Store Configuration

Within the Servitly Console, you can enable and configure in the Store Experience allowing you to monetize your DPS solution.

Main Concepts

The Store Experience allows DPS customers users to manage digital subscriptions and purchase products, for instance:

  • Service Levels enabling advanced digital capabilities of the connected machines.

  • Spare Parts that can be replaced within a machine due to sudden breakage or because they are subject to wear and tear.

  • Consumables used by machines during processing phases, and which require periodic refilling.

Each product can be associated with a specific Pricing Model, which can be a one-time purchase, or subscription based.

In the DPS we can identify two main actors:

  • BUYER: generally is the end-customer, so the user of your connected machines, but you can also allow your Partners (e.g. CAT, Resellers) to be Buyers for certain type of products (e.g. Spare Parts and Consumables).

  • PROVIDER: is who sell the products and manage orders, and in a DPS solution it can be the OEM itself, or one of the sub-organizations (e.g. local area subsidiary), or a Partner (e.g. CAT, Resellers).

For more details refer to the Buyers and Providers article.

Configuring the Store experience

In the DPS, the entry point of the Store experience, is the Store page which allows to:

  • view the product catalog;

  • manage subscriptions;

  • manage the shopping cart and complete a purchase;

  • manage orders;

  • manage payments.

The Store page is available for BUYER and PROVIDER users, but depending on the user's role the functionalities will be slightly different. For instance only a BUYER can place an order, and only a PROVIDER can modify an order.

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to configure the Store page in the DPS:

  1. Enter each View where you want to make the Store page available.
    Generally the Store page is made available to Operation Managers, and Back-office Managers (Organization or Partner), but you are free to enable it also to other personas.

  2. Press the Add Page button and select the Store page.
    This will add the predefined store page and all its subpages. 

  3. If necessary, you can configure certain aspects of the store page, such as the label, icon and menu in which this page is visible (side menu, top bar or user menu).
    You can also define whether the page should contain the Catalog tab.
    Optionally, the catalog section can be embedded into a thing dashboard by using the Catalog widget. In this case the catalog content is automatically filtered according to the product model associated with the thing.
    Optionally, if your view is shared among multiple User Types, you can restrict the set of User Types that will have access to the Store page.

  4. For each User Type, that will have access to the Store page, you must also configure the Permissions in order to improve Security (principle of the least privilege) and enable the right functionalities according to what do you want to sell and who can buy products.
    See the User Permissions paragraph below for more details.

  5. Navigate the DPS with one of the views involved in step one, you should see the Store page in the menu.

The order management flow requires the customer to select a shipping location.
The location details are automatically generated by including the location properties with these names: name, country, city, zipCode, address, streetNumber, phoneNumber.
When the order is created the same set of properties are also saved in the order details.

For more details about how the Store page is structured, you can refer to the Store Page article.

Catalog Access Point

The Catalog can be accessed by users in two points:

  • Store Page: directly in the Store page as the first tab. This requires the user to select the machine or product model and then find the right part to purchase.

  • Thing Details Page: from the buyer's point of view, it might be more useful to have the catalog automatically filtered by navigation context. This can be done, by using the Catalog widget placed directly in the Thing details page (dashboard).

User Permissions

Each user accessing the DPS are associated with a User Type (e.g. Back-office Admin) which has a set of permissions defining what the user can see and do in the DPS.

To improve the security (principle of least privilege), also the store is subject to permissions, and by entering the User Types page, you will find a group of permissions named Store you can configure on each User Type. Note that, some permissions could be available only to certain user type categories (e.g. only Organizations and Partners can modify an order).

Here are the permissions involved in the Store experience and their effect in DPS data access and UI.

PERMISSION

USER CATEGORY

DESCRIPTION

Read Spare Part

ANY

Allows the user to view Spare Parts in the Catalog.
The Catalog tab is visible on the Store page.

Read Order

ANY

BUYER: allows the user to view all created orders.
PROVIDER: allows the user to view all received orders.
The Orders tab is visible on the Store page.

Place Order

ANY

BUYER: allows the user to place an order.
The checkout button is available in the Cart tab of the Store page.

Write Order

ANY

PROVIDER: allows the user to add notes to an order or change the order status.

Read Subscription


CUSTOMER

Allows the user to access the list of subscriptions in the Store page.
The Subscriptions tab is visible in the Store page.

ORGANIZATION

Allows the user to access the Subscription of a Thing or Customer.
The Subscription tab is visible in the Thing or Customer editing page.

Write Subscription

ORGANIZATION

Allows the user to modify the subscription of a Thing or Customer.

Read Payment


CUSTOMER

Allows the user to read all payments made by himself.
The Payments tab is visible on the Store page.

ORGANIZATION

Allows the user to read all payments associated with the visible Customers.
The Payments tab is visible on the Store page.

Write Payment

ORGANIZATION

Allows the user to modify a payment of a Customer.