User roles, role types, and feature elements overview

The Rhythm e-Commerce Business Center uses the concepts of user roles, user segments, role types, and feature elements to enable a flexible system of assigning permissions for access to various features.

• Feature elements enable specific features to be enabled or disabled based on the role that is assigned to the current user.
• Role types define where a role is used.
• User roles are predefined with a subset of feature elements. Each user is then assigned one or more user roles to access available features.

The Business Center is designed so that the code required to create each feature element, for example, the ability to edit a reseller's shipping address, is applicable only for users that belong to a role that can access that feature element. Each time a feature element is shown, the current user is verified to belong to at least one user role, for example, Reseller, that has been granted access to that feature element.

Each user can be assigned several user roles, and each user role may be assigned to several users. In addition, each user role is granted several feature elements, and each feature element is enabled in several user roles.

The Business Center is delivered with several preconfigured feature elements and user roles.