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Find Customers

Find Customers (as well as employers, suppliers and, in general, parties of any type and in any role) using the Party Manager application. You will also find shortcuts to the Find Party function from various screens within many of the Managers to enable gathering or changing information about a party, whether Customer, Vendor, Employee, or whatever role the party might be in.

• Go to the Party Manager
  The Party Manager is designed to administer information about Parties, including their identity, their roles, how to contact them, etc. Each party is given a specific Party ID which represents them as they interact within OfBiz. Groups of parties are recognized and assigned a Group ID.
  • What is a 'Party'?
    A 'Party' in Open For Business is a person or a group of parties, which can be persons or other party groups. Sometimes a party is described as a vendor, an employee, et cetera, but these are just 'roles' that a party may be associated with.
    • Roles and Contact Mechanisms
      One type of related data is Contact Mechanisms such as postal addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, internet URLs. Another is Roles that the Party acts in such as Customer, Supplier, Employee, Manager, Merchandiser, etc. Generally a single party will interact with different parts of the system in many different roles.
    • Communications and Agreements
      Another type of data that fits into the Party category is information about communication and agreements between Parties. This gets into the area of relationship management and also includes information about issues or trouble tickets that a Party may have. These entities are used along with the Work Effort entities to plan and track the research and resolution of such issues.
  • Use the Party Manager tab
    To get to the Party Manager while logged into any of the other OFBiz manager applications just click on the Party tab near the top of the page.

• Select the Find link
  Find is the default screen in the Party Manager.

• Enter known information
  This includes information like Party ID, User Login, Last Name, First Name, Party Group Name, and Role Type.
  • Adding data focuses search
    The more information entered, the more specific will be the find. However, only one of the boxes need be completed to do a search. The search returns all Party IDs sharing the entered information. For example, if only 'Chicago' were entered under the City box, all Parties with a Chicago address are returned.
  • To expand your search ...
    Conversely, the less information entered, the broader the results. For example, if only two letters of a last name is entered, all the Parties with the last name containing those letters will be returned.
  • Show all records
    Click this link to show all Party records, even if no search criteria are entered.

• Click on Lookup Party
  Returns a table of all Parties found matching your input. If more than a screenful, you may need to scroll through the pages of results using the Previous and Next links.

Parties found

The table of information for Parties found includes the Party ID, User Login, Name and Type of party.

Links:

• Party ID or Details
  Takes you to the Party Profile screen. See: Edit Customer
• Orders
  Takes you to the Order Manager: Find Order(s) - Order(s) Found screen, even if there are no orders existing.
• Quotes
  Takes you to the Order Manager: Find Quote screen, populating the Party ID box.
• New Order
  Takes you to the Order Manager: Order Entry screen, populating the Party ID box.
• New Quote
  Takes you to the Order Manager: Create Quote screen, populating the Party ID box.

Edit Customer

Continuity of selection

Once a Party is selected, subsequent screen choices will be relative to the selected Party. If you wish to, for example, view the orders from another Party, first identify/specify the party before searching for orders.

By default, the View Profile page does not show expired information. To include those expired contact mechanisms and payment methods, click Show Old.

Personal Information

Contact Information

Creating new contact information
Click Create New

• Select the contact type and click Create

• Enter the information and click Save. A successful creation will return to the View Profile page.

Editing Contact Information

• Locate the contact information and click Update

• Add a contact information purpose (if applicable)
  • Select the purpose and click Add Purpose
• Update the specific fields and click Save

Contact Information

Creating new payment information
Example: Credit Card

• Click Create New Credit Card

• Enter the card information, select the billing address and click Save. A successful creation will return to the View Profile page.

Updating payment information
Example: Credit Card

• Locate the credit card information and click Update

• Update the specific fields and click Save. Note: changes are not applied to the original payment method, rather the original payment method is expired, and a new payment method is created from the supplied information.

User Login Information

• Locate the user login and click Edit

• Changing a User Login's Password
  Enter the current password along with the new password (entered twice for verification purposes) and optionally, a password hint. Click Save.

• Disabling / Enabling a User Login
  • To disable a user login, select N from the Enabled drop-down and click Save. If left blank, Disabled Date Time will be set to the current time. If a Disabled Date Time is specified, then after a period of time (configured in security.properties) starting from the one specified, the user login will be re-enabled automatically. To permanently disable a user login, you must first disable the login, then remove the Disabled Date Time, and click Save again.
  • To re-enable a user login, select Y from the Enabled drop-down and click Save.