User Role Permissions & Capabilities

User Roles Permissions, & Capabilities

Today will be going over user roles on a high-level overview. What do we mean by users and roles? Put simply, users are potential purchasers or sellers on the site. They can typically fall into one of those two categories, but for many of our clients they have really specialized marketplaces and users might actually be in both of those roles or scenarios. They may also be in subsets of capabilities within each of those, so they may not have the full capability of one role, but maybe full permissions of another.

User Role Approval Scenarios

For example, if a new seller sets up their account you may auto-approve the seller to go ahead and join the marketplace. However, they may not auto-approve all their listings and all of their postings to the community or to the catalog. As a result, they're not going to have as much junk, if you will, in the catalog system. Because the review of the different postings of products get reviewed first and then moderated. It's not uncommon to just approve all of the users that go through the system.

There may be some ability to complete purchases on an account or purchased through POIS, special shipping options, etc. If that's the case, it's possible to set up a simple automated process that sends an email to the approved folks on the approved roles within an organization. They can get this approval notification and then simply click yes or no and, if they want, they can see more detail before they approve or deny membership.

Role Access and Capabilities

It’s also pretty common to grant access to different functionalities within the application. This can be things based on an account or different products, pricing levels, or discounts. In addition, there may be special shipping logic based off of a special freight agreement between the marketplace or a vendor and a particular purchaser. The roles and accounts can all be business logic points that drive whether or not someone gets a different price to different option different features. Even so, they may see a different user interface and have access to different functions. Different user roles or accounts can pay differently based on rules you or the vendor set.

It's also common for different users that qualify and meet certain criteria to be established on the vendor level or at the overall marketplace level. They can have the ability to purchase an account where they've got an account balance they can build up. Similarly, they could issue pois or purchase through a payment portal. There are also other systems that often use credit card and debit card, but you can also see a lot with different electronic forms of payment through other transaction types that we can set up and configure for certain roles within your marketplace.

Clarity Marketplace Experts

These are all things that you discuss with your sellers and with the folks that are going to be listing products or internally, if it's going to be all internal. Think about three, five, even ten years down the road what the system will need to do. If you can plan for the future, it's optimal to have those capabilities in the system during the initial set up. This is especially true if you're looking to migrate to a system that has those capabilities you want. You’ll want to take the time to think about all the different nuances and learn about the different roles and different account users. Hopefully, this gave you a better understanding about users and roles. Below are a handful of helpful resources where we go into detail about the many facets of what makes up a marketplace. If there is anyway Clarity could help, we welcome you to send us an email, give us a call, or even set up a demo so you can see firsthand what all the possibilities are.