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Set up Violet Connect

Violet Connect is customized to the user experience you want to provide so that your merchants are interacting with your brand. In order to get yourself set up with Violet Connect, you will need upload the following to your Channel Dashboard:

The channel will be responsible for providing the following values that will populate and configure the onboarding experience. These values can be configured by you in the Channel dashboard. There may be additional configuration options that will be discussed during your integration.

  • App Name — This is displayed in the top left hand corner of your Violet Connect dashboard
  • Square Logo or Icon — This is displayed in the top left hand corner of your Violet Connect dashboard
  • Redirect URL — This is the page your merchant is taken to once the onboarding process is complete. Violet will append any information you need from our end, such as the merchant Id, to query parameters of this URL. See below.
  • App Description
  • More Info URL

Once all these have been set, you can contact Violet on support@violet.io or through Slack, depending on your support package and provide the final two values below and activate your Violet Connect experience.

  • Custom Path (ex. connect.violet.io/myapp) - This is configured by Violet and once set, will enable merchant onboarding.
  • Supported Commerce Platforms List (Optional) - You can filter which commerce platforms you show to your merchants instead of the complete list of Violet integrations

Once confirmed from our end, you can begin to onboard merchants in production, even if Checkout access is still disabled.

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Connecting Merchants

Do not connect real merchants through “Test Mode” Violet Connect (https://connect.violet.dev). If a real merchant, orders placed in “Test Mode” will not be distinguishable on their end from real orders, however, no money will have been transacted. This could result in your merchant incorrectly fulfilling orders.

We encourage channels to create free test stores they can own and manage and then connect those test stores to their test mode channel. This will allow you to manage your own test products, initiate test refunds/returns for your orders and get some experience working with Violet Connect before you start onboarding real merchants. See a guide here

Once setup you can go to your selected custom path connect.violet.io/myapp then go through the setup flow.

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Setting Details

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Redirect URL

The merchant will redirect to this URL after completion of the Violet Connect flow. You can pass in custom state information as documented below. Violet will append a query parameter, merchant_id to the redirect URL. This is the merchant_id stored in Violet and can be used by you for subsequent calls.

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Custom State

Using the state query string parameter you can pass a value into Violet Connect by appending that to your Violet Connect URL, for example connect.violet.io/myapp?state=sample. The passed in state will be returned to you when the merchant completes the onboarding process.

NOTE: state should be set when linking merchants to Violet Connect, do not add the query parameter in the Violet Channel Dashboard

As a more detailed example, if your base Violet Connect URL was connect.violet.io/myapp and you send the merchant to connect.violet.io/myapp?state=sample With your base redirect URL set as myapp.com after completion of Violet Connect the merchant will redirect to myapp.com?state=sample containing the same state or value that was passed into Violet Connect to start.

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State in Webhooks

The above mentioned state will also come across in a x-violet-connect-state header on the MERCHANT_CONNECTED webhook that is fired when a merchant completes a connection. This will give you additional options as to what and how you use this state field.

When testing the merchant onboarding process in Sandbox, do not use an email address that you later plan on using for a developer type account. When signing up as a developer we must create accounts in both the Production and Sandbox environments. If you use the email address with a Sandbox merchant it will become reserved in Sandbox and we will not be able to complete the creation of your developer account if you try to use it for that purpose in the future.