A trading partner collection is Trading Programs’ way of allowing you to control when trading partners become visible and who has access to them. When you allocate a trading partner to a collection, you will be able to group that trading partner according to the grouping labels that have been pre-configured in Trading Programs for you by Enable’s Customer Success Team.
Once you have allocated a trading partner to a collection, that trading partner will then become visible in the Program line module of Trading Programs, where users can create new trading programs and program lines for each trading partner that they are permitted access to.
In order to allocate a trading partner to a collection, admin users will be required to provide a value for each trading partner attribute that has been configured. This can be done individually within the user interface or in bulk via a CSV import.
Allocate individually
To allocate a trading partner to a collection on an individual basis, first click on Structure in the drop-down menu of the Config module. Then, click on the trading partners tab near the top of the screen (this label will be dependent on what you name your trading partners, e.g. ‘Suppliers’ or ‘Customers’), where you will see a list of your trading partners on the new page.
Finally, click on the Configure collection tab where you have the option to search for and select an individual trading partner. On the right-hand side of your page, you will notice a panel appear labeled ‘Allocate to collection’, where you are able to enter the relevant attribute values for the trading partner and click the Save button (see screenshot below).
Allocate in bulk
It is also possible to allocate trading partners in bulk by uploading a CSV file. To do this, you will need to return to the Maintain list tab. On this tab you will see a Download template option located at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. After clicking on this you will be given the option to select the Populated with existing button which will generate a CSV with a list of your trading partners and the corresponding references.
If you name your trading partners ‘Suppliers’ for example, there will be a column header called ‘Supplier’, one called ‘Reference’. There will also be a column for each attribute for your trading partners, for example 'Category'.
For each supplier row you wish to allocate, enter a relevant value within the corresponding attribute value column. Once uploaded, this attribute will define what collections the suppliers belong to.
Once you have finished updating and have saved your CSV file, you can upload this new CSV file by clicking on the Browse option located on the right of the page. You will then need to select the file you wish to be uploaded and click Open. Once a file has been selected you will then need to select Upload in the bottom right-hand corner. Once Upload is clicked, the import process will begin and the progress of the trading partner upload will be reported at the bottom of the page.
Once the upload is complete, you will notice that the panel on the right-hand side will change to ‘Upload results’. This panel will also show if your upload was successful or if any rows were rejected, which will be shown in the Rejection reason column.
Please note — if you attempt to allocate an unallocated trading partner to a collection, Trading Programs will warn you that this may result in access being automatically granted to some users who currently have no access to the trading partner.