I’m hoping to start a discussion around permissions for Collaborator Accounts being able to access the Point of Sale channel.
Since there are more POS apps being launched, app developers & partners need to be able to provide support for merchants using the Point of Sale channel.
I have tested this with many of our merchants, and it seems that currently Collaborator Accounts cannot access the Point of Sale channel, even with permissions set correctly in the Role.
For example:
This is the Point of Sale permissions in the Role that is automatically created for one of my merchants when I have requeted access. They have ticked the checkboxes for the Point of Sale channel:
There are legitimate reasons for need to help merchants with Point of Sale settings - for example, helping to make code changes to Receipts, helping to set up our tile correctly, etc.
Hey @adamwooding - thanks for flagging this. I was able to do a bit of digging on my end and I think I was able to replicate the issue you’re seeing. Out of curiosity, are you able to access the POS App itself for this shop when you’re given collaborator access?
I noticed in my testing that I wasn’t able to access the POS App either, so I just want to narrow down if this is potentially an issue with the POS component itself as a whole or with how our account authorization system works.
Hope to hear from you soon, happy to dig into this!
Hey @Alan_G , thank you so much for investigating this and apologies for my late reply.
I just tested again and I can confirm that I am also not able to access the POS app itself either.
Really happy to help with this in any way I can - it will be great to get this issue resolved as it is a major obstacle for being able to assist merchants with issues at the moment.
Thanks @adamwooding, appreciate you testing this as well and no worries at all, happy to help with this. I’ll reach out to some folks internally so that we can investigate this further for you since it does seem quite odd. I’ll loop back with you here once I have more info to share/if we need next steps from you. Speak soon!
Hey @adamwooding, quick follow-up after chatting with our retail folks. This is a known issue on our side and we’ve opened an internal issue to track it. We’re exploring options to improve collaborator access for POS in the admin. I don’t have an ETA or specifics to share just yet, but I’ll keep an eye on things and update here as soon as we’ve got movement or next steps. Thanks for your patience, let me know if I can help out with anything else in the meantime
@Alan_G we have experienced the exact same issue when trying to troubleshoot an issue for POS merchants. It ended up requiring they remove us as a Collaborator and then maybe add us as staff only? It involved an extremely time consuming back and forth with us both trying to figure it out. Fixing this would be very helpful for us.
Thanks @derrick, I’ll pass your feedback on internally to some folks on our team. I definitely understand how this would be helpful for sure.
I still don’t have a concrete update on this, but I can share that I’ve worked with some people internally on the issue and we are aware of the current limitation on an engineering-level. I’ll keep my eye on things and loop back with you all here when I move definite info to share.
Such a tease that we can see the POS channel and not access it. Having to manage numerous POS accounts under a separate email address and log in is honestly a PIA. I literally have 2 browsers open or my iPad and laptop when I’m working with a client. One for partner access and the other for POS.
This was one of 2 breaking changes that Shopify made without warning us (developers/collaborators), the other being that we can no longer access user settings as well. This wasn’t a bug, it was intentional, justified as for “security reasons”. But isn’t it a much bigger security risk if the shop owner has to let me log in using his/her credentials? The only other option, creating an additional staff account, is no more secure than a collaborator account, and is not a viable option for small business clients who need to keep costs to a minimum.
My clients are all small merchants (some are one-person operations) and they do not know anything about IT or back-end setup and configuration, security, RBAC, etc., so they rely on me to handle all of that for them. Which I can no longer do effectively, thanks to Shopify removing these Collaborator permissions for no justifiable reason, other than to force merchants to have to pay for additional staff accounts.
This is just the latest in a long line of moves by Shopify that make life for developers/collaborators more difficult. I am seriously considering migrating all of my clients to WooCommerce.
Hi Alan, hopping on this thread to confirm as Shopify Partners we still cannot access Shopify POS app nor can business owners add us to their POS app - they are experiencing issues with their marketing signup and discounts on POS and we cannot remotely support them with this as we can with the rest of Shopify. We assist locals in-person, but this isn’t possible with inter-state and international clients - is this on the roadmap for Partners & Collaborators to access?
Thanks for adding this context here. Just confirming that this is still a current limitation on our end: collaborator accounts can’t be granted POS permissions (a bit more info here), so Partner/collaborator access won’t currently work for the Shopify POS app or POS-related access that depends on those POS permissions.
The current workaround is for the merchant to create a separate staff account with the required POS/admin permissions for the work being done. I definitely get that this it more is not super ideal, especially for remote support workflows like POS discounts, marketing signup, receipts, or tile setup.
I’m going to add your example to the internal tracking for this though and I’ll loop back here if I get clearer next steps or movement on our end.
I am seriously considering migrating all of my clients to WooCommerce.