Customers

Video Tutorial

Overview

The Customers Management module enables Distributors and Vendors to create, review, and manage Tier Accounts and Tier Account Requests on the CloudBlue Connect platform.

The following schematically illustrates and describes the Customer management module on the Connect platform:

Partners can use the Customers module to create a database that contains tier account (reseller or customer) data with just a couple of clicks. Created tier account data is necessary for Tiers Configuration and consequently required for generating or activating subscriptions on the Connect platform. This data include company names, addresses, contacts and other account attributes.

Furthermore, the Customers module can be used to build hierarchical structures with your created accounts. For example, customer account can have a parent reseller account that can also have a parent account. Restructure tier account hierarchy as it is necessary for your business.

Note that this module is also used by Distributors and Vendors to consolidate tier accounts information and accounts structure via tier account requests. In case any provided account information is edited, the system generates a new tier account request.

Therefore, the Customer module is increasingly helpful for creating tier accounts database, managing your tier accounts hierarchy, and keeping track of accounts updates and adjustments.

Tier Accounts

Tier accounts represent objects that store customer or reseller account attributes. Creating tier accounts is required to specify customer and reseller information for subscriptions that are generated on the CloudBlue Connect platform. Additionally, note that that tier accounts are used to indicate the current state of reseller and customer data.

Note that tier accounts can form hierarchical structures with multiple independent trees as schematically illustrated below:

Furthermore, there are two possible ways of addressing elements within each hierarchy as displayed in the diagram below:

• Levels represent relative addressing from the “root” of the hierarchy (blue in the diagram above).
• Tiers represent relative addressing from the “leaf” of the hierarchy (red in the diagram above).

CloudBlue Connect primarily utilizes Tier-based addressing schema for customer and reseller data, hence the object name Tier Account.

Tier Account Requests

Tier Account Requests (also referred as Customer requests or TARs) are objects that store changes to the customer and reseller account object attributes. These request enable Distributors to consolidate tier account data with Vendors. Therefore, Partners can keep track of all tier account changes and updates.

The diagram below provides tier account request workflow on the CloudBlue Connect platform.

Once a request to change or update a tier account is created, the system transfers the tier account request to the Pending state. Thereafter, this request can be accepted or ignored by a Vendor.