Vendor Objects
A vendor user by itself does not have much access to anything. If Agent X were to log in at this point, they would be able to see both the home page and their worklist, which would be empty. Access to other objects in the system is granted using vendor objects. These objects represent certain roles that a vendor can fill:
• Agent
• Factory
• Supplier
A vendor user is bound to use one or more of these objects. These vendor objects are in turn bound to other objects throughout the system. This binding allows vendor users to access additional objects within the system.
Vendor Object Setup
The VendorPortal.properties file controls which attributes maintain the vendor object link. Entries in the VendorPortal.properties file must match the internal name and be text attributes. When viewing the vendor object Update page, the system automatically enters the name of a vendor’s group subgroup as the attribute value. This allows users of the subgroup to access the vendor object.
Vendor Object Configuration
There are two requirements for configuration of vendor objects:
• VendorPortal.properties file
The VendorPortal.properties file is located in your codebase directory. This file potentially contains many entries. The default file supplies examples of how to configure the entries in the file.
|
|
The VendorPortal.properties file is included only as a template for possible settings for the custom.VendorPortal.properties file. This file is located in the same folder as the VendorPortal.properties file, and works in the same manner as other custom property files. It overrides content in the main file.
|
The property setting to use when configuring vendor objects is:
SUPPLIER.supplierVendorAttribute=vendor
This entry exists by default, and dictates which attribute binds the vendor users to the given vendor object. As with all property settings, the value for this property setting is the internal name. The display value for these attributes is not a factor.
The default value for this property setting is vendor. You can configure this value to be an internal name of your choosing. It is not required that the value be vendor for the property setting to function. However, for the remainder of these topics, it is assumed that the value of the property setting is vendor.
If you do not intend to change the property setting value, you are not required to do anything further in the properties file at this time.
• Configuration in the Type and Attribute Management utility
You must update the Agent, Factory, and Supplier subtypes on the Vendor (Supplier) type to add the vendor-specific attribute. The system currently expects a text attribute and enters a group name as the attribute value.
Any additional vendor object information, such as contact information, that you want a vendor to be able to change must be associated to a separate attribute group, and group permissions adjusted accordingly. The vendor must not be able to change attributes such as the name or vendor, because this would result in the vendor’s ability to change who has access to objects within the system.
