In Trackops, vendors work like any other investigator, meaning they can be assigned to cases and tasks, and can create case updates. This works well when the vendor is an individual contract staff member or the vendor company has a single point of contact. However, if you're dealing with a larger organization that has multiple contacts you may want to grant additional contacts access to your system to provide updates or check the status of cases on behalf of the vendor. Trackops offers a concept called Vendor Contacts to make it easier for additional vendor support contacts to login without having to share accounts.
Step 1: Verify your Vendor Contact User Roles
Before adding a vendor contact, make sure you have a least one user role configured for these users. To get started, head to Settings > User Roles. From here, make sure you have at least one user role that is available for the Vendor Contact type of user.
To create a new vendor contact user role, click New User Role and be sure the Vendor Contact selection is made.
Once the Vendor Contact selection has been made you can select the appropriate permissions for this type of user and save the role.
Step 2: Verify your Vendor Contact Assign Types (optional)
Vendor Contacts have a unique Case Assignment Type, and you may also wish to verify the settings associated with it before continuing to create contacts or assign them to cases.
Step 3: Create a Vendor Contact
Assuming you have already created one or several vendors in your system, you can add additional vendor contacts to them by going to Staff > Vendor List and clicking on the name of the vendor. From here, click New > New Contact and fill out the information related to the vendor contact.
When working setting a vendor contact access level, there are two things to note:
- Limited Access - The vendor contact will only be able to access cases they are directly assigned, regardless of the vendor assignment.
- Full Access - The vendor contact will only be able to access cases where the Vendor is assigned as an investigator on the case.
Once you have created the vendor contact, they can log in like any other staff member in the system and view cases.
Note about Vendor Contacts
- Vendor contacts can only be assigned to cases where the associated vendor has been assigned as an investigator. If the vendor has not been assigned, any associated vendor contacts cannot be assigned.
- If the associated vendor account is deleted or migrated to an employee, any associated vendor contacts will no longer have access to login and view vendor cases.