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Magento 2 Shopping Assistant (Part 2): Customer Accounts

In the last blog, we’ve introduced to you the Magento 2 Shopping Assistant tools to help with your customers. We also provide you the instructions to create a new customer account through the Magento 2 backend. In this blog, we’ll continue with the tool to help you update your customers’ account.

With this tool you can help your customers to update their profile whenever there is any changes such as email, address, … To update an customer account through the Magento 2 backend, do the followings:

Sign in with your admin account. On the Admin sidebar, choose Customers.

Select All Customers under Customer.

Now you can see all your customers’ brief information listed in the grid. Click the Edit link in the Action column that match the customer’s name. You can use the Filters or the Search box to find your customer if necessary.

As listed in the very first row in the customer information page, there are five options you can do to your customer’s account:

Delete Customer: Erase all related information to that customer. A message will be displayed to confirm your action.
Reset: Reset all the unsaved changes in the customer account to their previous values.
Create order: Ceate a new order for that customer.
Reset password: Resets the customer’s password.
Force Sign-In: Clears the tokens that related to the customer’s password. With this option, you are allowed to access to the account.

On the left panel, you can also manage all the detailed information of the customer: Customer View, Account Information, Addresses, orders, Billing Agreements,… For example, in the Customer View section, you can examine the activities of your customer, such as the time he/she last signed in or out, the Customer Group that he/she belongs to, and so on.

In order to update the intended account, just select the type of information you need to edit. Then, make any necessary changes to your preferences.

When finish, tap Save Customer to confirm all the changes.

In conclusion, the tool to update your customer account is really useful for you to keep your customer profiles always fresh. Don’t forget to follow our next blogs to explore more tools to improve the experience of customers on your Magento 2 store.

How to Create A Virtual Product in Magento 2

Virtual products in Magento 2 stores are intangible items that are sold to customers. They are much like simple products, but has no weight or other physical statistics. Some examples of virtual products are memberships, services, warranties, or subscriptions. In a Magento 2 store, virtual products can either be sold one by one, or included as part Grouped Product or Bundle Product.

To create a virtual product for a Magento 2 store, follow the 6 steps below:

Step 1: Choose the Product Type: Virtual Product

Follow the instructions to create a simple product in our previous blog. Choose Virtual Product instead of Simple Product

Step 2: Choose the Attribute Set

Follow Step 2 in the blog “5 Steps to Add A Simple Product in Magento 2” to determine the most appropriate attribute for the new virtual product.

Step 3: Complete the Required Settings

Enable Product: Set it to “No” until all settings are completed.
Product Name: Type the new product name here.
SKU: You can either accept the default SKU or enter a new one.
Price: Enter a value here to set as primary price for your new product.
Click Save to save changes. Select the appropriate store view for the new item.

Step 4: Complete the Basic Settings

Tax Class: It can be set to None (no tax applied) or Taxable Goods.
Quantity: Enter the number of the products that are available to sell.
Stock Status: Set it to “In Stock”.
Notice that the Weight field is not available because the new product is a virtual one.
Categories: You can either choose an existing category from the list provided or create a new one. You need to enter the Category Name and select the Parent Category for the second choice.
Visibility: Choose “Catalog & Search” so that the new item can be seen in both catalog and search results.
Set Product as New From … to … : Enter the time range for the new product.

Step 5: Complete the Product Information

Complete the remaining fields as needed:

Contents
Images and Videos
Search Engine Optimization
Related products, Up-sells, and Cross-sells.
Customizable Options
Products in Websites
Design
Gift Options

Step 6: Publish the Product

Set the Enable Product to “Yes”
Click Save button on the upper-right corner.
You can preview the new item on your store by selecting the Customer View on the Admin menu.

Those are 6 steps to create a virtual product for your Magento 2 store. There is an important note for you when it comes to virtual product in Magento 2: Shipping options is not appear during checkout unless there is a tangible product in the cart. Now, let’s go to your store and try out the knowledge that you have acquired.

7 Steps to Create A Grouped Product in Magento 2

A grouped product in Magento 2 store is a collection of non-custom simple associated products. Although it is called grouped product, each purchased item will appear individually in the shopping cart, rather than as part of the group.

This article will provide information about How to create a grouped product from scratch via Magento 2 backend.

Step 1: Choose product type: Grouped Product

On the Admin sidebar, select Products. Then under Inventory choose Catalog.
Next, click the dropdown button next to Add Product on the upper right corner and select Grouped Product.

Step 2: Choose the Attribute Set

As the attribute set is used as a template for the product, we need to set it first before completing other fields. There are two options for you:

In the Search box, simply type the name a the attribute set. This option is useful if you already know the name of the attribute set.
If you don’t, select the value in the attribute list.

The form of the new product is then updated to show the selection.

Step 3: Complete the Required Settings

Enable Product: Set it to “No” as it is temporarily not ready to publish.
Product Name: Enter the name of the new product to the box.
SKU: You can either accept the default SKU which is based on product’s name or type a new one.
It is important to note that the Quantity field is not available because the value of this field depends on individual items that compose the grouped product.
When finish all the compulsory parts, click Save. Now you’ll see the Store View picker appears on the upper-right corner. Set the store view to wherever the new product is to be exposed.

Step 4: Complete the Basic Settings

Stock status: Set it to “In stock”.
Categories: You can either select an existing category from the list or create a new one.

If you choose the second choice, click the New Category button next to selection box. On the new tab, type the new Category Name and choose its Parent category. Tap Create Category to save the settings.

Visibility: Select the appropriate place where you want your product to be found. It can be set to be visible on Catalog, Search, Catalog & Search, or Not Visible Individually.

Set Product as New From … to … : Choose the time range for the new product.

Complete others fields for the new product: Country of Manufacture, Material, …

Step 5: Add Products to the Group

Expand the Grouped Products section then tap Add products Group. A new tap containing available products is opened for you to choose which items to add.
Mark the checkbox of items that you want to included in the group. You can use the Filters if necessary.
Next, click Add Selected products. The chosen items are then displayed under the Group section for your review. You can organize the order of those items by clicking and holding the Change Order button then move it to wherever you want.
Enter a value to the Default Quantity of each product.
To dislocate unwanted items, click Remove link in the Actions column.

Step 6: Complete the Product Information

Complete the remaining information fields of the product:

Contents
Images and Videos
Search Engine Optimization
Related products, Up-sells, and Cross-sells.
Customizable Options
Products in Websites
Design
Gift Options

Step 7: Publish the Product

When you finish 6 steps above, you can set Enable product to “Yes” to publish the product.
Tap Save to save the new product. You can take a preview of the new product by choosing Customer view in the admin dropdown list.

Those are seven steps to create a new grouped product for your Magento 2 store. Before inventing a new grouped product, don’t forget that simple and virtual products that are part of a grouped product cannot have custom options.

Magento 2 Shopping Assistance (Part 1): Create New Customer Account

Customers on your Magento 2 store sometimes may need help with their purchase process. For instance, some customers like to shop online, but then they prefer placing the order by phone. In that case, you can offer immediate assistance by using Magento 2 Shopping Assistance tools in the backend. The service is available for both guests (customers that haven’t signed up for an account yet) and registered buyers. With the Magento Shopping Assistance tools, you can help your customers with the following tasks:

Create a customer account
Update a customer account
Create an order
Update an order

In this article, we will provide instructions to create a new customer account through the Magento 2 backend. There are 7 steps you need to follow to do the work:

First of all, sign in with your admin account. On the Admin sidebar, click Customers. Then choose All Customers.
Next, tap the Add New Customer button on the upper-right corner.
In the Account Information section, you need to fill all the required fields:

- Associate to Website: Choose a specific store view to link the customer to.

Customer Group: Put your customer to one of the three customer groups that are available in the dropdown box: General, Retailer, or Wholesale.

Disable Automatic Group Change Based on VAT ID: mark the checkbox if you don’t want the VAT ID Validation process to run automatically.
Next, type your customer name on the First Name and Last Name fields.
Email: Fill in with your customer’s email.
After completing all the required fields, complete the optional fields as needed:

- Middle Name/Initial
- Prefix
- Suffix
- Date Of Birth
- Tax/VAT Number
- Gender
- Send Welcome Email From

Next, come to the Addresses section. Click Add New Address to create a new address for your customer.

5. There are two types of address in the left box: Default Billing Address and Default Shipping Address. Set the check-boxes to your preferences to define the type of the new address.

6. Fill in the First Name and Last Name fields. If the name fields are left blank, the customer’s name will be automatically used for the address.

7. Next, complete others fields as needed.

Company
Street Address
City
Country
State/Province
Zip/Postal Code
Phone number
VAT Number
Fax

8. When complete, click Save Customer to save all the changes.

Those are 7 steps that you can use to help your customers to create a new account through Magento backend. Follow our next bogs to receive more information about other Magento 2 Shopping Assistance tools.

A Quick Introduction of Grid Controls in Magento 2

Admin pages that control data show a list of records in a grid. In this article, we will focus on giving a quick introduction of managing the grid in Magento 2.

Admin will manage the data more effectively if he or she knows how to make use of grid controls in the backend page. Firstly, you can easily sort the data with the controls at the top of each column in the grid. The arrow in the column header indicates that the current sort order is either ascending or descending so that looking for data becomes more convenient. Secondly, you are capable of determining which columns display in the grid or changing different positions of them. Moreover, various column arrangements can be kept as views for the purpose of being used later. The Action column shows activities that can be applied to each record. Finally, the data from the current view can be conveyed to a CSV or Excel XML file.

Assort the list:

1. Choose any column header. The arrow shows the current order is ascending or descending.
2. To see other pages in the collection, utilize the pagination controls

Number the page:

1. Apply the Pagination control to the number of records that you want to view per page.
2. Click Next and Previous to page through the list, or enter a detailed Page Number

Filter the list:

1. Tap Filters icon
2. To define the record that you want to look for, fill in as many filters as necessary
3. Select Apply Filters to finish

We have shown you the brief overview of grid controls and how to manage the grid in Magento 2. We hope that this article is useful for the ones who are finding information about grid controls. If you need any help, please feel free to contact us.