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Admin Overview#

The Miva admin has come quite a long way since its beginning over 20 years ago. From custom fonts and icons to the ability to navigate on a touch device, the admin is easy to operate for any user base. Features like exporting CSV files for just about any data set to advanced search capabilities that replicate a mySQL call, make the Miva admin very powerful.

Admin Navigation#

In Miva Version 10 the admin was divided into two distinct sections. Upon logging into the store the user will land on the admin home page with the main navigation panel present. By selecting the store name a flyout will appear with the other available stores on the account. Then the following sections are typically accessed by the store owner on an everyday basis.

At the bottom of the main navigation panel the settings gear icon can be found. This area contains the sections related to the store’s functionality like integrations, modules, data management, and more.

When selecting the User Interface navigation link the admin will display a sub navigation panel containing the sections related to the look and feel of the store. This section is mainly for developers or admin users updating front end content through the Theme Components or Content Section (PageBuilder).

History, Jump Back In & Bookmarks#

The history section will show a list of recently visited places with the timestamp of when they were visited. This makes it easy to retrace steps to a previous location that was being edited. A more general history section labeled Jump Back In can be found on the home page, where a list of sections previously visited can be found to easily navigate through the admin.

Bookmarks are another useful tool when navigating around the Miva admin. Each of the screens and sections can be bookmarked and manged using the bookmark icon in the top panel of the admin.

Also in the top panel is the view in browser icon. When viewing a product, category or any template within the admin selecting the eye icon will open a browser window to view in runtime.

There are a number of ways to search within the Miva admin. The global search navigation has the ability to access any place in the admin quickly and from anywhere. To search specific data sets each batch list has a powerful search functionality with an assortment of features to filter the data to precisely what is needed. For developers Miva has a Template Search & Replace feature along with a list of all available variables and entities for a given template.

One of the most powerful features of the Miva admin is the Search functionality. The global search functionality has the ability to search within any location of the admin. The search will drill down into each section that has a result.

For example when searching SFNT, which is the page code for the storefront or home page, the result will be a list of every section within the SFNT page. When selected you will be taken directly to that section.

The global search navigation allows for the ability to search for places, products, categories and pages in the admin using a fuzzy search. Using a fuzzy search, the software searches every section and shows the most relevant results based on what has been entered then categorizes them into sections. When using, Option \ on the Mac or Alt \ on a PC, the search nav will open and focus in on the global search input.

Within the admin Miva displays data sets and other items using a batch edit list. In the next section the batch edit list is explained in more detail but let’s take a look at the bath edit list search tool. This functionality will search the data points being displayed in the batch edit list.

Selecting the search controls icon a menu will appear giving three choices for search; Default, Find in List, and Advanced Search. The Default option is a simple search which will do a query for the string entered in the data that is visible within the batch list.

The find in list mode will look for the search query within the data set and show the results in relation to where they are within the data set list. This mode was created to solve the issue of the browser search not working within Miva admin. Miva only loads the records that fit in the browser window then dynamically loads the results upon scroll, and the browser find can only search things being displayed in the browser.

Finally, using the Advanced Search very complicated queries to get the data can be performed. Advanced Search is an easy way to make what would be similar to a database SQL query but on the data in the batch list. Here is an example, a search for products that are $50 or less and in the clothing category. This can be done by clicking on this price field and selecting less than or equal to $50 then to further refine the search results by saying that it should only be products that are in a clothing category. If this is a common query that the user will be using, it can be saved using ‘Save Current Search’ for easy access in the future.

Batch Edit List#

Throughout the Miva admin any section which has a list of data will use the batch edit list layout. The batch edit list layout has a number of powerful features to inline edit, sort, and export the data in the store quickly.

To update or view any record in the data list simply select the link to view the specific record page within the admin.

Back at the batch edit list layout, to update records inline select the edit icon when hovering over the data or select the edit icon when hovering over the header row of the data to edit all the values in the data list.

To update the data being displayed select the plus icon and check any default data points or Image Types by selecting the Show / Hide Image Types section in the dropdown. A list of available Custom Fields can be found with the Show / Hide Custom Fields section. Finally, the data can be sorted by columns not displayed by selecting the data point in the Sort By Columns Not Displayed section.

Each batch edit list will have a similar look and feel with the search functionality, more options and primary action located in the upper right section. Under the more options menu the ability to refresh the data set and view in full screen mode is available along with three different view options. The reset option will refresh the entire page as the refresh will only refresh the data set. When in the catalog batch list the option to sort that data can be found, which will prompt a new window to edit the display order of the data. Also as seen in the catalog batch list a sub menu can be found in this section of the batch list which allows for more global batch list features. In the catalog batch list the sub menu will show all products, just active products or only the uncategorized products.

Item Menu#

When a record is selected in the batch list a sub menu will appear giving an In-Line Edit option along with more options located in a flyout menu when selecting the three dots icon. In some cases there may be a primary button located in the sub menu that appears like in the Customers batch list when the Shop As Customer button appears.

Within the more options menu the ability to delete and export the selected items to a CSV spreadsheet is available along with any other options for that specific list.

Exporting the data in a CSV file can be extremely helpful with any data set. First select the data that needs to be exported and then sort the columns in the order needed to display in the spreadsheet by dragging the column header to the desired location.

By holding down ctrl for a PC and command for a MAC individual items can be selected. Other hotkeys like select all and select multiple can be used as well. Once the records are selected and the correct data is showing, clicking the CSV option will save a file locally.