Hub and Marketplace Creation

Overview

Once the Connect Portal is activated and a service agreement is signed successfully, Resellers can define their commerce system to the CloudBlue Connect platform. Commerce systems should be represented via your configured hub and marketplace on the Connect platform.

In general, commerce systems are integrated with the Connect platform automatically. Note, however, that Connect users can create a hub and marketplace by using the graphical user interface. The following contains instructions on how to create a hub and a marketplace via the Connect interface.

Prerequisites

Before following the provided instructions, make sure that your Connect account and your service contract are activated successfully. Once Resellers can access their Connect account, it is possible to create hubs and marketplaces as described below.

Hub Registration

Hubs represent real commerce systems integrated with the Connect platform. Resellers can register several hubs differentiated by geographical regions or any other criterion.

The following showcases ACreed LLC that decided to manually register a hub on the Connect platform.

Navigate to the Hubs section of the Marketplace module. Thereafter, click the Register Hub button to start registering your hub via the Portal interface.

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, ACreed LLC created a hub by using the CloudBlue Connect interface. This Reseller organization can now create a marketplace as described below.

Marketplace Creation

Marketplaces represent available go-to-market channels that are used to express different logical concepts, such as regions, industries, sizing, and so on. Marketplaces can be registered via a 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, such as name, countries and currency.
2. Hubs: Select your created hub and specify its external ID.
3. Price list attributes: Specify the price list attributes.
4. Summary: The wizard provides a summary as the final step.

In this scenario, ACreed LLC selected United States, Spain and Mexico as countries that are covered by the created marketplace. In addition, USD is selected as the active currency. ACreed LLC also added the hub created earlier and selected the Suggested T1 Reseller Price attribute to manage prices independently.

Your Next Step

Once a hub and a marketplace are successfully created, Resellers will successfully define their commerce system on the Connect platform. Therefore, the system enables Resellers to enroll syndication agreements. Access Catalog Operations to proceed with the Reseller Tutorial.

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