Introduction to Contacts

Overview

Contacts are a key concept for your Kore Commerce site. First, let's break down how the fit into the structure of your Kore Commerce site. The graphic below displays the basic structure of a Kore Commerce buyer:

In Kore Commerce, there are two distinct objects: a customer (which represents a business, organization, etc.) and one or more contacts (who are the individuals within these businesses, organizations, etc.). In most cases, a contact must be attached to a customer.

A customer must also be associated with a primary location, while also having the ability to list one or more alternate locations. The primary location represents a real-world address (i.e. an office , headquarter, etc.) in which a given customer is located or does business. In turn, an alternate location represents another address attached to the customer (i.e. a satellite office, warehouse, etc.), which may be relevant for specifying where a specific contact is and/or distinguishing between groups of contacts belonging to the same customer, but in different locations.

The last piece of this structure to introduce of this system is web-users.

In order to allow a contact access to your Kore Commerce site, they must be a web-user. The user is what establishes an individual contact on your site. In order to gain user access, a contact must have an email address attached to their contact. This means that in order to create a contact, a contact must provide an adequate email address that will be used to create their account.

A contact's user is important, as it establishes the roles (buyer, administrator, etc.) that they will have while on your site. By changing these roles and permissions on a contact's user, it will alter what they are able to see, interact with, and change on your site.

Page Summary

Contacts are (usually) a part of a larger customer. A customer is attached to a primary location, and can have one or more alternate locations. A contact's user definition sets their permissions and allows them to see and interact with various parts of your site.

Now that we've covered the basics of contacts in the buying structure of your Kore Commerce website, you can head to the Introduction to Users page to learn more about how users work.