New Feature: Reseller Item/Quote Template Access Control

We’ve had our Resellers feature for awhile now, which allows you to set up sub-accounts with separate company information and logo so your Resellers can have access to your Socket account and generate Quotes. There was a major deficiency, however, in that all Users assigned to a Reseller could see all Item and Quote Templates within the system, which didn’t allow for different pricing for different Resellers. To fix this problem, we’ve introduced Item Groups and Quote Template Groups. The idea is that you create a Group, assign elements to it (Items or Quote Templates depending on what you’re working with), and then give certain Resellers access to the Group. This way, should you have a few new Items you need to assign to many Resellers, you don’t have to set their access one by one.

There are a few ways you can set access and create groups. The first is when creating or editing an Item or Quote Template, under the Settings tab:

Any existing Groups will be shown, and there is a simple interface to add new Groups on the fly.

When creating or editing a Reseller, you have a similar interface for managing Group access:

In this case, you can assign access for this Reseller to Item and Quote Template Groups. If you have a simple Reseller setup, you can give access to All Items or Quote Templates, in which case the Reseller would have access to everything existing, plus anything created in the future. By picking the Selected Groups option, you can see and select any existing Groups, or create new ones.

The final interface, and likely the most useful, is the Group management section. From here, you can create new Item or Quote Temples Groups, assign them to Resellers, and associate relevant elements for access. The Item Group create page looks like so:

To access these sections, there are new sub navigation elements under the Manage tab. When creating a Group, you can give Resellers access to the Group (any Resellers that have access to all elements which be checked and greyed out), and then assign accessible elements to the Group. Because your account can have a lot of Items, we have search capabilities available to make them easier to find. Simply check off each element you would like associated with the Group, and once saved, Resellers will be limited to accessible elements.

It’s important to note that the accessibility for a Reseller depends on both Item and Quote Template access. For example, a Reseller may have access to a Quote Template that contains Items they do not have access to. In this case, when viewing the Quote request form, the Reseller will only see Items they have access to, rather than all Items associated with the Quote Template. It is advisable to ensure that if a Reseller has access to a Quote Template, they have access to all Items associated with that Template.

We hope this new functionality improves the Reseller experience! Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.