Hi all. This is what I would like to do:
A multivendor e-commerce system. The idea is to sell locally produced organic food to local groups of customers. I want to provide structure for local producers to form groups, so they can offer their produce together: for example a cheese maker, a fruit producer, egg producer and vegetable producer join forces and have their own common 'product list' which they put on thier own shop page within my system. So I need a way of creating vendor groups, where there will be a vendor administrator who can manage vendor accounts within his own group, who can add new members of his group, or delete them. He will be able to enter new products into the product list for his own group too. Vendor group members can edit their own account, and add their own products to the Group product List. (This all exists because this way they can join all their orders, and drive only one van to deliver products to the consumers, instead of each driving their own vehicle. Another reason is - promoting each other's produce to encourage more customers to buy. Another reason is to cut out the middleman who often earns more than the producers themselves, then to encourage local consumption etc)
Similar for the consumer. They organise themselves into local groups, there is a group administrator, who can add members, or delete them, and he can order produce listed in Product lists for his own group. Consumer group members can edit their own accounts and order produce listed for their own groups.
Between the consumer groups and vendor groups there is a many-to many relationship, because one vendor group can deliver to many consumer groups, and one consumer gorup can order produce from many vendor groups. To manage these relationships, I will have an 'agreement' between them.... This means that a group of consumers has agreed to ordering produce fro a group of producers, and they have agreed to deliver to this group of consumers.
Reading the toolset documentation and looking through the options, it is (more or less) clear to me how to allow access for certain user roles to certain post types or products or categories. However, I am not sure how to create the groups themselves?
All indivdual vendors as well as group vendors will still be vendors - so they will have the same privileges or capabilities... And all consumers are for Woocommerce only customers, and they will all have the same WP privileges.
However, How can I ensure that they have the access only to those products that are linked to their groups? What is the way to set up a group and manage it? Do you know if toolset is compatible with Groups plugin (by itthinx)? If so, will I still be able to you Access to manage users' access to various things?
I don't have the website yet to show you...
Any guidance is much appreciated...
Best regards,
Ivana
