Overview
This document is designed to help produce partner-facing documentation for Crexendo Marketplace users.
The Marketplace supports three access levels as listed below.
- Public access
- Super User or Communication Service Provider(CSP) access
- Office Manager or Retail Business Administrator(RBA) access
To start the process, a CSP (NetSapiense licensee) needs to sign up for Marketplace access.
Once the access is setup, the CSP can publish links or tiles on their NetSapiens portal to navigate to the Marketplace. NetSapiens V45 will include enhancements to easily publish a Marketplace tile on the UI. Since Marketplace has OAuth2 based Single Sign On (SSO) built in, authorized users will be able to seamlessly navigate from their NetSapiens portal to the Marketplace interface without any need for a separate set of credentials and without any additional login dialogs presented.
Following sections contain details about each access level, and functionalities available within the same.
Public Interface
Navigating to https://marketplace.crexendo.com will render publicly accessible Marketplace interface. This is intended for potential customers and sales/pre-sales purposes.
Sign-up Process
- Send an email to evp@crexendo.com – providing a contact name, email (preferably a distro), and phone number to setup as Marketplace contact.
- Once corresponding forms are signed, an email will be received at the provided email address with an invitation code for registration with the Marketplace.
- Click the link within the email or go to https://marketplace.crexendo.com and click on “CSP Registration”. Make sure a Super User is available to finish the registration, as it will require OAuth2 credentials provisioning.
- Please provision a distro for the Email here as future communications related to Marketplace operations (app approval etc.) will be sent to this email address.
- “Application Access Level” can be specified as GA or BETA – and will govern whether CSP access will only see GA applications or GA+BETA.
- If “Restrict Marketplace Access” is set to “Yes”, Office Manager scope users will only have a “read only” access to the Marketplace.
Super User / CSP Access
A logged in Super User will see an interface like shown above. “Spotlight Integrations” are popular or newly introduced apps within the Marketplace.
Initially, only “Available Apps” carousel will be visible – as the CSP would not have enabled any apps for their customers at that point. As the CSP onboards available applications, the “Enabled Apps” carousel will start populating along with the status of an app.
To onboard an app, click an app and “Request Access”. This will move the app to “Enabled Apps” carousel with “Requested” state. The app will traverse through the following states.
- “Requested” – CSP has requested an app to be onboarded.
- “Processing” – Marketplace team is reviewing any pre-requisites for the app and are communicating with the Vendor as well as the CSP to facilitate the onboarding requirements.
- “Ready To Publish” – All contractual and technical requirements have been fulfilled. The CSP can now act on this app by clicking “Publish” to make it visible to CSP customer base.
Office Manager / RBA Access
Office Manager access to the Marketplace is structured like the CSP access. The only difference is that the visibility of apps is limited to what the CSP has onboarded/published.
Workflow Support for CSPs
A CSP can opt to enable workflow while requesting access to an app.
Enabling a workflow for an app means that an Office Manager will not be able to single click enable an application. They will have to request access to the app from CSP – just like a CSP requests access to an app while onboarding it.
The app goes through “Requested”, “Processing”, and “Ready to Activate” states, and CSP manages the flow using “Approvals” section on their Marketplace interface.
The main utility of workflow functionality is to provide an opportunity for the CSP to gate app enablement in case any contracts/paperwork needs to be put in place before opening up access to an Office Manager.
Domain Enablement
An Office Manager can enable or request enablement (if workflow is enabled) of an app of choice. Additionally based on the app setup, a Super User can also enable domains to have access to an application.
Super User Operation
If an application allows domain enablement by a Super User, it will display a “Manage Domains” button for a logged in Super User.
Clicking “Manage Domains" would display an interface to enable/disable domains for a given app.
Depending on whether an app has tier-based access (platinum, gold, silver) for domains or not, the interface will display a drop-down to pick a tier v/s a slider for enable/disable.
Office Manager Operation
Depending on whether workflow is enabled or not, an Office Manager will see “Enable” v/s “Request Access” for enabling an app for consumption.
For apps with domain tiers, an additional pop-up shows up to select the tier.
User Management
An Office Manager can enable/disable users for the applications enabled on their domain.
If a Super User needs/wants to perform this function, they’ll need to masquerade as an Office Manager.
Advanced App Integrations
Marketplace does support CSP, Domain, and User level webhooks to :
- Notify 3rd party apps on assignment changes (create/update/delete)
- Capture and provide 3rd party app specific parameters.
A webhook can also be provisioned to feed an API sequence to achieve a pre-provisioned goal of configuring certain aspects of the 3rd party application as well as provisioning complementing aspects of the NetSapiens platform.
An example would be Crexendo Extend user provisioning that involves NetSapiens user device creation and passing on corresponding SIP credentials to Tango for eSIM or physical SIM provisioning.
Since each integration leveraging this functionality would be one of its kind, any further specifics are out of scope for this document.