This page describes where the Merchant Dashboard of the Fibershed Marketplace lives, what it is, and some easy ways to remember and access it.
What is the Merchant Dashboard?
When producers and artisans join the Coop, apply for Marketplace accounts, and log in to their merchant accounts for the first time, they do so at:
www.fibershedmarketplace.com/backoffice
The /backoffice part of the website address is important. It provides access to the Merchant Dashboard, where merchants list items, and fulfill and manage orders.
The Fibershed Marketplace may look like one big store, and it is, but it has two distinct areas that serve two very different sets of activities:
1) the management side at /backoffice, what merchants see and do, and
2) shopping, what customers see and do.
Merchant and Customer Roles
The Fibershed Marketplace is a lot like a grocery store. A Safeway customer, for example, doesn’t get to go in the back, check inventory, and stock items, but employees do. And, to unlock the cash register, employees have a special ID and privileges that the average shopper does not.
The Fibershed Marketplace is similar. Just like the cashier, Marketplace merchants have a special ID and privileges. Anyone can create an account to purchase Marketplace items and track their orders (in the upper right corner of www.fibershedmarketplace.com). But only approved merchants can log in to the merchant dashboard at fibershedmarketplace.com/backoffice.
This means that going to www.fibershedmarketplace.com and clicking “Sign In” does NOT lead to the merchant dashboard. Without the /backoffice part of the web address, a sign-in attempt is for the customer-facing site.
As a result, if a Marketplace merchant tries to reset their /backoffice password from www.fibershedmarketplace.com, and not www.fibershedmarketplace.com/backoffice, logging in will not work.
Repeated attempts to reset passwords from the wrong page will eventually be perceived as a hacking attempt, and automatically block logins for 24 hours. If this happens to you, email [email protected] and our support folks can manually unblock access, as they are available and able. (We apologize, but the Marketplace is a 100% volunteer-run operation at the moment, so your patience is appreciated.)
3 Easy Ways to Find the Back Office
Merchants can use their web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and so on) to find the /backoffice part of the Marketplace more easily. Here are three suggestions.
- Visit fibershedmarketplace.com/backoffice. While there, bookmark the /backoffice URL by choosing the “Bookmarks” tab in your browser and clicking “Add Bookmark,” or similar. It should look something like this:
- Make the /backoffice bookmark a Favorite, and create a shortcut to it by setting new browser windows to open with Favorites shown. This will ensure a path directly to the /backoffice merchant dashboard always appears on your browser’s start/home page.
And then “New windows open with: Favorites”:
- Set the /backoffice to be your default homepage, as shown in the image immediately above, beside the word “Homepage.”
Just a minute or two of tooling up will help ensure merchants land in the right spot, and prevent login problems and frustration.