In this video we’re going to have a look at Availability Groups. You can use Availability Groups to limit which customers are able to see specific items in your Miva Merchant store. Let’s say for example that we have a special club. We want to be able to have products in our store that are only available to members of this club. This club could be our bowling team, fant team or favorite customers list, etc. Whatever the case may be, we’ll want to give them exclusive access to special products in our store.
Here we are in a category called “Club Member Items.” We have a Club Member Shirt, a Club Member Mug and a Club Member Hat. Let’s build an Availability Group so that only Club Members will be able to see this category. In the store Admin, we’ll want to click into “Customers.” From here we’ll want to click into the “Availability Groups” tab. We can add a new Availability Group by clicking on this “+” button here. We’ll just have to give this group a name. I’ll call it, “Club Members.”
Once we have the Availability Group created, let’s click on it and then assign a category to this Availability Group by clicking on this “Categories” button. We’ll do a search for the “Club Member Items” category and assign it to this Availability Group. Once assigned we can scroll down and click on the “Close” button. Now when we go back to the store and hit refresh, we’ll see that the Club Members Category is no longer available to the general public.
You’re not limited to assigning entire categories to Availability Groups. You can add specific products as well. For example, if we go into the “Books” category, here I have a Limited Edition copy of the book “Stardust.” If we wanted to offer this product to club members only, we can go back into the Store Admin, make sure that we have the Availability Group we’re working with selected, and then we can click on this product's button up here. Let’s do a search for “Limited.” We’ll select the Limited Edition Stardust book and then close out this modal window. Now when we go back to the store page and hit “Refresh” that Limited Edition Stardust book is no longer viewable in this category because the availability group we assigned it to is hiding it from the general public as well. Back in the Admin, let’s add Customer Accounts to this Availability Group. Once again, we want to make sure that the Availability Group is selected and then we can click on the Customers button on the top. Let’s add Rick and Sabrina to this group and now when we login as Rick, we can see the Limited Edition Book again since Rick is now a Club Member. We also have access to the Club Member Items category as well. That’s Availability Groups in Miva Merchant.