Distributor Tutorial

Introduction

The following tutorial help Distributors to get necessary skills in performing general operations on the CloudBlue Connect platform. This tutorial may also be increasingly useful for Vendors and Resellers to get better understanding of required operations and available activities on the platform.

Before you get started with the tutorial, it is recommended to familiarize yourself with the Getting Started article first. This article introduces and describes the key concepts and business flows of the CloudBlue Connect platform.

In addition, refer to the Portals Interface article to get familiar with the provided graphical user interface.

Tutorial Structure

The Distributor Tutorial contains instructions that showcases how to perform general operations from the Distributor Portal. Follow the provided guidelines to collaborate with Vendors and Resellers via the Connect platform:

1. Initialization: Registering a hub and a marketplace.
2. Inviting Partners to Connect.
3. Product Listing Processing.
4. Subscription Operations.

The following tutorial also introduces Mighty Mick’s LLC distribution company that works with Front Street Inc vendor organization and Champions Corp resellers. Mighty Mick’s LLC just started to work with the Connect platform. Therefore, this company should register a hub and a marketplace first.

Initialization

Before starting collaborating with Vendors or Resellers, Distributors are required to define their commerce system on the Connect platform. A commerce system should be represented via a registered hub and a configured marketplace. In general, commerce systems are integrated to the Connect platform automatically. However, Connect users can create a hub and marketplace by using the Connect interface as described below.

Hub Registration

Hubs represent real commerce systems integrated with the Connect platform. Distributors can register several hubs differentiated by geographical regions or any other criterion. The following steps showcase how to register a hub on the CloudBlue Connect for API integration with a Distributor’s system.

1. Register a new hub

Access the Hubs section of the Marketplace module. Thereafter, click the Register Hub button to start registering your hub manually.

2. Specify your hub properties

Fill out the following hub properties form:

• Name: Enter a descriptive hub name.
• Type: In this scenario, the API hub type is selected.
• Instance ID: In case the API type is selected, enter a required string that identifies a hub within a Distributor system.
• Description: Enter a short description of your hub.

Click Register to finalize your manual hub creation on the Connect platform.

Therefore, your registered hub will be available from the provided hub list. Note, however, that this new hub is not bound to any marketplace yet.

Marketplace Creation

Marketplaces represent available go-to-market channels that are used by Distributors to express different logical concepts, such as regions, industries, sizing, and so on. Note that marketplaces are configured via a marketplace creation wizard from the Marketplace module.

Access the Marketplaces module and click the Create Marketplace button to launch the aforementioned wizard.

Thereafter, follow the wizard steps to successfully create your marketplace and bind it with your previously registered hub.

1. General

Specify your general marketplace properties:

• Name: Enter a descriptive marketplace name.
• Countries: Select one or more countries that your marketplace should serve.
• Locales: Add locales that are supported by your marketplace (optional).
• Currency: Specify a currency that will be used in your marketplace.
• Upload an image: This will represent your marketplace logo (optional).
• Description: Enter a short description of your marketplace.

In this scenario, “United States” is selected in the Countries field and “USD” is selected in the Currency field.

Click Next to continue.

2. Hubs

Fill out the following Hubs form:

• Hubs: Select your previously registered hub. Add more hubs to this list if necessary.
• Tier Account External ID: Enter the ID of the account that sells products supplied through Connect on the external side. This must be an ID assigned to the account by the external system that the hub represents here.

Click the Next button to continue.

3. Price list attributes

Specify the price list attributes as follows:

• Price represents Distributors cost (i.e., wholesale price of an item from a Vendor to a Distributor).
• Suggested T0 Price (MSRP) is Vendor’s price suggested to Retail Customer.
• Suggested T1 Price is Vendor’s price suggested to Direct Reseller.
• Suggested T2 Price represents Vendor’s price suggested to Reseller.
• The Custom attributes option allows adding a custom attribute and its description.

In this scenario, the Suggested Retail Price attribute will be selected.

Click Create to finalize your marketplace creation.

4. Summary

As a result, the system provides the following summary:

Review the summary and click the Close button. Note that created marketplace will also be available from the marketplaces list. Therefore, Distributors can create required partner accounts to start working with Vendors and Resellers.

Your Next Step

By completing the initialization tutorial, the Distributor’s environment allows creating required agreements and contracts as well as partners accounts. Access Inviting Partners to Connect to proceed with the Distributor Tutorial.

In case more information on marketplaces or hubs is required, please refer to the Marketplace module or Hubs documentation.