Openfoodnetwork: Hub should be able to remove permissions granted by Producer (remove connection)

[kirstenalarsen]

What is the problem we are solving

Hubs that have been using OFN for a long time often have a big list of Producers, many of which they no longer work with. They don't want all these Producers clouding their shopfront and showing connections in map and searches

They currently can't remove them themselves. If they go to Enterprise_relationships and try to remove the connection, they click ok - but nothing happens the permission is still there

http://recordit.co/q0dfDzChrE

This MIGHT be a bug? but I suspect it was built this way (oversight) thinking that producers should control who they give permission to or not. In practice it needs to work also the other way.

We can workaround it as super-admin can do it, but would be much better for Hub to be able to self-serve. I am thinking it might be a nice little paper

Success factors = expected outcome

Hub can remove connection with a Producer that they no longer work with or don't want to be associated with

Useful information for inception

[luisramos0]

needs investigation to confirm but this is probably a papercut :+1:

[lin-d-hop]

We don't know if this is a dev size papercut or not.
@sauloperez thinks that we should be able to figure this out from the error message.

Papercuts team decided that this can be classifed as a papercut as soon as a dev agrees it can be done in 1/2day.

[sauloperez]

I tried reproducing this in staging and both the producer and hub can delete the permissions. That gif you shared was in production? I can go check in the DB and see what are their settings but any background you may have will be useful. If we could do exactly what you did in the gif while I'm watching the logs, it'd be ace

[sigmundpetersen]

Wonder if #619 concerns the same thing?
(One of our oldest open issues 👵 )

[Erioldoesdesign]

Just chiming in here with a small cautionary message! this is the kind of function that could be used maliciously, I imagine a scenario where a hub removes a producer for a reason that is complicated and maybe not in good faith.

I also imagine this wouldn't happen with our 'ideal users' and those we have now but it's always good to think of these scenarios and what we might do in the case of. I would likely think about implementing a 'grace period' so you delete, confirm and then that suppliers line is greyed out for 30 days and not selectable and then is deleted or, could be restored. I would also consider adding in an automated email saying that X hub has removed them as a supplier.

I know I can sound a bit 'over the top' with these scenarios but I've seen things like this happen so...yeah I always exercise caution!

[RachL]

@Erioldoesdesign can you detail a bit the risk you are seeing here? The distributor does not want to see the supplier's info anymore, so they remove the data from their view. I don't understand how it can harm the producer. I mean when this happens, before the distributor has already stop selling the producer's product. It does not change anything for the producer. The producer could actually re-add the permission if that's troubling to them but I don't see a real life scenario where this would happen 🤔

[Erioldoesdesign]

So my clarifying question about 'removing a producer from the supplier list' is:
When a hub manager removes producer A from the list, does that mean they are no longer intending on supplying or selling their products?

My assumption and worry is that the following can happen:

Producer A makes bread and still makes bread
Hub sells bread for 1 year
Producer A makes a change, price, type of bread, takes a break from bread making or in some way has a disagreement with Hub.
Hub removes Producer A from their supplier list because 'they no longer want to supply and sell their bread'
Producer A has been removed and still offers permission to be sold, but for a reason is no longer being sold.

At what point and how are Producer A and Hub making fair and justice driven decisions on how to work together and what part (if any) does OFN as a platform play into this?

I think Rachel, what you're describing is that Producer A is not removed completely from the Hub's ability to sell their bread, but that they are 'removed from this particular enterprise relationship view'.

I think this would become more likely if we had tens of thousands of hubs & producer users but always good to imagine the scenarios where people can do harm to each other through technology and understand how to mitigate that if it can be done. Good faith is great but preparing for 'bad actors' is something I've learnt to be useful.

[RachL]

@Erioldoesdesign sorry I'm still not understanding... 🙈

I'm not at all assuming good faith. There are a fair bit of hubs that are probably _already_ treating their producers badly (and reverse mus be true as well), it would be naïve to think we are only attracting distributor- supplier relationships that are fair. But that's linked to OFN's proposal to let each supply chain system to find their own business model. OFN lets hubs & producer decide their model for themselves. Which is different from the Food Assembly or the CSA model.

With this in mind, in 90% of the cases the distributor has the power to decide if they want to sell the producer's products or not. Removing the permission is not going to change that. When a hub is fed up with a producer, they just untick the producer in their order cycle and their products are not being sold anymore.

Producer A is not removed completely from the Hub's ability to sell their bread,

No they are removed completely. If the hub does not want to sell producer's A bread, in the end, the final decision is to be made by the hub _unless_ there operate under a long term contract (CSA or equivalent). But again, even in this case it comes down to who manages the OC in OFN's software. If it is the CSA's volunteers, then there is not much the producer can do already today...

[Erioldoesdesign]

Understood re. the good faith circumstance not being this confusion point.

From your comments, I think I understand better now where the power lies with the platform and my assumptions were that that hubs and producers were treated in a different way where there was an equal level of power but what I'm hearing is that, hub are tasked with defining how they want to engage with the producers they sell the produce of.

I think then, this may play into a bigger topic that to starts to sound like a part of the Network piece of work to me. To better understand not only how hubs, producers and customers connect and network but where the power balances exist and why and if our users are served well by this.

My original suggestion though, was about when a hub deletes a producer, that the producer receives some kind of email or notification of this because at this point, a hub can remove a producer and never sell their bread again, but a producer might not know until days, weeks or months. Again, understanding the relationships between hubs and producers is key for me to understand better which your explanation has helped with :D

[RachL]

yeah I think this is very interesting conversation :) I think you also have nailed why we want to build the network feature and how much it is important to our model :-)

but a producer might not know until days, weeks or months.

Yes I do agree with you but I was wondering if this suggestion shouldn't be also correct at the OC level as it is the first step today where the distributor can remove a producer and basically end up in the situation you are describing.
So I wonder if the notification shouldn't be worked on in another issue where we assess a bit deeper where and when the producer needs to be aware of the hub's activity.