Onboarding a Partner

• You can onboard partners or send the partner portal invitation only if you have purchased a software subscription.
• You must have the B2B administrator permissions to perform these activities.
• Ensure that you have the details such as name, email address, contact number, and so on of the business partners to whom you want to send the invitations. An email address is mandatory.

The basic flow to onboard a partner is as follows:

• Invited. You send an invitation link in an email to a partner. The partner can complete the form while this invitation link is still active.
• Revoked. You can choose to cancel the invite after sending one or revoke the invitation after examining the details of the partner. The revoke action deactivates the URL sent in the invitation email.
• Seeking Approval. After the invited partner provides the required information and submits it, the status of the invite changes from Invited to Seeking Approval.
• Approved/Revoked. In the Partners page, you can see if there are pending requests from the invited partners or users. You can decide to approve or reject the application from the Dashboard.

1. Select existing partners on the Partner profiles page. You can select a maximum of 10 partners to send the invitation.

2. Click to invite the partners to provide additional details using Partner Portal (Beta). You must configure a unique email address for each of the partners in the partner profiles. If you have configured multiple contacts, select the email addresses of the contacts on the Partner invitation screen to send the invitation. <!---the partner receives the invite on the email address that you configured first. --->

The partner will receive an email notification with a link to join Partner Portal.

On the Partner profiles page, the icon appears in the partner listing for partners that onboarded using Partner Portal.

Assign a designated user to monitor and edit your partners' accounts, feeds, and transactions through Partner Portal.

To add a user to manage partners:

1. Configure the user's email address as a contact in the partners profiles.

2. Select the partners on the Partner profiles page.

3. Click to invite the user to Partner Portal. Select the email address of the user you added as a contact in the previous step on the Partner invitation screen to send the invitation.

4. The user will receive an email notification with a link to join Partner Portal.

To remove a partner from the user's partner switching list in Partner Portal, either delete the partner or remove the user’s email address from the partner’s profile in IBM® webMethods B2B.

An illustration for the concept of managing partners on Partner Portal is shown as follows:

An Enterprise has five partners P1, P2, P3, P4 and P5. It intends different users to view and manage the accounts, feeds, and transactions of different partners:

• User 1 (U1) for P1 and P2.
• User 2 (U2) for P3 and P4.
• User 3 (U3) for P5.

1. In IBM webMethods B2B partner profiles, the enterprise configures email addresses as contact for the following:

   • U1's email address for P1 and P2
   • U2's email address for P3 and P4
   • U3's email address for P5

2. The enterprise selects P1 or P2, P3 or P4, and P5 on the Partner profiles page and clicks on . The enterprise selects the email address added as contact for U1, U2, and U3 to send an invite to their respective email addresses to onboard themselves on Partner Portal.

3. U1, U2 and U3 logs in to Partner Portal with the login credentials received in an email from the enterprise.

4. The users can now view and manage the accounts, feeds, and transactions for their partners by clicking on on Partner Portal.

   • User 1 (U1) for P1 and P2.
   • User 2 (U2) for P3 and P4.
   • User 3 (U3) for P5.

From the Partner profiles section, the Administrator can send an invitation to a partner by clicking Onboard Partner. This takes you to the Send Invitation screen as shown here:

1. Enter the email address of the partner along with the first name and last name.

2. To add more rows, click Add more.

3. To send to multiple partners with a single action, click Bulk invitation and type the email addresses of all the partners and use a comma to separate them out.

4. Click Send invitation.

An email will be sent to the partners to initiate the onboarding process.

NOTE IBM webMethods B2B recommends not to use a private browser window to log in. If you log in through a private window and click the Onboard Partners icon on the Partner profile page, the system directs you to the login page. Provide your enterprise login credentials to open the Partner Invitation page.

After you send the invite to onboard a partner, you can check the status on the Invitation Status page. An example is shown as follows:

1. Click Onboard parnters and switch to the Invitation status tab.
2. Select All to view the total number of invites that are in Seeking Approval and Invited state.
3. Click Seeking Approval, to view the number of invites that are pending your approval or rejection.
4. Click Invited, to view the number of invites that are sent by you and are still active.
5. Click to view the details entered by the B2B partner in the application form.
6. To revoke an active invite, select the invite and from the Action menu, select Revoke. The URL sent in the email invite becomes inactive.
7. To approve or revoke the partner after the partner provides complete information, select the invite and from the Action menu, select Approve or Revoke accordingly.

A partner approval request appears on the notification panel on the right-top corner of the page. Click on the notification tile to see the partner requests.

On the Invitation status page, approve or revoke the partner after the partner provides complete information. Select the invite and from the Action menu, select Approve or Reject accordingly.

• When you reject a request, type a reason to inform the partner the reason for rejecting the request. IBM webMethods B2B sends an email to the partner to inform the reason for rejection.
• When you approve, IBM webMethods B2B sends an email to the partner with a link to start accessing the partner dashboard.

When a partner updates a few details in the partner portal, those details appear in the Partner engagement page under Partner profiles. A partner can add or update details pertaining to a partner user. Click on a partner name to see the updates from each partner user. In the Review/Approve dialog box, review all the changes and click either Approve or Reject.

You will be able to see the updates from a partner on the Partner engagement page only if the partner uses Partner Portal to provide the details.

For information on the enterprise details visible to a partner, see To View and Monitor Transactions.

NOTE When a partner has a Partner Portal instance and you import its partner profile in IBM webMethods B2B, the feeds in Partner Portal do not capture the changes to the partner profile, and hence the changes do not reflect on Partner portal.

You can restrict your partners to view specific content parts of the document, document types, and attributes on Partner Portal. To add the restrictions on Partner Portal, perform the following steps:

1. In IBM webMethods B2B, go to Partner > Partner engagement.
2. On the Partner engagement page, click and select the Content parts of the document, Document types, and Attributes you want to restrict for your partners.
3. Click Save.

The following images show the details a business partner needs to fill-out in the Partner invitation form, when you send one.

You can customize the partner on-boarding screens. For example, you can set the logo, header colors, email templates, and so on. To customize the details, perform the following actions:

1. In IBM webMethods B2B, go to Partner profiles.
2. Select Onboard partners.
3. Click from the dashboard to open the Settings page.
4. In the Configuration tab, set the following details:
   • Logo of the organization. Upload a logo by clicking . This logo appears on the page where the partner fills the information required to get on-boarded. Also, type the name of the organization.
   • Select your theme. Set the theme color for your invitation form. You can set the colors for the background and the foreground.
   • Typography. Select the toggle button to enable custom font settings. On enabling this, you can set the Custom font URL and the Custom font family. If you do not enable this, select a predefined font from the available drop-down list.
   • Email Template.
     • From email name. Specify the email name to send an email with this name to your partners from a custom domain.
     • From email address. Specify the email address if you want to send an email with a custom domain. When both the SMTP server information and email address are configured, the custom domain uses the SMTP default sender email address from the SMTP server tab.
     • Cc email address. Type the email addresses (separated with comma) to whom you want the notification email to be carbon-copied.
     • Email template. Type an email template text to send partner invitations. Modify the default template as per your requirements.
     • Cc Response Email template. Those on the Cc email address will receive a copy of the email notification.
   • Terms and Conditions text. Enable this field to activate the terms and conditions, add the details for the Terms and Conditions that you want to share with your on-boarding partner.
   • Click Apply.
5. In the Questionnaire section, define the questions to onboard the partners. To add the questions, perform the following steps:

   • Click on > Add new button.

   • Provide a title for the questionnaire and select the question type, either Text or Choice.

   • Click to customize the question. With Text questions, you can offer partners the option to provide a lengthy response and have the flexibility to make the questions mandatory. For Choice questions, you can provide an option for multiple answers for a question and have the flexibility to make questions mandatory.

   • Click Save changes to save the questionnaire.

   • To include the questionnaire in the partner onboarding process, select Set to default from action menu .

     Important: The Enterprise can review the partner's questionnaire responses in the Invitation details section before rejecting or approving the partner invitation. The maximum limit for the questionnaire is 65,000 characters.
6. In the SMTP server tab, set the following details:
   • SMTP default sender email. To send the email invitations from your custom domain email address.
   • Host, Port, Username, and Password for your SMTP server to establish a custom domain.
   • Auto TLS and Authentication must be always enabled to connect with the SMTP server.
   • Click Apply and Close.
   Note: You must type the password each time you make an update to the SMTP settings. It cannot be retrieved from the SMTP configuration.

Set up the necessary channels, partner users, processing rules, business document type, and trading partner agreements, and share the inbound channel endpoint URL with the partner.