Cooperation with our Partners
We strive to be fast, effecient and friendly when working with our Partners. After all, if our cooperation is succesfull, our shared clients will be too.
TL;DR: We are here to help, but we are also here to educate and guide where ever possible. Below is a short list of the types of things we can support you with, but we've also noted down some things that we try to coach you to learn instead.
| What we do | What we don't do |
|---|---|
| Products catalog | |
| We will show you example products and point to our documentation for creating new ones, like this Support article | We prefer not to import entire product groups or catalogues, instead we'll show you how to use bulk actions in Centra UI, as described in this example on our support website |
| Custom attributes | |
| We'll help you to understand the concept of attributes and share some examples with you in our Custom Attributes docs | However, we will not build multiple attribute definitions for you, reviewing one you've created yourself and then advising you on the best outcome is much more effecient for us all. |
| Test orders | |
| We are happy to guide you on creating test orders, we can explain the order flow or teach you how to create / complete shipments. | Creating multiple test order variations, though, is something you'll benefit from learning to do yourself. We'll also show the client how to do it, of course, based on required use-cases. |
| Stress and performance tests | |
| - | Once again, teaching you to run stress tests without our help is a much more effecient way to develop skillsets with our partners, and once you know how you have those skills in house. |
Our work - general guidance
Philosophy #1: We are here to help
Centra is awesome. We love our product, and we want to convince you of the same.
From a client support perspective, we do that by teaching each new brand about how to configure and use Centra in the way that's most appropriate for their Product and store requirements. We help them understand sales and logistics, product catalogues, shipping options, taxes (configured for each Markets), Warehouse and Stock configuration, currency settings, language config and translations. After initial onboarding, it is the responsibility of the client to keep their data updated with new Products, Markets, etc. As an Integration Partner try to give clients the job of managing their centra stores and data.
From a Partner support perspective, we love sharing our knowledge. We've created guides on the majority of centra's features, for example they include documentation on swaggers and changelogs, store flows and information on how to test integrations. Whether you are building a website, application, ERP integration, pick-and-pack Warehouse integration, or simply playing with our brand new GraphQL API, there are guides to help you succeed. And if you can't find what you are looking for, feel free to reach out to us in Slack!
Are you a new Centra Partner? Welcome! Step one is familiarizing yourself with our Centra Fundementals documentation, these will help you understand the some core concepts. Once you do, you'll find it easier to follow specific docs and guides and most importantly you'll be ready for the next step. So step 2 then, attend one of our partner webinars. At these sessions we'll show you around the Centra UI and explain the most commonly used APIs and their functions.
Philosophy #2: We prefer supporting & educating over solving
Our team will always answer your questions, either by responding with an answer in writing or by pointing to our documentation. If documentation on a subject is missing then let us know and we will add it. If you forgot how something works - just ask, and we will remind you.
However, after explaining a concept once or twice, we will expect you to have that knowledge and document it if needed. It's impossible for us to give 1 partner 100% of our time and focus so use the time during early stages of working with Centra to really get to know our documentation and ask questions.
Help us by introducing Centra documentation to new colleagues and encourage shadowing - that way you'll have a common perspective on how to use Centra. Having said that, we'd also love to have them attend one of our API or certification training sessions.
Philosophy 3: Technical Support and Professional Services are two completely different things
What we do for our Partners:
-
Technical support
If you have technical questions, either about Centra UI or our APIs, let us know! Please make sure to always include as much details as you can. Always mentionthe following when contacting partner support:
- Which client you are working on
- Which environment you are working on (QA or production)
- What the actual results are now
- What you are trying to achieve
- Whether our guides and documentation helped, where you became stuck or if documentation is are missing
-
Bug reports and verification
If you encounter any behaviour that deviates from documentation or common practice, let us know! We want Centra to work reliably for everyone, so any technical issues will be looked at and fixed if deemed necessary.
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Questions about technical features
If you have questions about new features, specific APIs, or things mentioned in our newsletter - ask away! If a shared client needs the same training let us know and we'll get in contact with them
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(Optional) Basic monitoring of your websites (Pingdom-based with alerts in Slack)
With this we can help you share the burden of monitoring status of Customer's websites - we will discover if it fails to load, warn you about certificates that will soon expire, etc.
What we don't do:
-
Professional services (unless paid for)
If your request is out of scope of technical support, and you still want us to spend time working on it, we can of course help. We'll need to estimate how much time the additional service will take and agree on a fee.
-
Adding data to Centra enviroments
This is the responsibility of our common Customers - we give them education and tools to set up or import Products and their media, Markets, Shipping alternatives, Taxes, etc. We don't have automated tools to, for example, generate test orders - this is near to impossible to do well, since the amount of permutations of different setups, plugins, flows and integrations grows exponentially with every new, unique Customer.
-
Testing of customer's configurations / plugins
Centra should throw errors when, for example, payment plugin fails to authenticate. In most cases this won't be something Centra can help with. Clients will have their own agreements with Payment / E-mail / other service providers and any issues with those services should be addressed with the service provider.
-
Application design advice
Questions related to the architecture of a store such as how many Warehouses should be set up, is something our Clients will need to decide. Therefore, this type of question should be addressed to the client.
How we co-operate - communicating via Slack
Response times
Our team does their best to respond as quickly as possible
- Our aim is to respond within the hour for servere issues - however, we are usually much faster.
- For more general questions our aim is to respond within 2 hours
How to contact us
- Starting a message with
@hereor including it in one pings all online channel members. Use this call to help us give your issue the attention it needs. - Starting a message with
@channelor inclduing it in one pings everyone in that channel, whether they are online or not. - Please refrain from messaging individual people in the channel via threads. Ping the whole channel using one of the above methods instead
- Please refrain from sending PM's (private messages) to a channel member, unless it's for sharing API secrets, passwords, or for personal reasons.
- Similarly, only use threads in slack for ongoing discussions occuring in the same day. Do not re-use them afterwards - since they have limited visibility after 24h has passed
Note: People who have their notifications manually disabled will still not recive an @channel message. Use this message type with caution, a good example of when it is approriate to use is when you want to report an urgent issue (sev 1)
Best practice - Questions should be visable for everyone in the channel because:
- More people will your question
- Everyone in the channel will be able to see answers/solutions - increasing knowledge and know-how.
- Individuals you message individually may be in a meeting and cannot reply
Be kind
We are here to help, but in some cases we will need to consult internally which may increase response times, in other cases we may tell you the issue is not one casued by Centra and that you'll need to consult other service providers. We also understand that particularly troublesome incident can create anxiety, especially when there is a deadline, but we kindly ask you refrain from messaging the channel asking for updates once we have confirmed we are working on the problem.