What’s New

In June 2018, Skava released version 7.5 of its Commerce platform. With the release of 7.5, Skava released a new Corporate Admin microservice (Corp Admin) including an administrator console (Commerce Console).

See below for the new Commerce Administration and Operations Guide.

For details about the technical implementation of the Corp Admin microservice, please see the Corporate Admin Overview under the Skava Commerce section of this portal.

Introduction

Corp Admin provides a console for managing a client’s businesses and all microservices and stores associated with those businesses the client’s Skava Commerce instance.

This Commerce Administration and Operations Guide provides detailed information about how to:

• Access the Skava Commerce console
• Create and Modify Businesses
• Create and Manage Stores and Microservices
• Launch a Microservice Instance
• View and Configure Teams
• Invite Business Administrators and Business Users
• Create, Edit, and Assign Roles
• Manage Studio Properties
• View Third-party Plugins
• Monitor Instance Infrastructure and Microservices Health
• Manage Single Sign-on (SSO) Clients
• Manage User Profile Settings

Intended Users

This page of the Developer Portal is intended use by Instance Administrators (Instance Admins) and Business Administrators (Business Admins).

Key Terms

Term	Definition
Business/Businesses	This refers to the business(es) owned and managed by a Skava Commerce client. \n\nFor example, a worldwide retailer running stores across the United States, Europe, and Australia could have three (3) different businesses created under one Skava Commerce instance.
Client	This refers to a Skava Commerce customer.
Corp Admin Control	This refers to the three (3) tiers of Corp Admin control: Instance Level, Business Level, and Service Level.
Instance	This refers to a full deployment of Skava Commerce platform that is used to host one (1) or more client businesses. \n\nAn Instance is a dedicated environment in which a client can manage ALL of its Businesses.
Partner	This is synonymous with the term Business in Skava Commerce.
Service	This indicates a service is an Instance of a microservice associated with a Business.
Skava Commerce	This refers to Skava Commerce as a microservice-based architecture in which all capabilities are served by individual microservices (i.e. Customers, Stores, OMS, PIM, Inventory, Lists, Promotion, Search, Segmentation, Reporting, and Recommendations), which can plug-and-play into other systems cohesively. For more details about Skava Commerce microservices, see the Skava Microservices section of this portal.
Single Sign-On (SSO)	This refers to a Single Sign-On client. Skava supports SSO in its Commerce Platform, providing its clients with a secure and seamless authentication experience when accessing Admin application programming interfaces (API) from a third-party application.

Roles and Privileges

Use and management of Skava Commerce instances, businesses, services, and stores are controlled via roles and privileges assigned in the Commerce Console.

Standard and Advanced role assignment is necessary for Business Users, but not for an Instance Admin or a Business Admin as Admins enjoy the privileges necessary to administer Instances and Businesses, respectively.

This section covers:

• Standard Business User Roles
• Custom Business User Roles

Standard Business User Roles

Standard Roles are created, by default, when Service Instances are created under a Business. A set of privileges are grouped together under three (3) standard role sets:

• Viewer: the viewer role set includes only those privileges sufficient to allow a Business User to view one (1) or more service instances.
• Editor: the editor role set includes those privileges sufficient to allow a Business User to view and edit one (1) or more service instances.
• Manager: the manager role set includes almost all available privileges in a service instance.

A Business User can be assigned multiple roles in the Commerce Console based on her/his job responsibilities (i.e. a Business User could be assigned to both a Catalog Manager Role in PIM and Store Viewer Role for the Stores microservice).

Custom Business User Roles

Custom Roles are classified as either Generic or Advanced.

• Advanced Roles helps an Admin to select required privileges under different microservices to be grouped under one business role. For example, the privileges for the Business Users described below could be added to one (1) single advanced role and that role assigned to the Business Users:
  • Catalog editor for “Black Friday 2019 Catalog” in Product Information Management (PIM) without access to price details.
  • Promotions editor for “Cyber Monday 2019” to update marketing content.
• Generic Roles are similar to advanced roles, where various standard roles are combined into a single role for easy management with a friendly user interface.

User Access for Skava Commerce

Below is the list of available Skava Commerce roles and their associated privileges. For more details about Commerce roles, see the Roles and Permissions matrices in the Appendix herein.

Role	Privileges
Instance Admin	An instance administrator is a superuser with complete privileges to manage created instances for a Skava client in the Commerce Console. An Instance Admin has the ability to: • Create a new Business • Invite Business Admins to manage Businesses • Create and administer teams (inviting new users and creating roles) for all Businesses • Enable microservices required for Businesses • View third-party plug-ins installed for the Business • View and monitor microservices and infrastructure health statistics • Configure locales for Businesses • Perform any task that a Business Admin is able to accomplish • Perform any task that a Business User is able to fulfill Control Level: Instance (complete)
Business Admin	A Business Admin is a superuser at the business level who possesses sufficient privileges to manage one (1) or more Businesses as well as business teams. A Business Admin can: • Manage one (1) or more Businesses • Create and update stores and services for Businesses • Launch and manage Service Instances for Businesses • Create and update roles • Invite new Business Users, assign roles to Business Users, and manage Business Users • Perform any task that a Business User can accomplish Control Level: Business
Business User	A Business User is assigned a role (i.e. viewer, editor, and/or manager) that enables her/him to complete tasks within a Service Instance for a Business. For example, Business Users include: • Merchandisers • Customer Service Representatives • Marketing Managers • Store Managers • Content Editors • Price Managers • Catalog Managers • Finance Persons Control Level: Service

Once the Skava Commerce platform has been deployed and configured for a client, users, with appropriate privileges, will be able to login to and use the Commerce Console.

To Access the Skava Commerce Console in a Web Browser:

1. Navigate to the Client’s Skava Commerce Log In screen ( https://<domain>/mcadmin/v2/login.jsp).
2. Enter a valid Email address and Password.
3. Click to login or to reset your password.

Managing a Business

After a successful login (see Accessing Skava Commerce), an Instance Admin is navigated to the Instance landing page (Home) on which the Admin can:

• View Businesses and Stores
• Create New Businesses (Partners)
• Manage a team by inviting a user as business administrator with a set of privileges to manage the business instances or as business user with some specific roles for a service
• View third-party plug-ins installed for a business
• Check the health of microservices and infrastructure servers
• Manage the overall administration of the business

This section covers:

• Viewing Businesses and Stores
• Creating New Businesses (Partners)
• Editing Business Details

View Businesses and Stores

To View a Business:

1. On the Instance page, click on the Business name within its Business Card to launch the Business Instance page.
   
   The business instance landing page appears:
   

To View a Store:

1. On the Instance page, click on the Business name within its Business Card to launch the Business Instance page.
   
   The business instance landing page appears:
   
2. On the Business Instance page, click on the Store name at the top of the page to launch the Store Instance page.

For details about managing Stores, please see the Stores Admin Guide.

Create New Businesses

To Create a New Business (Partner):

1. On the Instance page, click .
   
   The Open a New Business screen will display:
   
2. Complete the Open a New Business form (* required fields) with the following information.

   Form Field	Description
   Business Name*	This refers to the name that appears on the Business Card for the Business on the Instance and Business Landing pages.
   Storage Service Link*	This refers to a simple Storage Service (S3) Server URL.
   CDN*	This refers to Content Delivery Network Link.
   Product SOLR Collection*	This refers to SOLR collection for the Product Information Management (PIM) microservice.
   Publish Domain*	This is meant for the Studio storefront service.
   Preview Domain*	This is meant for the Studio storefront service.
   Locale*	This guides us to select one (1) or more locales mapped with language and currency and click . Note: When you configure multiple locales, you need to set a default locale.
   Send Activation Email from Admin*	This sets the value to true that sends the user activation emails to the user, for activating the user account.
   Allow Update Email*	This sets the value to true that allows the user to update his/her email address.

3. Enable the required microservices for the Business by clicking on the slider to the right of the microservice to make it active (the default is inactive). The currently available microservices include:
   • CJE (Recommendations)
   • Cart/Checkout
   • Content Management
   • Inventory
   • List
   • Loyalty
   • Marketing
   • Order
   • PIM
   • Promotion
   • Studio
   • User
4. Click at the bottom of the form to create the new business or to abort.
   • If you encounter an error during creation, please try again.
   • On successful Business creation, a success message will display.
     
5. Click to navigate to the Business Instance page for the newly created Business.

Once the new Business is created, the Instance Admin has the ability to invite a Business Admin to manage the Business. The Business Admin then can define roles and build the business team.

For more information about building the Business team, see Setting Up a Team for Your Business below.

Edit Business Details

To Modify Existing Business Details:

1. On the Instance page, click on the Business Card for the Business Instance to be modified and the Edit Business option displays.
   
2. Click to open the Edit Business screen where the Instance Admin can modify the Business’ details, including enabling and/or disabling microservices.
   
3. Make the desired changes to the business details and enable/disable microservices.
4. Click to apply the changes or to abort. On successful update, a success message will display.
   
5. Click to return to the Business landing page.

Working With Businesses

After a successful login (see Accessing Skava Commerce), a Business Admin is navigated to the Business landing page where s/he sees all cards for the Business(es) for which s/he has management privileges.

The Business Admin can then drill down to a Business Instance page where s/he can:

• Manage stores and microservices for the business
• Invite a business user to view, edit, or manage one (1) or more stores or microservices.

This section covers:

• Navigating to the Business Instance Page
• Managing Stores
• Managing Services
  • Creating a New Service Instance for a Microservice
  • Launching a Service

Navigate to the Business Instance Page

To Navigate to a Business Instance Page:

1. On the Instance page, click on the name of the desired business (e.g. Digital 360) to navigate to the Business Instance page.
   
   The business instance page appears:
   

Manage Stores

Business Admins can view and manage Stores configured for a Business from the Business Instance page.

For details about managing Stores, please see the Stores Admin Guide.

Manage Services

Business Admins can view and manage the Services configured for a Business on Service Instance pages, launched from the associated Business Instance page.

This section covers:

• Creating a New Service Instance for a Microservice
• Launching a Service

Create a New Service Instance for a Microservice

Services are microservice instances associated with a single Business Instance. In the following example, we create a new Promotion Service Instance for the Digital 360 business.

1. On the Business landing page, click on the name of the Business for which the new Service Instance is to be created.
   
2. On the Business Instance page, click for the desired microservice section (e.g. Promotion).
   
3. Complete the Create a Service form (* required fields) with the following information.

   Form Field	Description
   Name*	This refers to the name of the new service instance.
   Description*	This indicates description of the new service instance.
   Start Date*	This specifies duration for which the created service will be valid, including the start date.
   End Date*	This specifies duration for which the created service will be valid, including the end date.
   Locale*	This indicates selecting the required locale and clicking . Note: When you configure multiple locales, you need to set a default locale.
   Time Zone*	This specifies the time zone for the service instance. Note: Currently, supports only the UTC Time zone.

   
4. Ensure the service status slider is in the active position (right). By default, it will be in the active position.
5. Click to create the new service instance or to abort.
6. On successful Service Instance creation, the Business Admin will have the option to go or      .
   
7. The newly created service appears on the associated microservice card on the Business Instance page.
   Skava Commerce automatically generates a numeric service identifier (ID) for a newly created Service Instance, which appears in brackets to the right of the Service Instance name. See screenshot above.

Launch a Service

Skava’s Commerce microservices are enabled and configured as service instances on the Businesses Instance page within the Commerce Console. Below is the list of Services that have admin consoles that can be launched from the Business Instance page as well:

• CJE (Recommendation Engine)
• Content Management
• Customer (User)
• Inventory
• Loyalty
• Marketing
• Order Management System (OMS)
• Product Information Management (PIM)
• Promotion
• Studio

To Launch a Service Instance from a Business Instance Page:

1. On the Business landing page, click on the name of the desired Business to navigate to its Business Instance page.
   
2. On the Business Instance page, click on the required microservice card (e.g. Promotion).
3. The Admin Console for the Service Instance launches in a new tab of the browser.
   
   Alternatively, a Service Instance can be launched from within a Store Instance. For more details about managing Stores, please see the Stores Admin Guide.

Setting Up a Team for Your Business

After creating the required Businesses for a client, the Instance Admin can invite a Business Admin to manage the Business Instance(s). A Business Admin can invite Business Users to view, edit, or manage a particular Service or Store instance from the Business landing page. While it is typically a Business Admin who manages businesses and teams, an Instance Admin is a superuser with privileges sufficient to manage Businesses and Teams as well.

This section covers:

• Viewing a Business Team
• Inviting a Business Admin
• Inviting Business Users and Assigning Privileges
• Creating a Skava Commerce Account
• Editing Existing Users
• Creating New Roles
• Editing Roles
• Cloning Roles
• Deleting Roles

View Business Team

To View a Business Team:

1. On the Instance (Instance Admins) or Business (Business Admins) page, click Team in the left navigation panel to launch the Team Instance page.
   

Invite Business Admin

An Instance Admin must invite a Business Admin to manage one (1) or more Businesses.

To Add First User as a Business Admin:

1. On the Instance page for a client, click Team in the left navigation panel to launch the Team Instance page and the following message will display.
   
2. Click on the link as shown in the above screenshot or click at the top right side of the Team page.
3. On the Invite User page, enter the Business Admin’s email address.
4. Select one (1) of the following privileges:
   • Instance Admin: Set this admin privilege to provide access to all current and future Businesses in the client’s Instance.
   • Business Access + Admin Privilege: Check the Business Access checkbox for each Business that the Business Admin manages and enables the Business‘ associated Admin Privilege slider.
5. Click SEND INVITE and a confirmation message will display.
   
6. Click CONTINUE to exit.
   An invited Business Admin can register for and login to the Commerce Console, which displays only those Businesses for which that Business Admin has privileges to access and manage.

Invite Business Users and Assign Privileges

To Invite Business Users and Assign Privileges:

1. On the Instance or Business landing page, click Team in the left navigation panel.
2. Click Team from the Menu at the top of the Team page and the Invite Users option from the menu.
   
3. On the Invite User page, enter the user’s email address. To invite multiple users, add multiple email addresses, separated by commas.
4. Check the box for the Business for which the Business User should have access and the Standard or Custom Role the user should have.
   
5. Click SEND INVITE and a confirmation message will display.
6. Click CONTINUE to exit.
   

 

Create a Skava Commerce Account

Skava Commerce sends an email to Admins and Business Users that have been invited from the Team page in the Commerce Console. In order to gain access to Skava Commerce, invited users must register using the link in the email invite.

To Create an Account:

1. Invited users receive an email invite from Skava Commerce asking them to create an account.
2. Click the Create Account button in the mail to launch the user registration screen.
   
3. Complete the User Registration form with the following required information.
   

   Form Field	Description
   First Name*	User's first name.
   Last Name*	User's last name.
   Create Password*	Must be at least eight (8) characters It should include at least one (1) number, one (1) uppercase letter, one (1) lowercase letter, and one (1) special character Allowed special characters: @ $ ! % * ? & Password expires after 90 days
   Confirm Password*	Retype password.

   
4. Click to complete the registration.
5. On success, a Successful Registration message will display. Click to exit.
   
6. Skava Commerce sends the user a User Registration Successful email after registration is completed successfully.
   

Edit Existing Users

Instance Admins can activate and deactivate users. Instance Admins and Business Admins and modify existing users’ access privileges.

To Edit an Existing User:

1. On the Instance or Business landing page, click Team in the left navigation panel.
2. On the Team Instance page, click for the desired user.
   
3. Click .
4. Change one (1) or more of the available options below for the Admin or Business User.
   

   Form Field	Description
   Activate/Deactivate	Instance Admins (only) can activate or deactivate an account.
   Business Access	Instance and Business Admins can grant users access to a Business.
   Admin Privilege	Instance Admins (only) can make a user a Business Admin If the Admin Privilege is activated, no Standard or Common Role can be assigned to a user.
   Standard and Common Roles	If the Admin Privilege is NOT activated, the Business User must be assigned a Role.

   
   
5. Click to save edits.

Create New Roles

To Create a New Role:

1. On an Instance or Business landing page, click on the name of a Business for which you want to create a new role to launch the Business Instance page.
2. On the Business Instance page, click Team in the left navigation panel and a list of existing team members will display.
   
3. Click on Team in the header.
   
4. Click and the Create Role page will display.
   
5. Enter a name and description for the new Role.
6. In the Configure Privileges section, select the microservice(s) for which the Role will have access and the Services associated with the Business for the microservice will display.
   
7. Select the desired Service associated with the Business and the Standard Roles for the Service appears.
   
8. Select the desired Standard Role (i.e. Viewer, Editor, or Manager) for the new Role.
9. Repeat steps 6 and 7 to provide access privileges to other services, if required, in the same microservice or any other microservices listed under Configure Privileges section. For example, selecting multiple roles across different businesses:
   
10. Click and upon completion, a Success message will display.
    
11. Click to return to the Manage Roles screen.
    

Edit Roles

To Edit Existing Roles:

1. On an Instance or Business landing page, click on the name of the Business containing the Role to be edited to launch the Business Instance page.
   
2. On the Business Instance page, click Team in the left navigation panel and a list of existing team members will display.
   
3. Click on Team in the header and then Manage Roles in the menu to launch the Manage Roles page.
   
4. On the Manage Roles page, identify the Role to edit. Click and then click to launch the Edit Role page.
   
5. Make the desired changes to the Role name and/or description.
6. In the Configure Privileges section of the page, reassign the role to the required Business within the same microservice or different microservices.
   
7. Click to save the changes and on save success, a confirmation message will display.
   
8. Click to exit.

Clone Roles

To Clone an Existing Role:

1. On an Instance or Business landing page, click on the name of the Business containing the Role to be cloned to launch the Business Instance page.
   
2. On the Business Instance page, click Team in the left navigation panel and a list of existing team members will display.
   
3. Click on Team in the header and then Manage Roles in the menu to launch the Manage Roles page.
   
4. In the Manage Roles page, identify the Role to edit. Click and then to launch the Clone Role page.
   
5. Edit the Role Name as “_COPY” will be appended to the original name, automatically.
6. Make necessary changes to the Role Description and Configure Privileges section.
   
7. Click to save the changes and upon successful save, a Success Confirmation message will display.
   
8. Click to exit.

The newly created role appears on the Manage Roles page.

Delete Roles

To Delete a Role:

1. On an Instance or Business landing page, click on the name of the Business containing the Role to be edited to launch the Business Instance page.
   
2. On the Business Instance page, click Team in the left navigation panel and a list of existing team members will display.
   
3. On the Manage Roles page, identify the Custom Role to be deleted. Click and then click .
   
4. Click to confirm deletion.
   
5. Upon successful deletion, a Success Confirmation message will appear.
   
6. Click to exit.

Managing Studio Properties

Skava Commerce allows a business administrator to manage studio properties at the business level.

To view or manage studio properties, navigate to a particular business and click
Administration in the left navigation panel.

The Studio partner property macro appears where you can configure macros:

• for a partner
• for a site across domains
• across locales for each domain

View Extensions

Instance Admins can view the list of extensions or plug-ins deployed for the client’s Instance.

To View Third-party Plug-ins Used by a Client:

1. On the Instance page, click Extensions in the left panel.
   
2. Click on either of the following:
   • All Categories – lists extensions pertaining to all microservices
   • One Category – lists extensions pertaining to the selected microservice
     
3. Click on a plugin to view its input parameters.
4. Click COPY ALL to copy all the input parameters.
   
5. Click DONE to exit the plug-in parameters screen.

Perform Health Checks

As an Instance Admin, Skava Commerce allows an admin to monitor the health status of a client’s microservices and infrastructure. The health check ensures all applications in an Instance are functional and are working as expected, including all microservices and infrastructure components, such as web servers, application servers, databases, backend systems, and any other systems that are critical for the business(es).

Monitor the Health of the Infrastructure

To Run an Infrastructure Health Check:

1. Click Health Check in the left panel of the Instance page.
2. In the Health Check section, click Infrastructure.
   
3. The status typically indicates whether each component of the client’s Commerce Infrastructure is healthy (Pass) or failing (Fail).
   

Monitor the Health of Microservices

To Run a Health Check on Microservices:

1. Click Health Check in the left panel of the Instance page.
2. In the Health Check section, click Microservices and a health status screen for all enabled microservices will display.
   
3. Last health check dateThe Health Check Summary displays the following:
   • Total number of tests failed
   • Total number of tests that did not run
   • Test result status and option to download and view the .tar file
4. Current release number with the option to view release notes
   

Manage Single Sign-On (SSO)

Single Sign-On (SSO) management in Skava Commerce includes the option to view all the available SSO clients, create new clients, update existing clients, and delete SSO clients.

Covered in this section:

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Steps for Accessing Skava Commerce APIs
• Viewing SSO Clients
• Registering New SSO Clients
• Edit Existing SSO Clients

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Skava Commerce Single SSO?

Skava Commerce provides a secure and seamless authenticate experience, while accessing Skava Admin Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from a third-party application. For example, creating products in the Product Information Management (PIM) microservice via a customer’s third-party Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is supported by Skava Commerce; however, the application must be authenticated by Skava Commerce. SSO redirects a user from the third-party application to the Skava Commerce console for login and returns to the third-party application with a proper access token for accessing Skava Commerce APIs.

Who Can Manage SSO Clients?

Only users with Instance Admins privileges can view and manage SSO for a client’s Instance.

Steps for Accessing Skava Commerce APIs

Initially, the on-boarding client needs to register as a SSO client. Then, from the client’s third-party application, all login calls should be redirected to Skava Commerce login URL with the client’s identifier as a query parameter: https://<domain>/mcadmin/partnerlogin.jsp?clientId=<clientID>.

On successful login, an authToken is sent to the client’s third-party application using the callback URL. Now, the third-party application should make another backend call to Skava Commerce passing clientId, clientsecret, and authToken to get the access token, which can be used to access Skava Commerce Admin APIs.

View SSO Clients

To View SSO Clients:

1. On the Instance page, click SSO Management in the left navigation panel to launch the SSO Management page listing all SSO clients.
   

Register New SSO Clients

Registering a new SSO client requires details from the client’s third-party application.

To Register a New SSO Client:

1. On the Instance page, click SSO Management in the left navigation panel to launch the SSO Management page.
2. Click to add a new SSO client.
   
3. Complete the Add Client form (* required fields) with the following information.

   Form Field	Description
   Application Name*	Application name (alphanumeric characters accepted).
   Application Description	Third-party application description (optional).
   Homepage URL*	Valid URL required.
   Callback URL*	Valid URL required. [We should give more description of what this is and where it comes from].
   Email Address*	Email address of the primary contact.
   Privacy Policy	Valid URL (optional).

   
4. Click to save and register the new SSO client or to abort.
5. Click on the requested action success message.

The new SSO client, with its unique client identifier (ID), appears on the SSO Management page.

Edit Existing SSO Clients

To Modify an Existing SSO Client:

1. On the Instance page, click SSO Management in the left navigation panel to launch the SSO Management page.
2. Click and then to launch the Edit Client page.
   
3. Modify the required details for the SSO client and click to save the changes.
   
4. Upon successful save, a Success Confirmation message will display. Click to exit.
   

Manage Your Account

Admins and users can manage their Skava Commerce profiles settings, including:

• Basic information such as username, email address, and contact number
• Language preference
• Password update

To Manage Profile Settings:

1. Click on your profile icon available in the top-right side of the header section:
   
2. Click to update your profile.
   

   To log out of Skava Commerce, click .

3. Enter your profile details or make necessary changes to the existing details.
   
4. Click to save changes. You will receive a successful message in the My Account page.
5. Update your password, scroll-down the page, and enter and reconfirm your password:
   
6. Click , after updating your password.

Appendix

Roles and Permissions

The following tables describe the permissions available to each Commerce role.

Business

Activity	Instance Admin	Business Admin	Business User
Create Business	X
Edit Business	X
View All Businesses	X
View Specific Businesses	X	X	X

Team

Activity	Instance Admin	Business Admin	Business User
Invite User	X	X
Edit User	X	X
Remove Access to a User	X	X
View User	X	X
Create Role	X	X
Edit Role	X	X
Assign Role to a User	X	X
Clone Role	X	X
Delete Role	X	X

Store

Activity	Instance Admin	Business Admin	Business User
Create Store	X	X
Edit Store	X
View Stores	X	X
View Specific Stores	X	X	X

Microservice

Activity	Instance Admin	Business Admin	Business User
Create Service	X	X
Edit Service	X	X
Launch Service	X	X	X

Extension

Activity	Instance Admin	Business Admin	Business User
View Third-Party Plugins	X

Health Check

Activity	Instance Admin	Business Admin	Business User
View Infrastructure	X
View Microservices	X

 

Revision History
2020-03-30 | AM –  Minor copyedit.
2019-06-22 | PLK – Updated content.
2019-06-14 | PLK – Page created and content uploaded.