In addition to setting up profiles for individual Business Control Center users, you can set up additional profiles for abstract entities called organizations and roles and use them to create a multi-level organization of site users grouped by function.
Some Web sites require only a one-level or flat organizational structure for their users. For example, a large retail site may have many different types of visitor (new customers, frequent buyers, customers with a high income, residents of a specific area), and those visitors may have dramatically different needs in terms of the content of the site. Regardless of their different requirements, however, they perform essentially the same role – retail customer – at the site. For a site such as this, the organizational structure of users requires one level only.
A profile repository configuration that includes organizations and roles is useful for Web sites that serve a variety of users with widely differing functions. For example, a business-to-business commerce site could have some users who are buyers and others who have the supervisor role of approving purchasing decisions. In addition, other users may act as administrators for the site. In this case, the site’s organizational structure could have two or possibly three levels. Other examples of sites that could involve multi-level user relationships are sites that manage interactions between a business and its partners, or sites that function as an Internet community or discussion forum.
In addition, organizations and roles are also often used in combination with user profiles to configure secure access to different parts of a site or an ATG application. Some ATG applications require you to set up organizations and roles for this purpose. The Business Control Center, for example, uses roles to manage access permission for different areas of its UI. For information on using organizations and roles for security in ATG applications, refer to the documentation of the appropriate application. For information on using roles to control access to the Business Control Center, see Configuring Home Page Security.
