It doesn’t seem to make sense that we as collaborators CANNOT access the dev dashboard at all for merchants without them setting us up as staff.
I may be completely misunderstanding, but from my viewpoint we as Shopify Partners are really required to access shops via collaborator access - not as staff. These permissions are not as expansive and it makes more sense give the nature of the support we provide.
However, at this time how are we supposed to direct shops to the “best” place to create apps? If I’m providing services with custom extensions and/or apps, it makes the most sense that this should “live” within the merchant dashboard. But based on the docs it seems there’s no pathway for collaborator accounts. Even in a recent support chat I had, support suggested that I needed to ask the merchant to add me as a staff to get access.
This doesn’t seem to make sense at all with how we are supposed to interact with shops. Am I missing something?
At the moment you are correct, there is no way to add a partner as an organization-level collaborator with app development access. You would need to be added as staff.
I’d like to hear more about your typical use case, will drop a PM.
Thanks for the feedback and side conversation Taylor.
If you need Dev Dash access, requesting that the merchant set up staff permission would be the Shopify recommendation at this time. We are looking at ways to improve this experience for partners and merchants.
This needs to be greatly improved. I’m a collaborator with dozens of clients and I’m no longer able to support them. I don’t want to manage dozens of staff logins for myself. That was the main benefit of having a single partner account. Why can’t a Shopify store owner/org owner grant a collaborator access to their dev dashboard?
A couple existing use cases for improving this and allowing store admins to grant collaborators access to their dev dashboard:
Our client had an existing app that they asked us to manage. I cannot update the webhook api version or app URL without signing into their admin as a staff member. It would be much simpler (and a better auth flow) to log in as a collaborator and be able to publish a new version of the custom app.
We develop very custom apps for some of our customers, and because of that it makes more sense for the app to live in their dev dashboard. But it would be helpful for us as collaborators to be able to modify the app or see the logs and monitoring.
@NickWesselman Please advocate on our behalf for Shopify to add this permission option!