form

Deleting Shopper Groups

You can delete Shopper Groups from the Shopper Group List by clicking the "Trash Bin" icon in the last column of each row in the shopper group list. You could also check the checkboxes of each shopper group which you want to remove and click the "Remove" button in the toolbar.

{typography icon type="info" boxstyle="float: none; margin: 5px;"}You can't delete shopper groups, which still has customers assigned to it.{/typography}

Users

Adding or modifying Users

To do

Deleting Users

To Do

User Groups

User Groups are "Permission Groups" and used to restrict access to certain parts and functions of the shop. Each user is assigned to a user group. By default registered customers are members of the group "shopper".

When can this be useful?Imagine you have a user, who wants to access the "Report" section of the store. Usually this is restricted to admins and stoeradmins. If you assign this user to the admin/storeadmin group, he will also be able to access other sensible parts of the store, where he could change or delete important data. The solution is to add a new User Group called "Report", which will have the same permissions as shoppers PLUS access to the "report" core module. After the Group has been added, you can assign this user to the new group.

User Groups can be added, modified and deleted from the User Group List ("Admin" ⇒ "User Groups").

VirtueMart Administration: User Group List

Figure 4.60. VirtueMart Administration: User Group List


You can click on the name of an existing group to open the user group form.

{typography icon type="alert" boxstyle="float: none; margin: 5px;"}The groups "admin", "storeadmin" and "shopper" are key groups in VirtueMart and can't be modified nor removed.{/typography}

You can add a new Group by clicking on the "New" button in the toolbar. This opens the User Group Form:

VirtueMart Administration: User Group Form

Figure 4.61. VirtueMart Administration: User Group Form


Here you can choose a name for the group and the group level.

{typography icon type="alert" boxstyle="float: none; margin: 5px;"}The higher the group level, the less permissions are assumed: "admin" has higher permissions than "storeadmin", because the group level number is lower.{/typography}

After you have saved the user group, it is available in the core module and function list/forms.

VirtueMart Administration: The New Group in the Module List

Figure 4.62. VirtueMart Administration: The New Group in the Module List


Now you can start to grant permissions to this new group by checking the boxes in this list for the column of the "New Group".

{typography icon type="alert" boxstyle="float: none; margin: 5px;"}The same needs to be done for the function list of each module!{/typography}


User Registration Fields

The "User Fields" Management allows you to freely modify the fields displayed on registration and account maintenance. Such fields are for example: First Name, Last Name, Telephone,...

The User Field Management can be accessed via "Admin" ⇒ "Manage User Fields".

VirtueMart Administration: Manage User Fields

Figure 4.63. VirtueMart Administration: Manage User Fields

 

4.7.4.1. Add a new Field

You can add a new field by clicking the "New" button on the toolbar in the User Field List. The Field Form allows you to choose from various field types like

Text Input Field
Textarea
Checkbox
Date
drop down
email
Web Address

Used for Web Addresses.

EU VAT ID

Checks for a valid EU VAT ID upon Registration.

Age Verification

Allows you to ask the Customer for her/his Birthday to check if she/he is old enough to purchase from your Store. You can specify the minimum age at the bottom of the Registration Field Form after you have selected this type.

{typography icon type="info" boxstyle="float: none; margin: 5px;"}Some other Field Types will be visible depending on what other Components you have installed on your Joomla!/Mambo:{/typography}

Newsletter Registration

You can let your new Customers be automatically be subscribed to a Newsletter. The following Components are supported: Letterman.

Captcha Field

Obviously not a good idea if you don't want to bug new Customers, but sometimes necessary to prevent Registration Spam. You can add a Captcha Check to the Registration Form if the SecurityImages Component is installed on your Site.

In our example we will add a new field where users from the EU can fill in the EU VAT ID of their company if applicable.

VirtueMart Administration: Add a new User Field

Figure 4.64. VirtueMart Administration: Add a new User Field


The Form Fields have the following meaning:

Type

The type of this field. Can't be changed afterwards!

Table Field Name

The name of the column that will be inserted into the table structure of the tables "docs_vm_user_info" and "docs_vm_order_user_info" in your database.

Title

This is the Label of the Field in the Registration / Account Maintenance Form

Description

This description will be shown to the customer in the frontend in a small tooltip besides the field to explain the field.

Required?

If this is set to yes, a value must be provided or chosen, otherwise registration will not be possible.

Show on Account?

This defines whether the field is shown in the account maintenance form or not.

User Read Only?

If this is set to yes, the field is read-only and can't be changed by the customer.

Show at Registration?

If this is set to yes, the field will be shown in the registration form.

Published

Here you can unpublish the field completely, so it won't be shown in any form.

Size

This defines the length of text input fields.

Max Length

This is the maximum number of characters that can be filled into the text field.

Move the customer into the following Shopper Group...

Here you can select into which shopper group the newly registered customer is moved when the EU VAT ID has been successfully validated.

If you are finished filling in the necessary values, don't forget to Save your changes.

Here is a screenshot of the newly added field "EU Vat ID" in the registration form:

VirtueMart Administration: New Field "EU Vat ID" in the registration form

Figure 4.65. VirtueMart Administration: New Field "EU Vat ID" in the registration form

4.7.4.2. Modifying Fields

Fields can be reordered, renamed, published, set to be required or not and much more.

Reordering Fields

Fields can be reordered using the blue arrows in the user field list or using the text input fields in each row of the list:

VirtueMart Administration: Re-Ordering in the Field List

Figure 4.66. VirtueMart Administration: Re-Ordering in the Field List


If you have used the input fields to change the ordering of the fields, you must apply your changes by clicking the Save Icon in the top of this column. After that the fields will be reordered.

Publish (show)/Unpublish (hide) Fields

You can publish and unpublish fields by clicking on the icon in the column "Published". After that the publish state will be toggled.

Changing Fields

You can access the field form by clicking a field name in the User Field List. In this form you can modify all settings except the field type.

VirtueMart Administration: Modifying a Field

Figure 4.67. VirtueMart Administration: Modifying a Field

Deleting Fields

You can delete all non-system fields from the User Field List. You just need to click on the Trash Bin icon at the end of the row of the item you want to remove. You can also select the checkboxes of the fields which you want to delete and then click the "Remove" button in the toolbar.