Managing a growing business can sometimes be quite challenging. However, by delegating responsibilities to different members of your team, you can make it less stressful.
Magento 2 user roles help with that. They allow you to grant users access to different sections of your backend. This not only declutters the space but also allows you to protect the admin from any unauthorised changes and improve Magento admin panel security.
So, in this guide, you will learn how to create Magento user roles and understand how to leverage them to your benefit.
What Are Magento 2 User Roles?
Magento user roles are permissions to access certain admin sections and functionality, restricted to certain admin users. They allow you to define what parts of your backend a user can view or modify.
This helps to avoid unauthorised changes, streamline the workflow, and protect sensitive data. It is important for delegating tasks, managing teams, and, of course, securing data.
However, let us give you a full picture of why the Magento user roles are so important.
Importance of User Roles in Magento
You're facing a lot of challenges as your store grows. One of them is how to delegate tasks within your team. But you now know that Magento user roles cover that and even more.
Control
Magento user roles give store owners full control over who can access and work with different backend sections. The system makes it easy to add new users, assign corresponding roles or modify existing ones.
Moreover, it is possible to track admin actions, that is, every change in your admin panel. Nothing can happen without you knowing about it, since each page visit, edit, delete or simple change is tracked.
Efficiency
When admin users are not overwhelmed by unnecessary features, they perform the tasks much faster.
Moreover, Magento user roles prevent the team from interfering with each other's work and accidentally modifying the settings someone is working on.
Security
Magento user permissions limit access to sensitive data. They keep the right people in the right places. It means your employees can only see the data they need for their tasks — nothing more.
By granting special permissions only to trusted members of your team, you secure the backend and reduce any risks. Besides, there is a way to track login activity, to monitor who logs into the admin and from where.
Flexibility
As your business grows, the responsibilities change or shift to other staff members. The system allows you to add or edit the user roles as many times as you need. So, you adapt to any changes quickly.
Accountability
When each Magento admin user has their own role, it's easy to know who makes the changes. It helps to keep the team accountable for their actions and encourages them to be more careful.
Scalability
The number of admin users always rises. Instead of creating permissions manually each time, Magento user roles allow you to assign existing roles to new users.
It not only saves time but keeps your backend organized and ready for scaling, as each role is already predefined.
Magento User Role Types
Even though Magento 2 user roles can be customised to your specific needs, there are some general types to start with. They are based on the common ecommerce operations required by every store.
So, here are the common Magento user role types you should consider when working with user permissions.
Administrator
An administrator plays a leading role in your Magento backend. It's a person who manages other users, assigns roles, changes settings, and configures the system. In other words, it's a person who has the right to view and modify every task.
This means administrators have access to orders, products, customers, marketing, content, reports, store, system configurations, integrations, and extensions. Consequently, this role is generally assigned to a store owner or a main developer.
Sales manager
The sales manager's job is to take care of the transactional aspects of customers' orders. They need to review, confirm, cancel, or edit orders, generate invoices, create and track shipments, issue refunds, etc.
However, they don't need access to content, marketing tools, or system configurations. Their role is operational rather than strategic or creative.
Content manager
Content managers are responsible for the storefront user experience. It is a role that combines storytelling, branding, and SEO skills to optimise content and engage customers more.
As it was mentioned earlier, content managers need to access CMS pages, static blocks, media gallery, widgets, WYSIWYG editor, as well as page layout and design settings. However, access to customers, sales, or system information is not within their role.
Product manager
The product manager's task is to manage the catalogue. It includes editing products, monitoring their performance, collaborating with suppliers, developing strategies for up-sells, cross-sells, related products, and so on.
Correspondingly, this Magento user role needs access to products, categories, and analytics. They may also have access to the inventory, content, or promotion sections. However, it depends on how involved you need them to be.
Customer service representative
Customer service representatives assist with customers' issues and answer their questions. Whether it's returns, refunds, or complaints, they are responsible for upholding your company's good name.
To perform their job well, they need access to customer accounts, order history, returns, messages, and order comments. However, products, sales configuration, payment, or system settings will just bring unnecessary complications and security risks.
Marketing manager
Marketing managers in Magento are those who help your store grow. Their task is to drive more visitors and increase sales by creating promotions, planning and running Magento marketing campaigns.
For this, they need permissions to access promotions, email templates, URL rewrites, SEO, and reports to grab marketing-related insights. Yet, the customer data and critical configuration settings may stay restricted.
Developer
The developers' role is focused on the customisation, integration, and technical performance of your store. They work behind the scenes. However, the configurations they make are essential to your platform performance.
Developers handle everything from configuring system settings to managing third-party extension integrations and troubleshooting backend issues. Therefore, they need access to system configurations, store settings, and attributes, as well as extensions and integrations.
Yet, most businesses restrict permissions to live environments and grant full administrative access only to trusted senior-level developers.
Custom role
Of course, your business may have other tasks tailored to your specific requirements.
In this case, Magento allows you to add a custom role that will cover the necessary areas. Just follow the instructions below to create Magento user roles that fit your team's responsibilities.
How to Create Magento 2 User Roles?
The process of creating Magento roles is quite straightforward. You don't need any developer assistance. What you have to do is follow these simple steps.
Step 1: Create a new user role
Navigate to System > Permissions > User Roles. Here, you'll find and, if needed, modify all the user roles you currently have. Now, hit the Add New Role button to add a new user role.
Step 2: Fill in user role information
Fill in the following user role fields:
- Role Name. It's a title to identify the role. You may choose a label that describes the assigned tasks best (e.g., Order Manager, Support Staff, etc.), rather than actual people's names. It will make it easier to manage the roles later.
- Your Password. Here, you need to set your current Magento admin password, not a new password for the role. You are asked to enter your own password for as security measure. That's how Magento checks whether you have proper authorisation.
Step 3: Choose role resource access
Move to the Role Resources tab to choose the resources a user will have access to.
- Resource Access. Choose All if you want a user to have access to all pages and capabilities of the admin panel. However, select Custom to manually choose specific permissions.
- Resources. If you choose Custom access, you'll see a tree structure of all the possible admin areas. Just check the boxes that are relevant to your user's responsibilities.
Once you finish selecting the permissions, press the Save Role button and flush the cache. Now, the new role will be available for assigning.
How to Assign a Role to an Admin User in Magento?
After creating a new user role with needed permissions, it's time to assign it to an existing admin user. It will take only a few steps.
First, you need to go to System > Permissions > All Users and start editing the user you want to assign the role to.
Then just switch to the User Role tab and select the role you need.
Finally, click the Save User button to apply all the changes. You will get a notification telling you that the user has been successfully saved with a new role.
Best Practices for Managing Magento Roles
As you can see, Magento 2 user roles add a wide range of benefits to your store. However, there are still some best practices to take into consideration when managing Magento roles:
- Review user roles regularly: Members of your team may change their position in your company, take on other tasks, or just leave. That's why it's important to review user accounts and roles every now and then for security reasons.
- Avoid shared accounts: Even though it can seem convenient, shared accounts may create confusion and misunderstanding when errors appear. Besides, it may result in password leaks.
- Grant access only as needed: Give users only those permissions they need. If someone's account is compromised, it won't affect your backend as badly.
- Create temporary roles: If you need to grant temporary access to freelance developers, seasonal workers, or marketing agencies, create a role with minimal permissions and expiration dates.
While your eCommerce business is growing, your team is doing the same. With that growth, you have to manage new users with different responsibilities or change the entire workflow for your team.
Magento user roles will come in handy in both cases and define clear and structured roles for everyone.
However, note that, as mentioned before, user roles are not the only way to protect your admin panel and sensitive data in it. Follow the best Magento security tips to cover every possible vulnerability.
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