Welcome to Agora! The Agora commerce system is an interconnected set of B2B e-commerce solutions for buyers and sellers of goods and services. Our mission is to reduce chaos in your buying and selling, saving you time and money with every transaction. We do this by prioritizing your visibility and control over every element of the e-commerce workflow. This gives you the ability to build powerful, adaptable, and flexible Stores and Marketplaces that, once they’re set up, run themselves and return dividends in savings.
Agora provides e-commerce tools to two types of organizations:
- Buyers
Buyer organizations are generally businesses or institutions that regularly buy from a variety of Suppliers. Within these Buyer organizations, the Agora Platform can be administrated by procurement or purchasing professionals, finance officers, licensing directors, marketing directors, or anyone else involved in purchasing goods and services for the organization. - Suppliers
Supplier organizations are businesses, distributors, or manufacturers that regularly sell to a variety of Buyer organizations. Within these Supplier organizations, the Agora Platform could be administrated by account reps, middle management, or upper management.
The Agora commerce system has two online environments:
- Admin Console
The Agora Admin Console is where Administrators create and manage their Platform and their Sites. Buyer and Supplier Admins both use similar, but different versions of the Admin Console. - Front-End Sites
Agora Sites are the customer-facing online shopping environments managed by Supplier or Buyer Platforms. Front-End Sites are either Marketplaces or Stores.
The User Guide is designed to help Admins navigate and effectively utilize the Agora Admin Console. The Admin Console is separated into two levels:
- Platform Level
At the Platform level of the Admin Console, Admins can manage certain high-level settings, create and manage Sites, and can see data and reports from all Sites managed by their Platform. - Site Level
At the Site level of the Admin Console, Admins can customize and design a specific Store or Marketplace, manage Site Users, and see data and reports from the specific Site they’re managing.
Depending on whether the Agora Platform is a Buyer Platform or a Supplier Platform, the Sites created by those Platforms will fall into two categories:
- Marketplaces
Marketplaces are created by Buyer Platforms. They are customer-facing environments designed to house any number of participating Suppliers in a Supplier Directory. Site Users in a Marketplace can request, compare, and order Quotes from the participating Suppliers. - Stores
Stores are created by Supplier Platforms. They are customer-facing environments, and can either be the online storefront for the Supplier themselves, or they could be created and personalized by the Supplier Platform specifically for each of the Supplier’s contracted B2B clients.
Login Page
Log in to the Agora Admin console at admin.agoracx.com.
[Screenshot of Login Page]
If you’re an Admin for a Platform or a Site, log in with your email address and password. If you’ve forgotten your password, click the “Forgot Password” button to reset your password.
You will be logged out and redirected to the login page after two hours of inactivity.
Admin Console Header
[Screenshot of Admin Console Header, Site-level. Store or Marketplace.]
The Admin Console header contains a two-level breadcrumb that will always be visible, indicating to the Admin what Store or Marketplace they’re managing, and in which Platform. If you are an Admin with Platform access or access to multiple Sites, when managing a Specific Site, you can click the name of the Platform in the Admin Console header to navigate back out to the Platform level. At the Platform level, no Site name will appear in the header breadcrumb.
[Detail screenshot of breadcrumbs]
The Site-level header will include a “Visit Site” button on the right-hand side of the header that will open the front-end Store or Marketplace in a new browser tab. If a Supplier Admin is administrating a connected Buyer Marketplace, this button will read “Message this Site”. When clicked, a new email will be started, addressed to the Marketplace’s administrative contact.
Click the profile icon at the right side of the header to log out of the Admin Console or edit your profile. Click here for more on the My Profile [add hyperlink] page.
[Detail screenshot of profile icon and menu]
Click the hamburger menu icon at the right side of the header to navigate to this Help and Resources site or submit a support ticket to our support team directly inside of the Admin Console. Click here for more on the Submit a Support Ticket [add hyperlink] page.
[Detail screenshot of hamburger icon and menu]
Admin Console Sidebar
[Screenshot of Admin Console Sidebar, probably the Store sidebar. With menu (Products?) expanded. And hovering over another category icon.]
The Admin Console sidebar is the primary navigation for the Admin Console. Hovering over the category icons will display the category names, and clicking on the icons will expand a submenu with a list of Admin Console modules in that category. The sidebar will contain different categories at the Platform level and the Site level, and it will contain different categories at the Site level if the Site is a Store or a Marketplace.
Some categories and modules will appear at both the Platform level and the Site level. For example, Order Approval appears at both the Platform level and the Site level. In this case, the Site-level Order Approval module will only contain orders from the Site from which the orders were placed, whereas the Platform-level Order Approval module will contain orders from all Sites in the Platform.