In this tutorial, you will get skills in performing basic provider operations in Connect. Being oriented on providers, it is also helpful for vendors and closely bound with Vendor Tutorial.
Before you get started, please read Introduction and Portals first; this will get you acquainted with the overall concepts of the Connect platform and its UI.
Note
Since every business flow requires activities from both sides (provider and vendor), during this learning course, you will change your role to Provider or Vendor and perform a required action following one or another tutorial.
The instructions in this tutorial will walk you through provider main management steps starting from initializing the provider environment to placing the first order for a product.
As a provider, you come to Connect with your own commerce system with resellers and customers using that system. In Connect, you get vendor products and sell them through your commerce system. A commerce system must be represented in Connect with a hub and a marketplace.
In this tutorial, you will create a hub to be used for managing business flows manually.
Navigate to the Hubs module from the Provider Portal:
Click the Register Hub button.
In the pop-up window, enter the hub properties:
Click Register. The new hub is now in the list of hubs:
The new hub is not bound with any marketplace yet.
In the following steps, you will create a marketplace and bind it to the hub created earlier.
Open the Marketplaces module:
Click the Create Marketplace button.
In the pop-up window, enter the following general properties:
Click Next to continue.
Fill out the following Hubs form:
Note
Here you build a product flow from Connect to the marketplace, then to the hub, and finally to the account on the commerce side.
Click Next to continue.
At least one of the following attributes should be selected:
Click Create to finalize your marketplace creation. The system will provide a summary, click Close to finish reviewing your summary.
Note
Here you build a product flow from Connect to the marketplace, then to the hub, and finally to the account on the commerce side.
As a result, your created marketplace is now in the list:
The new marketplace is not bound with any distribution contract yet. This is what you will do in the contract flow.
Your provider environment is ready to support business flows. Prepare agreements and set contracts with a vendor following the Sign Vendor Contracts instructions.