Getting Started Community Getting Started

Provider Tutorial

Updated: June 15, 2020

Contents

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.

Prerequisites

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.

Tutorial Structure

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.

Initialization

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.

Create a Hub

Information

In Connect, a hub represents a real commerce system integrated with Connect. This integration can be fully automated or managed manually. A provider can have several hubs differentiated by geographical regions or by another criterion.

In this tutorial, you will create a hub to be used for managing business flows manually.

1. Start creating a hub

In the Provider Portal, open the Hubs module:

Click Register Hub.

2. Enter the hub properties

In the pop-up window, enter the hub properties:

Name: Enter a descriptive hub name.
Type: Select “API”.
Instance ID: Enter any string that uniquely identifies your hub on the provider side.
Description: Enter a short description of the hub.

Click Register. The new hub is now in the list of hubs:

The new hub is not bound with any marketplace yet.

Create a Marketplace

Information

A marketplace is a Connect internal object that can be bound with several hubs. Through the marketplace, vendor products are distributed to those hubs.

In the following steps, you will create a marketplace and bind it to the hub created earlier.

1. Start creating a marketplace

Open the Marketplaces module:

Click Create Marketplace.

2. Enter the marketplace properties

In the pop-up window, enter the following general properties:

Name: Enter a descriptive marketplace name.
Region: Select the geographical region that your marketplace covers.
Countries: Select one or more countries that your marketplace serves.
Description: Enter a short description of the marketplace.

Scroll down the pop-up window to specify the rest properties:

Upload the image: Upload an image that will represent the marketplace on the Marketplaces main window and other places.
Hubs: Select the hub that you added earlier in this tutorial. You can add more hubs to the list when 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.

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 Create. The new 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.

Next Step

Your provider environment is ready to support business flows. Prepare agreements and set contracts with a vendor following the Sign Vendor Contracts instructions.

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