In order to have a successful partner network relationship it is important to complete some setup in the system from within the administrator menu.
Roles
When you setup a partner network you will have to define which role the partner network users will have to your company. For this reason, it is important to make sure that you define a role that will have only the information that you want to have displayed to the partner. The following section to look at some settings that you might want to consider when you are defining roles for your customers and carriers.
By default, when you partner network users see VIA® they are viewing the same boards, lists and cards that you and your employees see. You are essentially granting the partner network users access to only their information. Meaning, customers (while they can see your boards) can really only see their cards within the lists. Carriers as well can only see the cards to which they are listed as carriers on.
It is recommended that you create a role for both types of partner networks that you might create. Carriers may have different rights than customers. For example, you may want to allow carriers to change the status of an order, or arrive and depart stops. Alternatively, you might want customers to be able to add new orders where you would not want carriers to be entering new orders on the boards.
To create your role you will need to have an idea of what you want your partner networks users to do and what you want them to have access to. Taking the time before you setup the partner network now can save time in the future.
Creating a New Role
In order to create a role, you must have access to the administrator menu in VIA®. To access the administrator screen click on your name in the VIA® screen and select Admin. If you do not see the admin menu item you may not have administrator access to VIA® and you will need to contact your system administrator.
Once you have the administrator screen open, click on the Roles button on the left side of the screen. Here you will be able to view your roles, and their corresponding rights; and you can create a new role from here as well. Let's create a new role for a customer. On the top right side of the screen select New Role and in the resulting popup screen enter in the role name you would like to use the the role description.
When you are done you can choose you new role from the drop down list at the top of the screen in order to edit the rights associated with the new role. NOTE: before you make any changes to a role, make sure you are viewing the correct role. By default, the global role will show up when the screen is loaded.
Some settings that you might want to consider are listed below; however, how you choose to configure your system should be a business decision and you may choose different settings to best fit your business needs.