Introduction

In X-Cart, a User Role is a set of permissions that controls the level of access granted to specific user groups to edit content, change settings, and access administrative functions. With User Roles, you can provide access to certain areas of your store backend and allow the users to perform only the necessary action. 

User Roles are managed by the User permissions Addon, included by default in X-Cart Business, Multivendor, and Ultimate editions. This is a handy feature when you have multiple people working on your store, as it eliminates the need to grant full access to all your staff.

In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to re-configure the default roles, create custom ones, and assign them the required permissions.

If you feel like you can catch up, let's jump straight to the point.

Accessing the Roles page

First thing first, please log in to your X-Cart Admin Area and navigate through the left-hand side menu bar to Users > Roles.

Under the "Roles" page, you can see a list of all pre-configured by default User Roles. If you have created custom roles, they are going to be listed here as well, of course.

The green Power icon in front of each role indicates it is enabled. If the icon is greyed out, it shows the corresponding role is currently disabled.

The first "Administrator" role is the role that provides root privileges. In other words, full access to the entire admin area and all features and functionalities. This is the only role that CANNOT be deleted in X-Cart.

The exclusive right to manage User Roles is reserved to the X-Cart admin user (root user), and any other admins granted the "Administrator" role.

Role Configuration

As previously pointed, Roles consist of a set of permissions determining the level of access granted to the users. Each role (apart of "Administrator") is entirely customizable, in terms of adjusting the permissions assigned to it to match the required access needed by a given group of users.

To edit a particular role, you have to click on its title.

The role overview page consists of only three fields. The first "Name" field represents the title of the User Role, the second "Enabled" checkbox indicated the status of the role and the third "Permissions" tab contains a list of all permissions granted for this user role.

The permissions available by default in X-Cart are:

• Root access - Grants full access to the entire Admin Area. This permission does NOT apply any limitations.
• Manage catalog - Allows users to manage the product catalog, which includes products, product categories, tags, classes, and attributes.
• Manage reviews - Allows users to manage product reviews.
• Manage users - Grants permissions to manage user profiles and create new customer accounts.
• Manage administrators - Grants permissions to manage existing and create new admin and vendor accounts. Users with this permission are allowed to create root admin accounts, although they CANNOT modify permissions assigned to existing admin accounts.
• Manage orders - Allows users to manage orders, including processing orders, editing order statuses, payment transactions, change order products, and make refunds.
• Manage import - Allows users to import product data to the product catalog.
• Manage export - Allows users to export product data from the product catalog, including product categories, classes, attributes, tabs, reviews, customers, and orders data.
• Manage banners - Permits users to configure banners and manage their appearance in the storefront.
• Allow unfiltered HTML - Authorizes users to insert unfiltered HTML code to any type of website content, such as product and category descriptions, news, static pages, etcetera. This permission has to be bundled with permissions that allow access to the given content type, for example, "Manage catalog" and "Manage reviews", etc.
• Manage custom pages - Permits users to create and modify custom web pages.
• Manage menus - Permits users to manage website menus, including primary and footer menus.
• Manage news - Allows users to create and manage existing news messages displayed in the news section in the storefront.
• Manage coupons - Grants privileges to create and manage discount coupons.
• Manage volume discounts - Permits users to create and manage volume discounts.
• Manage conversations - User assigned with this permission can manage customers' messages left in their orders and further communicate with them.

If you need to assign new permission, you have to start entering its name into the field, and a list of suggestions will display right beneath, making the job even simpler.

When you are ready with the desired changes, please make sure to click on the "Update" button to apply them successfully.

Adding a New User Role

Now that you are already familiar with the whole User Roles and Permissions concept and you know everything there is to be known, you are going to find the process of creating a new user role elementary.

For a start, please click on the "New role" button.

Under the following "Role" page, all you need to do is enter the name of the new role and select the permissions to be assigned to it. Please make sure to keep the "Enabled" checkbox ticked, as either way, the role will not be functional.

When you are done, just click on the "Create" button to finalize the creation process.

Pretty much that is it! Now you should be well aware of the user roles and permissions concept in X-Cart. We hope your new skills are going to come in handy in the future management of your Online Store. If you did not find an answer to a specific question, please do not hesitate to address it to our Support Team.